The Results Are In, And They Are Meaningless

            And so it was that a mere matter of days into the New Year, Mitt Romney stomped his foot on the presidential terra. He went toe to toe with all the others in Iowa and came out victorious. But it was not an easy victory. It was a hard fought battle, and Romney only won by eight votes. Romney may be one step closer to locking down the nomination, but if Iowa proved anything it’s that Romney isn’t commanding the support he once thought he had.

            It has been an up and down season. All the candidates have seemed to have had their fifteen minutes in the spotlight. But the one that no one took seriously up until now was former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum who surged to the front to battle with Romney like a frothy whirlwind. If nothing else, his minor defeat by less than a dozen votes gives Santorum the ability to present himself as the clear cut alternative to Romney.

            New Hampshire is next, right around the corner and Romney has that under lock and key; he’s been campaigning there for what seems like years. Rick Perry has apparently also thrown in the towel, given up and gone back to Texas to “assess his candidacy.” He finished in fifth place with 10 percent of the vote, behind Gingrich’s 13 percent and Ron Paul’s 21. Michele Bachmann, who many thought could do some serious damage in her home state, wound up with only 5 percent of the vote.

            All of it seems somehow meaningless though. To majority of the public there was never a doubt that Romney would win the nomination eventually. And for many others there has never been a doubt that Romney will lose in November. It is only been on the fringes that there has been hope for Ron Paul and Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich. This has proven to be an utterly lost season, perhaps foreshadowing that 2012 will in fact be the year the world ends.

            It all seems more about the ritual than the results, more about the pomp than the circumstance. Not only Iowa has seemed to have lost its meaning, but the whole process seems to have become unimportant in the eyes of the voters. People all around on both sides seem indifferent or unenthusiastic about the prospects of 2012. Is this the year that role of President of the United States finally becomes unimportant? Only time will tell. So until then, buckle up, because the journey is almost over. I feel it will have a very Vonnegut style ending. We will crown the Republican nomination not with a whimper or a bang, but simply with a shrug.