Pay no attention to those Iowa Caucus results which will undoubtedly show Newt Gingrich trouncing Mitt Romney. Romney is going to win the GOP nomination and face President Obama in the general election. Yup, that’s what’s going to happen if you believe in the theory of “Follow the billionaire campaign contributions”.

The Washington Post was nice enough to go rooting through the Federal Election Commission (FEC) donor records and then matched them up against The Forbes Billionaires List and here’s what they came up with.

Click Here to Read Washington Post Story How Romney Wins Big Among Billionaire Donors

President Obama runs a solid second to Romney in the chase for billionaire campaign funds, but when it comes to collecting small donations from a broad base, he’s the undisputed champion.

One caveat to keep in mind is that the FEC records are from September. At that time, Newt’s polling was still languishing in the single digit range. The next cycle of FEC records might well show that more billionaires have jumped on his bandwagon.

Take note how Ron Paul is the only one who hasn’t broken the ice yet. Even Rick Santorum has one (Richard Mellon Scaife?). How ironic, the guy who would most fiercely defend the right of billionaires to buy votes (excuse me, express their freedom of speech), gets zero billionaire love.

Update – 1/9/2012 Newt Didn’t Quite Trounce Romney in Iowa, and Ron Paul has support of Maybe-a-Billionaire Jim Rogers

I’m sure glad we didn’t pay any attention to those Iowa Caucus results.(Newt Gingrich would trounce Mitt Romney.) Oh wait a minute, it turns out that Newt was the trouncee rather than the trouncer.

We also guessed wrong about Rick Santorum’s sole billionaire supporter. According to OpenSecrets.org, Richard Mellon Scaife is among the 42 billionaires supporting Romney, not fellow Pennsylvanian Santorum.

Santorum’s largest source of campaign cash is The Red White ansd Blue Fund, which derives much of its financial support from Foster Friess. While The Daily Kos describes Friess as the “Billionaire Who Bought Iowa for Santorum, his name does not appear anywhere on the Forbes Billionaire list.

Likewise, outspoken commodities trader, Jim Rogers, said “In this election if Ron Paul gets anywhere near the nomination I would certainly support him. He is the only one that I’ve seen in American politics that seems to have a clue about what’s going on.”

The Examiner refers to Rogers as “Billionaire investor Jim Rogers”. There is little doubt that Rogers is a very rich guy, but like Foster Friess, he doesn’t make The Forbes List. It should also be noted, Rogers’ support of Ron Paul is strictly “moral”. So far at least, there is no evidence to suggest that he has made any financial contributions to the Paul campaign.