Will the Iowa loser backers back another loser elsewhere in president primaries?

I’m more interested in the upcoming Iowa caucuses to see what becomes of the losers and the people who think they’re worthy of being president.

Does Ron Paul deserve frontrunner status...

 Because the Iowa campaigns for president are a multi-candidate affair – with a half-dozen or so people thinking they have a chance to someday work in the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W. in D.C.

THAT IS WHY polls can show Mitt Romney as the “leader” in Iowa, even though only about 25 percent of the Republicans who have been surveyed in that state actually support him.

Coming in fourth, fifth or sixth in Iowa is going to be the blow that causes many of those dreamers to realize how ridiculous they’re being. The Republican candidate field is likely to be paired down in coming weeks.

But what becomes of the people in the follow-up states who would have wanted to support people like Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry (or maybe even Newt Gingrich)?

Will they gradually shift over to the idea of Romney for president? Or are they going to cling desperately to their ABM credentials and cast their ballots for Anybody But Mitt?

IS A STRONG Ron Paul performance in Iowa likely to encourage many of those hard-core ideological types to shift over to him – allowing the Texas congressman to be the one who eventually gets a sizable enough level of support to become a real “front-runner?”

... or is it Mitt Romney?

It’s just that I can’t get over the fact that Romney (in poll after poll taken in state after state – and even in the national polls) is the candidate who is only liked by about one-quarter of the potential electorate.

Considering that the political pundits like to pontificate about the idea that Romney is the only one of the GOP presidential hopefuls who could actually appeal to enough of the masses to WIN a general election, something seems to be off.

Anybody with that little support within his own political party strikes me more as being someone who cannot motivate his ideological allies to bother to cast ballots for him come Nov. 6.

IT’S JUST STRIKING me as being that the election cycle that will start heating up on Tuesday with the Iowa caucuses and primaries in other states in coming weeks will truly be the election between the candidates that nobody is really enthused about having in place to run the country.

Such a notion is why I found it laughable when I heard Saturday that Romney is going around saying that the Obama presidency will be a mere “footnote” in U.S. history. Anybody who draws such little enthusiasm among his own ranks has no business going around diminishing the significance of anybody else.

So the answer is, “yes.” I will be looking differently at the results of the Iowa caucuses (and the soon-to-follow first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary).

Some people will think that what matters is who finishes first, and perhaps second.

OBAMA: Mr. 53 percent?

WILL MITT ROMNEYwin? Will Ron Paul finish a close second place (as various polls of late indicate he just might)?

I’m more interested to see who finishes after them, and what becomes of the people who want those people to be U.S. president.  Because if the Bachmann fanatics wind up remaining hard-core in their ideological leanings, then this primary has the potential to set the stage for an incredibly ugly general election cycle.

Which may well be why there’s a new study out there that says Barack Obama has a 53 percent chance of actually winning the general election, and why some Obama backers already are giving thought to his second inaugural address.

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