Read an article over at Real Clear Politics by Mark Salter titled Why the Iowa Caucuses are so un-Iowan where he essentially says: Caucuses bring out the crazies and give Iowa a bad name because what genteel common-folk Iowan will sit in a school basement in the middle of winter arguing politics?
He then goes on to talk about Steve King's little tea-hadi get together last week, saying that King is a principle player in the Republican craziness, and that the real winners are the prospective presidential candidates that didn't attend.
Without putting any thought into it his arguments sound cogent and mirror what many other columnist have been saying about Iowa's self marginalization as a Republican primary state. But an ounce of thought reveals that a fishing net would hold more water than his argument. The very Steve King he derides has been duly elected repeatedly by not just the crazies but by the entire electorate of his district. Granted he isn't state-wide elected, but I find it hard to believe that Sioux City has a monopoly on GOP branded craziness in the state. Also Joni Ernst was state-wide elected and well known to be in the back pocket of Koch Industries, so there's no running away from that. We'll see if she is King level of craziness or just your garden variety GOP crazy that passes for mainstream Republican nowadays.
He admits that he is now a transplant and hasn't lived there for a while (though claims to feel more at home there than in his unspecified east coast city). I posit that Mark has some idealized view of his beloved Iowa that probably wasn't accurate when he lived there and is flat out wrong today. His ideal Iowan likely still exists, but is an endangered species that is going the way of the do-do.
I know that by-in-large Iowans are good-folk, I've found this to be a Truism practically everywhere I have traveled in this country. But I believe there is a growing disconnect between personal lives, their "immediate sphere of influence" moral code and the politics they support, at least for those who identify with the right side of the aisle.