Mitt Romney, who does not believe in evolutionary genetics

The face of his sons says it all: Mitt Romney technically won the Iowa caucuses. He got it by eight votes. It was a victory clutched in the snatch of defeat, since the real winner—the guy who worked his black slacks off to accomplish what Romney did casually—was Rick Santorum. Now it’s his turn to be the GOP front-runner who runs second to Mitt Romney. Michele Bachmann has dropped out. Newt Gingrich was eaten by a big, poop-eating snake that thought he was a poop. And Ron Paul believes that you can’t have a caucus, because they’re unconstitutional. He came in third to Santorum, proving that you can always sell nihilism to the Republican Party.

Of course Iowa does not matter. You can tell because they managed to pick not just the guy we refused to admit would win but also the guy who had no chance at all. Those are two mutually exclusive outcomes, yet somehow the pundits were wrong to dismiss both. It’s like we went to the moon looking for green cheese and found that it was in fact composed of two substances: dry, gray dust and elves. With Iowa’s Romney/Santorum split, conventional wisdom is wrong in the most obvious way and also the way nobody expected, and the only possible conclusion is that Iowa is crazy.

Partly that is true. Particularly on the Republican side, the Iowa caucuses have done a sporadic job of predicting the eventual nominee. It’s almost as if people didn’t really make up their minds in January. The media’s fixation on the caucuses before they happen and swift dismissal afterward is a study in bad faith. It’s particularly clear this year, when the presumptive front-runner keeps running in front and the person running second keeps imploding.

Romney had the lead going into Iowa. Newt Gingrich was hot on his heels, but then anonymous super PACs spent federally unlimited money on smearing him—the ad I saw Christmas eve said he was “for global warming”—and he dropped. The guy who apparently took his votes just happened to be the guy no one spent money to run against. No one bothered to smear Santorum’s name, because A) his name is smear* and B) he is obviously crazy. If you believe the United States should draft a code of laws based on God’s instructions as transcribed in the Bible, vote for Rick Santorum. We should probably be counting you people anyway.

Probably there are more Santorum people in Iowa than in most places. Probably negative campaigning hurt legitimate candidate Gingrich and totalizing theory Ron Paul, and both men could run strong in New Hampshire. But Romney has been the object of every strong campaign’s negativity since summer, and he keeps polling on top. He ran a half-assed campaign in Iowa, and he tied for first against an argument for ignoring Iowa. Political realists say Romney is the man to beat. He also polls well in Crazytown.

So frantically we look for someone to beat him. If Iowa’s caucuses have not been accurate statistically, last night’s were highly accurate metaphorically. Half the GOP likes Mitt Romney. The other half likes anyone who is not Mitt Romney, followed by their second choice, anyone who is not Barack Obama. Different regions of the Venn diagram have different names in them, but they overlap on one person. It is not Rick Santorum.

Try saying it to yourself: the one guy all the Republicans can stomach is Ron Paul. The guy least likely to cause a mutiny is Rick Santorum. Newt Gingrich is not a shit golem. You can do it, but a pang says you’re probably lying. I personally think the results of the Iowa caucuses were great this year, in that they combined the absurdity of the thing we’re telling ourselves with the half certainty of the thing we’re denying. Spring forth, Santorum—over Gingrich, over Paul, over the predictions of the press. Leap to the fore of all bad-faith estimates. Take your turn as the other thing the Republican Party might do—will do, probably, tomorrow.

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