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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 12/31/11

Iowa: Watch!...Watch!...Watch!... Why Are You Watching?

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This article cross-posted from WhowhatWhy


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The conventional media love to baffle us with bullshit.

Following months of endless horserace reporting on the upcoming GOP caucuses in Iowa, they are now publishing warnings that...it is all virtually meaningless.

The takeaway from this is that the media are essentially admitting that they fill your free time with political "reporting" that is about as relevant as watching televised poker matches.

That, of course, is instead of figuring out what is deeply wrong with America and what can (maybe) still be done about it.

Big outlets like the New York Times, CNN and Politico serve up an endless junk food diet of polls, random street interviews, daily candidate posturing, and essentially flood the field with personnel. They give us the excitement of dark horses coming suddenly from behind, as in this, from CNN the other day:

"A new survey of people likely to attend Iowa's Republican caucuses indicates that former House speaker Newt Gingrich's support in the state is plunging while former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's is surging, with support for Santorum more than tripling since the beginning of December.

"According to a new CNN/Time/ORC International poll, 25% of people questioned say if the caucuses were held today, they'd most likely back former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and 22% said they would support Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Romney's 3-point margin is within the poll's sampling error.

"Meanwhile, Gingrich has plunged from 33% to 14% this month while Santorum grew to 16%. The poll's release comes six days before the Iowa caucuses kick off Republican nominating contests."

Then, suddenly, with the days counting down to the all-important Iowa caucuses, a new refrain begins to play from the pipes. Iowa...means almost nothing.

Here's establishment editorialist Michael Barone, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

"The Iowa Republican caucuses have a poor record in choosing their party's nominees. In the five presidential nominating cycles with active Iowa Republican caucus competition, the Hawkeye State has voted for the eventual Republican nominee only twice -- in 1996 for Bob Dole, in 2000 for George W. Bush -- and only once was the Iowa winner elected president.

"... In a state of three million people, a bare 119,000 Republicans showed up for the caucuses. Some 60% of them identified as evangelical or born-again Christians -- a far higher percentage than in any presidential contest in any large non-Southern state that year."

A day or so later, we get a similar, if more entertaining version, from the New York Times' columnist Gail Collins.

"Only days until the Iowa caucuses! Can you believe it? Less than 8,000 minutes to go!

"Perhaps this would be a good time to point out that the Iowa caucuses are really ridiculous."

[snip]

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Author, investigative journalist, editor-in-chief at WhoWhatWhy.com

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