The US Presidential Race begins

Like it hasn't already been going on for seven long months the first actual vote in what will be an eighteen month process to decide who will be the most powerful person in the world (only questionably these days of course) has begun in earnest. Well Iowa (and no I checked unfortunately there is no town called Earnest in Iowa).

And so it was on the 3rd January that Iowans stopped picking corn and picked there preferred candidate to contest the presidency for the Republican Party (or Grand Ole Party, GOP).

The 76 year old Dr Ron Paul is a hit with the under 35's...
In other words the ones who will have to pay
for today's excesses of their parents

Mitt Romney, the anointed candidate, hit first with 25% of the vote. Rick Santorum surged to second with a further 25% of the vote and Ron Paul finished third with 21.5% of the vote, leaving the rest of the field to split the rest between them.

John Huntsman finished seventh but remains in the race until the New Hampshire primary at least which will take place on the 10th January.

Michelle Bachmann, a native Iowan who finished sixth, dropped out of the race the next morning.

Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, finished fifth and after returning home to consider his position has decided to let the dice roll once more in South Carolina on the 21st January. Perry actually won some counties unlike fourth place finisher Newt Gingrich who likewise will see how New Hampshire and South Carolina go before making a decision.

The big test will be Florida whose primary is held on the 31st January and usually proves to be a key state in the eventual Presidential election.

So as candidate after candidate has surged then fallen away - Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich - Americans are really scraping the bottom of the barrel in an attempt to avoid a potentially divisive Paul vs Romney run off.

The media assault on Ron Paul began almost immediately with newsroom after newsroom re-iterating strongly that Dr Paul simply cannot win the election, in spite of the evidence to the contrary. Rick Santorum who had been written off for months is suddenly the media darling as the sheeple are encouraged to coalesce behind the latest big thing. If Santorum falls flat that only leaves Huntsman and as a former aide to the Obama administration he just does not have the support of the party.

The analysis of the vote is more interesting - Ron Paul was far and away the winner with the young voters which bodes well for the future.

Eighth place finisher New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson has dropped out and confirmed that he will run as a third party Libertarian candidate in the elections, subject of course to whatever happens to Dr Paul...