Mitt Romney won the first battle in this year’s White House race on Tuesday, taking Iowa by a -razor-thin margin to defeat Christian conservative Rick Santorum by just eight votes.
The former Massachusetts governor won 30,015 votes in Tuesday’s Republican nominating contest over 30,007 for Santorum, Iowa officials announced after the two men slugged it out to a nail-biting photo-finish.
“Congratulations to governor Mitt Romney, winner of the 2012 Iowa caucuses. Congratulations to senator Santorum for a very close second-place finish, an excellent race here,” Iowa Republican Party chairman Matt Strawn said.
It marked a remarkable comeback for Santorum in the battle to capture the Republican Party crown and to challenge US President Barack Obama on Nov. 6.
“You have taken the first step in taking back this country,” Santorum, who surged after being given up as politically dead weeks ago, told cheering supporters at what was essentially a victory rally after the Iowa caucus.
The former senator, a devout Catholic who opposes abortion and contraception, and has a hawkish foreign policy, took a shot at what are seen as Romney’s more centrist views, saying “what wins in America are bold ideas, sharp contrasts.”
Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and millionaire venture capitalist, said he and Santorum each had “a great victory” and he congratulated Representative Ron Paul on his third-place finish — then trained his guns on Obama.
“This has been a failed presidency,” Romney said late on Tuesday, in a variation of the stump speech he used in Iowa, calling Obama “in over his head.”
Romney and Santorum ended with 25 percent each, Paul stood at 21 percent and former House speaker Newt Gingrich led the second tier of candidates with about 13 percent of the vote.
“This movement is going to continue and we’re going to keep scoring just as we have tonight,” said Paul, 76, a small-government champion who has stumped heavily in his opposition to foreign aid and military interventions overseas.
Gingrich, whose support in Iowa crumbled under a barrage of attack ads chiefly run by Romney’s allies, served notice he would show no mercy as the battle for the party’s nomination shifts to New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday next week.
After a months-long campaign onslaught — barrages of television attack ads, telephone calls and mailings, candidates blitzing across the state — Iowans headed into hundreds of caucus sites around the mostly rural heartland state.
They gathered on Tuesday in places such as school gymnasiums, libraries and church basements to speak out in front of neighbors on behalf of their chosen candidate and then vote by secret ballot.
The Iowa caucuses came against the backdrop of a sour, job-hungry US economy that weighs heavily on embattled Obama’s bid for a second term, four years after he promised “hope and change” in his historic 2008 victory.
Obama, in a message beamed to Democrats holding their own caucuses across Iowa, pleaded with them to stick with him, saying: “Change is never easy.”
“We’ve been making steady progress as long as we can sustain it and that’s what this is going to be all about,” Obama said.
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
SHIFT PRIORITIES: The US should first help Taiwan respond to actions China is already taking, instead of focusing too heavily on deterring a large-scale invasion, an expert said US Air Force leaders on Thursday voiced concerns about the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) missile capabilities and its development of a “kill web,” and said that the US Department of Defense’s budget request for next year prioritizes bolstering defenses in the Indo-Pacific region due to the increasing threat posed by China. US experts said that a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan is risky and unlikely, with Beijing more likely to pursue coercive tactics such as political warfare or blockades to achieve its goals. Senior air force and US Space Force leaders, including US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink and
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
Czech officials have confirmed that Chinese agents surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March 2024 and planned a collision with her car as part of an “unprecedented” provocation by Beijing in Europe. Czech Military Intelligence learned that their Chinese counterparts attempted to create conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, which “did not go beyond the preparation stage,” agency director Petr Bartovsky told Czech Radio in a report yesterday. In addition, a Chinese diplomat ran a red light to maintain surveillance of the Taiwanese
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