FROM THE DESK OF: Reaction from the Iowa Caucuses and Huff-Po’s “Power Outsiders”
BY: Taft Matney
As the dust settled from the Iowa Caucuses and before Clemson shocked the world coming out on the short end of a 70-33 Orange Bowl game against West Virginia, I had an opportunity to chat with Shawn Drury, editor of Mauldin Patch about the caucus results.
According to the piece that appeared today:
Now that the dust has somewhat settled on the Iowa caucuses we asked our team of pundits for their thoughts. They’re joined this go-around by Taft Matney.
We’ll start off with Taft, a public relations professional and Mauldin resident. You can follow him on Twitter @TaftMatney or @CrescentMag.
“There’s no doubt that even with Governor Romney’s eight vote victory, the night’s real winner was Senator Santorum who showed that pavement pounding and personal touches still work in an era where so much communication is electronically driven. It gives him a big boost going in to New Hampshire, but with the other candidates having purchased most of the available TV time, wearing out that shoe leather over the next week becomes even more important to him.
“Iowa’s results illustrate the divide in passions of Republicans on the evangelical right who supported Santorum versus those with more of a focus on jobs, the economy, and beating President Obama in November who supported Romney, and there’s still a fluidity that will keep a clear frontrunner from emerging right now. We’ll start seeing candidates suspend their campaigns after receiving underwhelming results. With media markets that level the playing field for candidates with smaller coffers, South Carolina remains a major player in the primary process over the next few weeks.”
If you’re unfamiliar with Patch, add it to your list of regularly visited media outlets. It’s is a division of AOL with more than 800 separate editorial units in small/medium-sized towns, cities, and communities across the country. Much of Patch’s hyper-local reporting is then fed to another AOL news division, The Huffington Post.
South Carolina’s eleven Patch outlets, that stretch from the Upstate to the Lowcountry and are led by veteran reporters and editors, do a great job embedding themselves in their communities and reporting news and information that other outlets are missing.
One of Patch’s most interesting projects this election cycle is a joint effort with its sister outlet The Huffington Post. Their “Power Outsiders” series conducts weekly surveys of political consultants, activists, and elected officials in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida. While I’m proud to be a “Power Outsider,” I also recommend it as an interesting read.
