The Iowa Caucuses Redux

I wrote back in early January about Iowa’s inane first-in-the-nation caucuses:

They’re little more than a non-binding straw poll of preferences among a minority of registered Republicans. The ‘votes’ mean nothing politically. The caucus attendees, meeting in groups of several to dozens to maybe scores in homes and schools and churches, after hearing last-minute speeches on behalf of the candidates, write down their preferences on blank sheets of paper or raise their hands, the results counted on site, and then the results are phoned in to the Iowa Republican Committee who collate and release them to the media. There are delegates elected at the caucuses to attend county conventions, but they are uncommitted, not bound by any of the preference ‘votes.’ At the county conventions, delegates, also uncommitted, are elected to the state convention where delegates are elected, uncommitted, to the national convention.

Of course, the course of the caucuses this year played out even more silly than usual. Late on the night of the caucuses, Mitt Romney was declared the “winner” (of no committed delegates) by the wide margin of 8 votes. But about a month later, another count discovered that the “winner” (also of no committed delegates) was Rick Santorum with a 30-some margin. So the county conventions came and went, and yesterday was the state convention, and the almost 2,000 delegates there voted to send 23 of the 28 delegates Iowa gets at the national convention . . . for Ron Paul, who came in a strong third place back in January. I don’t understand all the political machinations, but apparently the Paul people were much more successful than the Romney people in manipulating the system to push through their delegates and agenda from the county to the state to the national conventions. They aren’t expected to cast their votes for Paul – but then they weren’t expected to get almost all of the Iowa delegates either – but they are vowing to push the Paul agenda in platform committee meetings and wherever else they can. More power to them, I say. The more splintered the Republican Party comes out of their national convention – especially with the nutty fringe splinters of the Paul campaign, the Tea Party, and the Birthers – the harder it will be for Mitt Romney to claim distance from those who helped boost him to the nomination. And if nothing else, perhaps this farce will put an end to Iowa’s first-in-the-nation silliness.