Romney Rising!

Sorry to borrow the Hugh Hewitt trademarked headline, but all indications are that even though he may not be having a great night elsewhere, Mitt Romney has won the Minnesota caucuses and our state's 41 delegates. The ward that I captained tonight had five precincts and Romney captured about 43% of the total votes with McCain getting 34% and Paul and Huckabee about 10% each.

That result was a little surprising to me. What was really surprising was the turnout. You've heard that all the energy is on the Democrats side this year, but I've been attending GOP caucuses since '96 and I've never witnessed anywhere near the turnout like we had tonight. Along with a few familiar faces, there were many first time caucus attendees. A number of those were young people which is a very encouraging sign. The last few years have not been good for the GOP, particularly here in the North Star State and this is the first ray of hope that we've had for some time.

The number of people signing up as volunteers and election judges was also encouraging. It's going to take a lot of foot soldiers to battle the army of Democratic activists that will take the field this year and the caucuses are where the recruiting begins.

That being said, I wonder if we wouldn't be better off having a separate primary for the presidential vote. The caucuses are important for the parties and for those who actively participate. But there are many other interested people who would like to vote in the presidential contest without having to make the time commitment.

My wife for example was home with the kids tonight. If we had a primary she could have dragged the kids along and voted without much trouble. Or we could have voted at different time. No such flexibility with a caucus. We had one woman who showed up tonight just as we were leaving. She wanted to vote, but since I had already called in the results for the ward, she was not able to.

While the results of a caucus probably accurately capture the feelings the feelings of party activists, they don't necessarily reflect the opinion of your more casually connected Republican voter. Which probably explains why Romney won Minnesota. The whole presidential nomination process with a patchwork of some primary states and some caucus states seems to be in need of a serious overhaul.

UPDATE: Gary e-mails to report a similar turnout in Saint Paul:

Expo school auditorium was jamb packed with Republicans from Highland Park and Mac Groveland in St Paul. Double the amount of people we expected or ever had! So many people they had to stand in the hallways!

Things are happening in St. Paul!