Tuesday, January 03, 2012
Tonight are the Iowa caucuses. The media, of course, is covering this with the zealotry of fanatics trying to feed the 24-hour news cycle. They have given us front-runners, and polls, and interviews ad nauseum with “everyday people” who they root out of churches, diners, and corn silos. Sometime tonight they will tally up the results and anoint a leader for the Republican nomination. While the on-the-scene reporters find their way to New Hampshire, a parade of talking heads, most of whom are called “experts” for reasons either obscure or self-proclaimed, will analyze the results.
The entire process reminds me more of Chris Berman than Walter Cronkite. In these days of superficial journalism, the final score means much more than the import of the results. Mike Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses four years ago, quickly dropped out of the race and is now a popular (in his own circles) pundit. So much for the electoral process. Nevertheless, all the networks, newspapers, magazines, and bloggers have descended again on Iowa to drum up national interest in the Republican caucuses where a few thousand arch-conservatives will, for a short time, set the tone of American presidential politics.
I am no Republican so the entire process of choosing a Republican presidential nominee bores me. (To clarify, I am not a Democrat either.) After they pick a guy (I am discounting the possibility of a Bachmann nomination) I will then weigh his strengths and weaknesses against our current president before I decide which is the lesser of two evils. Just as I have done in pretty much every presidential election since 1976.
But if I was invested in Republican politics, as many of my friends at the DA’s office are, I would be troubled by this entire process. I mean do Iowans and New Hampshireites (?) really represent America enough to be given this great role? Tom Brokaw interviewed four Iowa Republicans on tonight’s news. One said she could never vote for a Morman (eliminating Romney) and another said Obama was not a Christian (which ruled out a vote for him). They seem to like Rick Santorum, who is extremely religious and thinks it was not weird to take his dead premature baby home so he and his other children could pray with it. Personally, I don’t think I want a president who carts dead babies around for the purpose of prayer meetings, but hey, if that is what people want in the leader of the free world that is what democracy is all about.
Lots of people in Iowa think Ron Paul would be a good president because he wants us to not wage war, a stand which would have been very popular in much of America right up to December 6, 1941. Ron is cool with Iran having nuclear weapons, and he cares very little about what al-Queda does on the other side of the world. Good for you, Ron. If elected he is going to give his attention to cutting down the size of government by eliminating superfluous agencies like the Federal Reserve.
So if Rick or Ron (or Newt for that matter) gets nominated I can pretty much ignore all the campaign ads because my decision will be made. This means that about 80 percent of what will be on television news from now to November will be irrelevant to me. That is ok. I have the Major League Baseball network.
The entire process reminds me more of Chris Berman than Walter Cronkite. In these days of superficial journalism, the final score means much more than the import of the results. Mike Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses four years ago, quickly dropped out of the race and is now a popular (in his own circles) pundit. So much for the electoral process. Nevertheless, all the networks, newspapers, magazines, and bloggers have descended again on Iowa to drum up national interest in the Republican caucuses where a few thousand arch-conservatives will, for a short time, set the tone of American presidential politics.
I am no Republican so the entire process of choosing a Republican presidential nominee bores me. (To clarify, I am not a Democrat either.) After they pick a guy (I am discounting the possibility of a Bachmann nomination) I will then weigh his strengths and weaknesses against our current president before I decide which is the lesser of two evils. Just as I have done in pretty much every presidential election since 1976.
But if I was invested in Republican politics, as many of my friends at the DA’s office are, I would be troubled by this entire process. I mean do Iowans and New Hampshireites (?) really represent America enough to be given this great role? Tom Brokaw interviewed four Iowa Republicans on tonight’s news. One said she could never vote for a Morman (eliminating Romney) and another said Obama was not a Christian (which ruled out a vote for him). They seem to like Rick Santorum, who is extremely religious and thinks it was not weird to take his dead premature baby home so he and his other children could pray with it. Personally, I don’t think I want a president who carts dead babies around for the purpose of prayer meetings, but hey, if that is what people want in the leader of the free world that is what democracy is all about.
Lots of people in Iowa think Ron Paul would be a good president because he wants us to not wage war, a stand which would have been very popular in much of America right up to December 6, 1941. Ron is cool with Iran having nuclear weapons, and he cares very little about what al-Queda does on the other side of the world. Good for you, Ron. If elected he is going to give his attention to cutting down the size of government by eliminating superfluous agencies like the Federal Reserve.
So if Rick or Ron (or Newt for that matter) gets nominated I can pretty much ignore all the campaign ads because my decision will be made. This means that about 80 percent of what will be on television news from now to November will be irrelevant to me. That is ok. I have the Major League Baseball network.
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