Mitt Romney has eked out an 8-vote victory over Rick Santorum to win the Iowa caucuses, 24.6 percent to 24.5 percent, with Ron Paul in third with 21.4 percent. Meager the victory might be, and Romney’s victory speech was distinctly underwhelming, serving only to reinforce the impression that he’s an android whose empathy chip is out of warranty. Santorum, by contrast, began his “victory” speech with a quote from C.S. Lewis and emphasized manufacturing and blue-collar economic appeal, positioning himself in much the same place Mike Huckabee occupied four years ago, with a dash of 1990s Pat Buchanan thrown in. The Club for Growth won’t like it, but this approach does strike at Romney’s chief weakness: the sense that, as Huckabee said in 2008, Romney is the soulless executive who fires you, not the neighborly businessman who gives you a job. The weak economy may actually put Romney at a disadvantage against Obama because even though Obama receives much of the blame for it as president, Romney resembles the character type that Americans may plausibly believe is behind their misery.

This was Romney’s night, thin as his margin may have been, because Iowa was the best and perhaps only place anyone could have stopped the former Massachusetts governor. He’s well known and even liked in the Granite State, where he has campaigned assiduously for four years. Unless God grants Huntsman or Paul a miracle, New Hampshire belongs to Mitt. With two wins under his belt, he’ll move on to South Carolina, the traditional graveyard of social conservatives who appeal to Reagan Democrats. If Santorum can survive New Hampshire, the Palmetto State will finish him off. The media, rather than look at the actual record of the S.C. primary, continues to see the word “South” and think of religious-right voters. But South Carolina went for Dole over Buchanan in ’96 and McCain over Huckabee in ’04 ’08. It’s the state that put Lindsey Graham in the Senate, after all, and if I’m not mistaken it’s the state with the highest number of political consultants per capita in the country. It has an unusual, highly establishmentarian political culture.

Now, as Tim Carney points out, what happened in Iowa yesterday had little to do with awarding delegates to the Republican National Convention: the numbers reported for the caucuses only represent a straw poll; the business of selecting delegates to the state convention, which in turn selects RNC delegates, takes place shortly after the straw-poll voting, and Ron Paul’s activists may have volunteered in greater numbers than other candidates’ supporters for those positions. Paul, who unlike Santorum has the money and support — and the sense of mission — to stay in the race as long as he wants, can count on doing reasonably well in other caucuses, including Nevada. As Jason Sorens has noted, Paul did best in 2008 in later contests, after other candidates had dropped out, and in caucuses. But Romney will have the full weight of the Republican Party’s regulars behind him right after New Hampshire. Those are the voters for whom nothing else matters but “electability.” They’re the voters who gave us two Bushes, Dole, and McCain. They’re primed to give the country Romney next, barring something very uncanny happening in New Hampshire next Tuesday.