Ron was on the cusp of winning Iowa but then he let Santorum run away with it. We can blame the media, but the fact is Santorum ran an aggressive retail politics campaign. If I remember correctly, Ron pretty much left the state shortly before the caucus.
Although I agree more could have been done in Iowa 2012, have to somewhat disagree with the idea that Ron Paul let Santorum run away with it, because Santorum had an aggressive retail politics campaign that could not be matched.
The media did have a HUGE part to play into what happened in Iowa, if you watched what had unfolded the weeks before and the critical 72 hours prior to the caucus what was in the news was massively disturbing with its wall-to-wall overwhelmingly positive reports regarding Santorum. He and his support was hardly talked about before December 2011 (the months prior) and polling didn't show he was a strong competitor to win Iowa or even place well, I'm not a big conspiracy theory guy, but I could see why after that some would have serious thoughts about what happened only because the turn around was so extreme including literally hours leading up to caucus night that it was so sad one could only laugh.
Santorum literally went from a 4.0% polling in Iowa based on RCP average to a 16.3% with a final of 24.6 IN LESS THAN A MONTH!
Based on polling and voting data one has to surmise to some extent that the majority of potential voters being polled would have previously gone with Gingrich, Cain, and Bachman and decided to swing towards Santorum in the last month leading up to the caucus, the question is why? Santorum and his team may have been geniuses when it came to Iowa retail politics, but this type of turn around seems so beyond the pale to be believable. One might argue perhaps it was a mixture, the efforts locally to win over voters and groups combined with a media quick to pounce on stories to fill a news cycle that generated an unintended snowball effect with Santorum being the beneficiary, but then this again could only have been possible with the loud speaker of the media involved.
The truth is, and this is something no one especially here should doubt, the other candidates are not the only opposing force in a presidential race. Regardless of how good their retail politics are there is another entity at play that has much greater tools of influence than any candidate possibly could imagine and that is the media. Again I'm not a big conspiracy guy and I think bottom line the media's end goal is all about money and survival of their companies and industry above all, but never the less all it takes is a series of "mistakes" by the media or intentional drama reporting to drum up viewers and the next thing you know a bottom tier candidate
ends up winning a caucus without actually gaining delegates with a difference of three thousand votes. The Media has as much influence (if not more) in Iowa and New Hampshire as it does in any other state in the country and people have and will continue to rely on what the talking heads are saying to "help" them determine what to think and who to vote for in the weeks, days, and hours leading up to caucuses/primaries, I really don't see how this can be refuted.
From wiki:
The Washington Times reported in November 2011 that conservatives had gone on a "carousel" of supporting different candidates against Mitt Romney, from Michele Bachmann to Rick Perry to Herman Cain to Newt Gingrich. As such, Santorum would be next on the "carousel".
Gee I wonder what generated that "carousel", are we to believe that the voters were so indecisive that they intentionally bounced between one candidate to the next when asked, could it be that some outside force was influencing who they were considering to vote for at the time and in this case before it even happened predicted as such? The media really has our fellow citizens all screwed up, it really is sad, can anyone say WMD-smoking-gun-mushroom-cloud?
So what is the take away from this? Of course the candidate, his staff and volunteers should work as much as they can with the goal of beating the other candidates by as far as a vote margin as possible, but never underestimate the power of the media to help push you competitor even one you may consider a dark horse across the finish line in the most ridiculous way imaginable with less than a month leading up to the caucus/primary.
