Vox Populi! The people of Iowa have spoken (sort of). Results of the Iowa Republican Straw Poll are in: Michele Bachmann came in first, with Ron Paul a close second. Tim Pawlenty was an also-ran.
The Iowa Straw Poll is not be confused with the Iowa Caucuses. The Caucuses come early next year, just before the New Hampshire Primary. The Straw Poll is a preliminary to the preliminaries, and a rather peculiar tradition in which a handful of random Iowans go to county fairs, church bazaars, and lemonade stands to "vote" for their favorite candidate by dropping corn kernels into Mason jars with the candidates photos attached. Mad Michele apparently got the most corn kernels. This exercise in civic duty is statistically valid within a margin or error of plus-or- minus 99%.
Poor Tim Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota, hitched his Presidential dreams to this wagon. He said he spent his entire campaign war chest in Iowa and needed to show he was "competitive." Yesterday, he said that his Mason jar contained "just half a dozen corn kernels, a couple cigarette butts, some gravel, and a wad of bubblegum." This, he conceded, was not competitive and so he withdrew from the Presidential race.
Well, they won't have Pawlenty to kick around in the Iowa Caucus! The Caucus is another Hawkeye oddity where the Party faithful enter a gymnasium, stand in clusters representing "support" for each candidate, and try to convince those in other clusters to change their support by moving to a different candidate's group. They talk and mill around and change horses until time is called. It's Cluster-Fuck Musical Chairs! Oh, those Iowans!
One last thought on the way we play these games: There are well over 300 million people in the United States. Iowa is a rural state with 3 million residents, 90% of whom are Caucasian. New Hampshire is a rural state with a population of 1.3 million, 92% of whom are white. By contrast, California has 37 million people of every sort. Yet in our Presidential primary process, Iowa and New Hampshire have much more influence than California. Just sayin'.