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.

The Iowa Caucuses

The Iowa Republican caucuses are a weird political event. Actually, they’re not a political event so much as a media event. 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. So among the candidates in the caucuses, there are no winners or losers in terms of delegate count, as there are no pledged delegates to be won or loss. It’s the media’s (self-compelled) job to determine who won and loss, and that is based entirely on the expectation built up over the weeks leading to the caucuses by . . . the media.

So in this year’s caucuses, there could conceivably be four winners: Romney (if he finishes first), Paul (if he finishes at least second), Santorum (if he finishes at least third), and Gingrich (if he finishes fourth). Perry and Bachmann could also be winners if they finish fourth or better, but that would mean at least one of the other four would have to drop down, making them losers. Romney would be a loser if he comes in third or lower, Paul if he comes in third or lower, Santorum if he comes in fourth or lower, and Gingrich if he doesn’t make it to fourth. The defense of the caucuses is that they “winnow the field”: if you can’t mount a grass roots campaign that puts you in the top three or four in Iowa, you can’t make it anywhere, and you would do us all a favor by dropping out now. Which is why there are always three or four winners and two or three losers. It’s the ultimate in media-driven horse-race politics. And it’s no surprise that the importance of the Iowa caucuses emerged in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, as the 24/7 cable news megaphones were born. The caucuses are regularly touted (by the media) as pure grass-roots, knock-on-doors, campaign-over-coffee democracy. But they are nothing of the sort. They are a media created and media sustained (money making) circus. They don’t deserve to be “first in the nation” – they don’t deserve to continue as is at all.