Every corn-packer's vote counts: eight to win.

As I, rather arbitrarily, predicted on my Facebook account, Mitt Romney, Republican candidate for President, won the Iowa caucus earlier this morning (30,015 votes,) followed by Rick Santorum (30,007 votes,) and Ron Paul (26,219 votes.)

I often thought the race would be close between Mitt Romney & Ron Paul over the past two weeks. On one end, Ron Paul offers drastic revisions to the federal government's behavior by slashing one trillion dollars from the budget after his first presumptive year as President. On the other end, Mitt Romney, an individual finding it difficult to defend a conservative record, appears to be more favorable to win the nomination than Ron Paul. Why? I can only venture a guess. I do not think Ron Paul is concretely unelectable, it is my honest view that his ideas would fizzle out very heavy burdens on our country at this point in time. His ideas are, however, fundamental to those resonating in the United States during the early 1800s. I also honestly believe that many voters do agree with a majority of Ron Paul's ideas as solutions. They, however, fear a Barry Goldwater type general election scenario - because - I don't think the American people generally support a return to fundamentalist American principles; fear hinders his progress. They're extremely unfamiliar to our century. Perhaps they shall be saved for a century in the future.

Rick Santorum's results did indeed surprise me tonight. Something I didn't take into account: there are a large group of conservative voters in Western Iowa who both don't want to vote for Ron Paul's fundamentalism and do not want to vote for a candidate who is NOT historically a conservative. This is where Rick Santorum's last minute surge came in: the last minute result from the last minute decisions of disgruntled Republican voters.

In the end, there is no winner in Iowa tonight. We have three candidates. Each one exists "more right" to the other ideologically. It is my opinion, in the end, Paul's fundamentalism will fail him, Santorum's unexpected need to quickly organize will fail him, and Mitt Romney shall become the nominee for the Republican party. After his victory, he shall be more open about his moderate points of view and leave the conservative title - the conservative title that he has been gripping onto so intently - behind.

PS: Interestingly enough, I just learned via CNN (not hyper-linking that one,) that the delegate count has been split 7-7-7 between Romney, Santorum, & Paul despite the popular vote disparities (25%, 25%, & 21%.) And what counts at the national convention: delegates or the popular vote counts from the fifty states? Be seeing you!