Tomorrow's Iowa GOP Caucuses

Tomorrow is the long-anticipated day of the Republican Iowa Caucuses, an event that supposedly will help to establish the eventual party nominee for president. Like it did back in 2008, when Mike Huckabee won it. Wait, he didn't win the nomination, did he? Oh, I see...

The winner of the Iowa Caucuses doesn't necessarily get the nomination. It's one's own prime time Fox News Channel show that is the prize for victory (that's what Huckabee got). And the runners up? They will probably be recruited as Fox Political Analysts, assuming that they aren't the one actually getting the nomination in the end.

The problem with the Iowa Caucuses, as I see it, is three-fold. One, it is just that: an open-hall statewide caucus, held at one special time in the various precincts, not a legitimate, secret ballot election spread out over the day to give voters more time to get to the polls. Although the Republicans have adopted a secret ballot system of voting, in practice this has not always been followed, nor is it legally mandated. As a result, participants will tend to be more ideologically-driven and fanaticial, not representative of the typical voter who actually has a life aside from politics or preciously-held hot-button emotional issues. Two, every candidate has their own excuses for not doing well in Iowa, should that happen. Some have played the double game of downplaying the significance of the caucuses while spending money and time there. The fact that true primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida are coming up soon thereafter will quickly diminish the significance of the Iowa winner anyway. Three, with almost instant nationwide polling and seemingly endless nationally televised debates, the focus on the campaign isn't as intense on individual states in the early campaign like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina as it has been in the past. This is especially true with the current theory that the 2012 election will hinge on a very small number of key states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan. So while the Florida Primary may be important in revealing a candidate that has Republican voter appeal there, Iowa won't because it isn't really a primary and New Hampshire and South Carolina are too regional in character to make a deep nationwide impression.

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are the leaders in this Republican run for the 2012 nomination. Maybe the most significant result of the Iowa Caucuses will be to convince some of the other candidates to drop out of the race, especially with financial resources drying up. But since they are almost all media-seeking egomaniacs with plenty of opportunities in nationally-televised debates and powder-puff interviews on FoxNews to keep their sense of importance hyperinflated, I don't see this dropping-out process beginning until after the true primary season has been underway...