Game On!

At 2:34AM Matt Strawn, state chairman of the Iowa Republican Party announced the final results of the seesaw battle between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.  Eight votes separated the two:  Romney garnered 30,015 votes and Santorum placed second in the caucuses with 30,007.

On New Year’s Day, I asked if the Iowa Caucuses would turn out to be a good underdog story for Santorum. The answer is decidedly yes.

The amazing story behind Santorum’s successful showing in Iowa is the demonstrated hard work he put into the race.  His efforts to visit all 99 counties in the Hawkeye state and hold more than 370 town hall meetings helped to propel his second-place showing.

While Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich were traveling across the state in large campaign buses with their names on the sides, Santorum had been riding in a Dodge Ram 1500 pickup truck called the “Chuck Truck”.  The truck is nicknamed after his campaign aide Chuck Laudner.  Tuesday night he said he was taking the “Chuck Truck” to New Hampshire.

The other point to note is that Santorum’s campaign success was achieved without any kind of funding that compared to the Romney campaign.  So, Santorum emerges from Iowa with the wind at his back and a slew of new-found attention.

There’s one other thing he’s got today that he didn’t have yesterday and that’s a giant target on his back.