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Romney's Iowa Straw Poll Victory
EURSOC's US correspondent Chris Timmers catches up on the latest news from the US Presidential Election.
Imagine a football match between two top teams to be played in a stadium seating 50,000 fans. Now only 1,000 tickets will be sold, the top players (like a Beckham) won't play, and the outcome of the contest will not determine placement in the Premier League, or any other league for that matter. How much interest would you have in such a game? Probably not much.
Well, that is sort of what happened in the Iowa Republican straw poll.
Sure, Romney won, the third place holder in all Republican polls so far. But Rudy Guiliani decided not to participate. And Fred Thompson, the darling of many American conservatives, hasn't even decided whether he is going to run (and wasn't in the Iowa poll). And the results of the straw poll, no matter how spirit bolstering they may be, do not commit any delegates to any candidate.
Certainly Romney should be pleased with his showing in one out of 50 states, where the heavy hitters of his party didn't show up and where the African American and Hispanic populations are, to say the least, not really relevant. (Nationwide in the US, blacks are 14% of the population while Hispanics account for 13% and are the largest growing minority in the country. Blacks and Hispanics together account for less than 10% of the electorate in Iowa).
So, let us congratulate former Massachusetts governor Romney on his win. Perhaps it is the harbinger of better things to come for him. But let's keep it in perspective.
