I’ve been saying for about a decade that Iowa is irrelevant when it comes to the presidential primary season, but this year might be the first real nail in the coffin of the first-in-the-nation caucuses.
It is not like they have been the first in the nation forever either. It might (but probably not to the political junkies around these parts) surprise you to know they only started this early shin-dig in 1972. That’s right, this is only the tenth time that this tiny (in population) rural state has been the first to have something to say about who the nominee for each party is.
About 65% of the time the winner of the Iowa Caucuses goes on to be the nominee, with Republicans being a little more likely to eventually nominate the winner than the Democrats (a couple of times early in the process the Dems actually had Uncommitted win over all candidate in total delegates awarded).
The thing is why should Iowa be the first to speak up? While the process has been relatively good at picking the eventual nominee, the fact is not in any way representative of the nation as a whole.
The conservatives there are much more conservative, the population skews a hell of a light whiter than most of the nation, the population density is very low compared to most of the nation and the issues that are important there are not always the issues that are important for us all.
Yet it takes up a disproportionate amount of time and effort on the part of the candidates to run in this state. The need to do so-called “retail” politics in the upper Midwest has become a litmus test for journalists and pundits. If you don’t have a good ground game in Iowa you are often considered unserious in your campaign.
So much so that even though the Romney campaign was going to basically skip Iowa, in favor of New Hampshire where they feel they have a better chance, they are now pouring money and effort into the state.
The same proposition is true with the newly surging Gingrich campaign. In fact one of the knocks against Gingrich as a candidate has always been the fact that he did not even have a campaign office in Iowa, until just last week.
Really it is more than a little strange that they felt they needed to put more effort in there. The former Cain supporters, have been, as a rule, flocking to the newest “Not Mitt” and there is hardly time for the facts about Newt to be dredged up before the caucuses. It seems likely that he will win the state, even if he kept doing what he had been doing and basically treating this campaign as a book tour.
Which brings us to why the Hawkeye State is probably irrelevant in the process now. For all that the Republican establishment has to be gnashing its teeth about the way they have been shown to be completely bankrupt in terms of ideas and leaders, the long Goat Rodeo season of debates have allowed the nation a chance to really see all the possible candidates time and again.
We no longer need the supposed careful deliberation of Iowans to winnow down the field. The actions and ability (well mostly inability) of the candidates in various forums with varying levels of soft-ballness has already ended the aspirations of Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and Tim Pawlenty (remember when he was the only logical nominee choice?).
Yes, the scrutiny they all received as they gained then lost the front runner status (except Santorum who is running on campaign plan that all the other candidates will die in tragic plan crashes) has been part of their downfall, but it was their performance at the debates that either started the process of their rise or ended it, or both.
Personally I think that this is a good thing. The process of choosing a presidential candidate (who by virtue of our two party system has a good chance of becoming president) is one that should be more dependent on the views of the nation as a whole, rather than the views of a small Northern state.
For all the arguments, and brain damage that the long primary season of 2008 caused there was very little doubt that we had plenty of chances to see and understand who the various candidates were before settling on Senators McCain and Obama.
Too often there is momentum gained in Iowa that is not really valid to my mind. This state and its early process are likely to give a boost this time to a candidate that will never be president, namely Rep. Ron Paul.
His showing a strong third there and if all goes as it is showing now the story after the caucus will be that Gingrich won, Romney showed how weak he really is (as if a blind deaf and dumb person could not see that already) and that Ron Paul might be the new guy to carry the Republican standard.
The problem is that Paul would be even a worse choice for Republicans than Gingrich. He has a lot of support because he does have a good ground game in Iowa and the people who like him are often fanatical about it. That does not mean that he is someone that the nation should be looking seriously at to be president.
Still the rules of the game as they are being played out in Iowa allow him the possibility of his moment in the sun (just long enough I am sure to allow the whole nation to really see that the Mad Elf of the Republican Party is not really playing with a full deck).
It is time that we start the nominating process in a way that does not reward a state that does not look like the rest of the nation with importance it has not earned. Given that there are alternatives, and all it takes a braver campaign than either the Gingrich or Romney one are to say “We’re not going to Iowa and that is that” and a commitment to lots of debates by both parties to address this issue. It is something that should happen and happen soon.
If we must have small states first, what is wrong with a state like Colorado or Delaware or Mississippi or Oregon as the first to speak up? In fact what could be more democratic than to have this nominal honor be a rotating one for states that fall in the bottom 5th of list in population?
If the goal is to have the best nomination process possible (though you could make a good argument that is not even in the top 5 reasons) then it just makes sense that we move to a system where it is not always the same little states that get to go first.
The floor is yours.