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.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to lead a delegation to China next month, saying she hopes to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and bring stability to the Taiwan Strait. “I am grateful and happy to accept this invitation,” Cheng said in a statement from the KMT chairperson’s office. Cheng said she hopes both sides can work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, enhance exchange and cooperation, bring stability to the Taiwan Strait and improve people’s livelihoods. At today's news conference, Cheng said any efforts to
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
RSS