Late night pre-Iowa roundup and merciless assessment of the odds...

"I think he's an excellent candidate, but I'm still not decided," said Paul Massey, a 65-year-old eyeglass salesman from Sioux City who visited Perry. "He is saying what I want to hear and he is sincere for sure. But I want to make sure I vote for and caucus for someone who is a winner.

There, encapsulated in one brief sentence, reported by a member of a media horde slavishly traipsing from one of corner of Iowa to the another searching for an angle, is a summary of why this idiotic elevation of Iowa to some bell weather for the whole country is an utter waste of time.   First, this guy is talking about Rick “I thought you said I was ahead” Perry, a man reduced to wandering from coffee shop to corner drug store and reading his stump speech from a handful of tattered note cards.  Hey Rick; you’re supposed to believe this shit, OK?  I know Reagan is one of your heroes and he was an addled dimwit but that’s really not what the country’s looking for right now.  Try to remember what city you’re in.   I think that speaks volumes to the “excellent candidate” idea and might cast doubt on the “he is sincere for sure” while we’re at it.  His own campaign is coming apart at the seams over what a dork he is and he’s still polling about 10%.  Of course, in Iowa that’s 10,000 delusional souls who think Children of the Corn was a documentary.

As to his “saying what I want to hear”, is that surprising?  Given half a chance every one of these candidates will tell you exactly what you want to hear, a time proven, successful strategy if there ever was one.  Hell, between them we’re going to eliminate half the government – the half you don’t like – bomb Iran, undo legal gay marriages, outlaw abortion, cut taxes on every one and make sure the Supreme Court is subservient to every halfwit congress person from sea to shining sea.  Anything else you want? 

But the last sentence may be the most telling of all.  We have a tiny fraction of the voting population of a state with about a third as many people as Los Angeles, 90% of whom are white, culling the herd for the rest of us and this guy’s main concern is to vote for a winner, as if it will reflect on him personally if he picks the person who gets the most delegates. (Remember, this is a caucus and not an election) Is it any wonder that the candidates jabber on about anything that comes into their heads?  “Oh, well, if you want your president to give classes on levitation and play the harp underwater you need to vote for me and not someone who has spent their career inside the beltway as an actual politician.” 

As the breathless reporting reaches a crescendo this evening, with desperate reporters  stopping people driving through the Bob’s Big Boy take out window to ask them how they’re leaning, the absurdity of whole thing is practically exploding over Ames like red, white and blue fireworks.  Front runner Mitt Romney – who didn’t really care about Iowa a month ago – has been scampering from place to place trying to find a half dozen people in any one of them who really want him to be the candidate.  His campaign slogan might as well be, “Whatever...”.   Finally today, as one after another of the competitors has sputtered and fizzled, he is attracting crowds who are half-way enthusiastic if for no other reason than this, “I want to vote for a winner and he looks like it...”, sentiment, a dubious reason for choosing a president but one  which seems to be Mitt’s main claim on the electorate.

Bachman meanwhile, bug eyed with all the veins in her neck visibly pulsating, has been delivering a series of high octane rants promising to wreck biblical havoc on Iran if they so much as twitch when she’s president, a nightmarish and terrifying prospect that we luckily will never have to experience.  Cranky-assed Ron Paul, in between barking indignantly at reporters bold enough to confront him about the weird and disturbing things he has said in his past, is lobbing bombs at the other candidates and has drafted his tea party rock star son Rand to hit a few last Des Moines hot spots with him and continues to position himself as the ultimate spoiler / kingmaker and the most viable third party candidate since John Anderson. 

Newt has graciously pre-admitted defeat today, acknowledging his plummeting free fall in the face of relentless negative ads coming at him from every direction.  While the process to this point has mostly resembled a “who’s not Mitt” whack-a-mole, the concentrated blast of anti-Newt advertising has been enough to turn his own family against him.  Even Callista has been keeping her distance in public in case whatever terrible cooties are affecting him jump onto her.  It’s a measure of the disdain and loathing he inspires in the republican establishment that he has flamed out like a shooting star in the Iowa night and now sets his sights on the more friendly reactionaries in South Carolina to make his last stand.  And a last stand it will be.

The purpose of the Iowa Circuses is really as a savage and merciless Darwinian cage match and by the end of the week the bottom two finishers here will be floating face down in the pool like William Holden in Sunset Boulevard.  And I suppose that’s as it should be; the two who finish last, (are you listening, Michele?), inhabit the very fringe of the political universe and really had no business seriously thinking they could run the most powerful country in the world.  It almost seems like one of those ideas that come to people late at night after too many shots or after two days of eating bennies – “Wait...you know what would be a great idea, dude...?”  For that I suppose we should be grateful, although we all know the dog with two heads isn’t destined to live very long anyway.  

Now we need to prepare ourselves for a tidal wave of nonsense in the aftermath of tomorrow – sadly this is a function of the 24/7 news cycle that inhabits the media like a mad tapeworm.  If you have people talking all day, every day, the chances of them saying something stupid increase exponentially.  Watch Faux News for a couple of hours.  But the fact is, it’s 2012.  This is it – the election is this year and it will be the year of living comedically and much hilarity will no doubt follow the journey for at least the next three months until the republican candidate is confirmed.  (It will be Mitt, just for the record).  It will be serious business once that happens and the earnest and heartfelt lying and exaggeration will prevail.  So let’s enjoy this last bit of carnival inspired theater while we have the chance and before everyone climbs into the little clown car and exits stage left.