A Little Iowa Perspective

Karl Rove was just on XM Radio’s POTUS ’08 channel, and he mentioned that fewer people vote in the Iowa Caucus than vote in Wichita, Kansas. He also mentioned that fewer people vote in the Iowa Caucus than vote here in Dakota County, Minnesota. (Of course, he had to mention that nobody knows where Dakota County is…)

Ultimately, he’s right, slams to this county aside. Iowa doesn’t represent a particularly valid cross-section of voters on either side. If you’re part of the Romney or Clinton campaigns, that’s at least some comfort. Iowa’s important because it’s the first real vote, but even then it doesn’t matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. A good campaign can lose Iowa and still win nationally. Even though Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney lost the expectations game, there are plenty of other states in which to mount a comeback. Romney has fewer options on the Republican side than does Clinton, but even he’s not dead yet.

6 thoughts on “A Little Iowa Perspective

  1. Such “perspective” is always proferred by those supporting losing campaigns, so it’s not surprising that he who supports Fred Thompson would find a brother-in-arms with the Republican cheerleader Rove forced to justify why his party was swamped by a Democratic turnout nearly 2 1/2 times larger than his own party. More hilarious yet is in one of the threads below where you attempt to spin Fred Thompson’s dismal third-place showing as one of the evening’s “winners”, never mind the fact that he barely mustered out a third-place showing in Iowa against a guy who wants to eliminate ethanol. I sure wish my home computer hadn’t gone down last week because I wanted to be here to ridicule Thompson’s demise every step of the way. With luck, I’ll be back online by next Tuesday when Grandpa Fred comes in sixth in New Hampshire. Undoubtedly, you’ll attempt to spin that as a “win” as well.

    As for Dakota County, Minnesota, it’s a pretty populous place, as anyone who drives from Burnsville to Hastings can attest to. As someone who grew up in a county of 32,000 people and has lived in counties with as few as 11,000 people, it’s pretty difficult to demean the Iowa Caucus by comparing the number of participants to a bustling county of 325,000 residents….unless of course you want to sound like a pompous big-city elitist. Funny….I didn’t hear any of Rove’s “perspective” on the smallness of Iowa when George Bush won the caucus in 2000 with a considerably lower turnout than the turnout of 2008.

    And please point me in the direction of an American state that IS representative of the nation at large. Iowa is a classic swing state with very liberal Democrats, very conservative Republicans, and a plurality of independents in the middle. Which state has this magical “cross-section of voters” that Iowa lacks? You and Rove and making transparently idiotic excuses to justify poor performances for your team.

  2. The Iowa Caucuses are not representative of the electorate at large. This was the caucus system that gave the not to Pat Buchanan in 1992 afterall. Huckabee’s rise in Iowa does not necessarily translate nationally.

    Thompson needed to get third. He got third. He’s not fighting in New Hampshire, which makes his position there irrelevant. What Thompson needs is for McCain to win in New Hampshire which hurts Romney.

    Besides, I support Thompson out of principle. I know a poll-centered finger-in-the-wind type like yourself doesn’t understand the concept, but there is such a thing of supporting a long-shot candidate because they have the positions most compatible with yours.

  3. I’ll ask it again, Jay? If a swing state like Iowa with very liberal Democrats, very conservative Republicans, and a plurality of independents in between isn’t representative of America at-large, which state is? It’s easy to mindlessly parrot the talking point that Iowa “doesn’t represent America”, but those who repeatedly say that fail to point to a state in America that does. Will you be the person who does, Jay, or will you continue to hide behind trashing Iowa as an outlier?

    Thompson needed to get SECOND in Iowa, not third. He would have generated headlines (and by proxy momentum) if he had finished second. Finishing a distant third, he generated none and goes into both New Hampshire and South Carolina with zero momentum.

    You may have noticed I was supporting Joe Biden and Chris Dodd as my favorite candidates, and that I don’t believe any of the remaining Democrats would be electable nationally, even though all anecdotal evidence 10 months before the election suggest any of the Democrats would beat any of the Republicans. You can accuse me of plenty of things, but having a “poll-centered” worldview is not one of them.

  4. Which point is that?

    All I saw was a generic dismissal of the state of Iowa as “unrepresentative” without a single alternative suggested as the magical state that IS representative of a “cross-section of America”. Why does that question instill such terror in the hearts of those who demean Iowa? Why can’t they answer it? Could it be that every state in the nation is demographically askew from the country at large and your man’s failure to get more than 13% of the vote in Iowa has you executing a half-cocked and not-at-all cogent vendetta against the state?

    I’m sure I’ll be spun or ignored again, but I am asking OUT OF PRINCIPLE which state is so vastly more representative of America than Iowa.

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