So I just saw this news item online…
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Tuesday that he is suspending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, dropping out after failing to register in the Iowa caucuses.
…and I thought, as you probably did or are thinking now: "Asa Hutchinson was still in the race?" Admittedly, I didn't watch the last few G.O.P. debates but I don't think I've heard or read that name in a month or two. I guess I heard Chris Christie saying, "I'm the only one in this race telling the truth about Donald Trump" and I just kind of assumed that Hutchinson, who was doing some of that, was out.
And I see that he got 0.2% of the vote in yesterday's caucuses which isn't all that far from how you and I did in them. He finished behind someone named Ryan Binkley whose name I don't think I've read or heard before. It sounds like one of those character names we used to make up at Hanna-Barbera. I may have written an episode of Scooby Doo where one of the suspects was named Ryan Binkley.
The strangest thing I saw in the news this morning was this statement from Nikki Haley — and this is an actual quote: "When you look at how well we're doing in New Hampshire, in South Carolina and beyond, I can safely say tonight Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race." This is a very odd statement coming from the person who finished in third place. She also said Iowa demonstrated that her campaign has "momentum." Okay…but so does someone falling from a very tall building.
Meanwhile, there seems to be some controversy over the media calling the race for Trump when they did…
The Associated Press called the race just about 30 minutes after voting began, projecting Trump as the winner with only nine of 1,657 precincts reporting results, or 0.54%, according to Axios. Fox News, NBC News and CNN all projected Trump as the winner before 9 pm as well.
"Absolutely outrageous that the media would participate in election interference by calling the race before tens of thousands of Iowans even had a chance to vote," tweeted DeSantis spokesman Andrew Romeo. "The media is in the tank for Trump and this is the most egregious example yet."
I kinda agree about calling the race before everyone had a chance to vote but they've kind of been doing that for months now. That same media has been telling us that Trump was going to crush all challengers and he did. What they did on Election Day or Caucus Day or whatever you'd call it ain't all that different from what they did the day before that and the day before that and the day before that…
And much of that media has been telling us that Trump was found to have sexually molested a woman and that he's likely to be convicted of one or more felonies in the coming months. If they're "in the tank" for him, they're doing a good job of disguising it.
Anyway, for an interesting take on what the vote in Iowa means, go read Mona Charen. She thinks there's a growing movement among Republican voters to vote for anyone else even if anyone else is Joe Biden.