Tied Iowa vote produces epic CNN night

Mitt Romney “won” the Iowa caucuses tonight by 8 votes out of 122,255 cast, “beating” Rick Santorum 30,015 to 30,007. That’s a margin of 0.0065%, which is even narrower than Florida’s unbelievably close 2000 election (0.0090%), and essentially meaningless in the absence of a recount. The caucuses ended in a tie, plain and simple.

As dramatic as that was, CNN’s “Best Political Team on Television” somehow managed to make it even moreso, on a wild and wacky night of television that just got weirder and more wonderful as the hour got later and later. If you’re a political or news junkie and you weren’t watching CNN from 1:30 to 3:00 AM Eastern Time, you truly missed out.

First came this moment, when the entire set collectively lost its sh*t:

Then, a bit later, came the live-TV interview that will live forever in political journalism lore. As Rick Santorum clung to a 4-vote lead, and the nation waited for results from a single outstanding precinct in Clinton County, Iowa, an enterprising CNN producer managed to get two local biddy-old-lady county GOP officials, Edith Pfeffer and Carolyn Talett, on the phone to discuss what had happened in their county that was delaying in tally. It was absolutely, sublimely amazing. Here’s video of most of it:

Moments later, Candy Crowley at Romney headquarters got independent word that Romney had been told he’d won by 14 votes. John King did the math, and found that — voila! — Edith and Carolyn’s numbers would lead to precisely that result. He revealed this to America in a way that surely had Tim Russert, he of the famous dry-erase board, looking down from Heaven and smiling:

Eventually, the official word came down that Romney’s margin was actually 8, not 14. Somehow, Santorum had picked up an extra 6 votes from the 30,001 shown by King’s biddy-old-lady-based tally. But whatever. Edith and Carolyn are instant legends, and CNN got a truly epic night of punch-drunk wee-hours TV out of the whole thing. HI-LA-RI-OUS. We might as well end the 2012 election now — RIGHT NOW, as Wolf Blitzer would say — because I’m pretty sure nothing can ever top this. LOL!!