Tonight, some folks in Iowa will do some caucusing, and some folks in journalism will do some wall to wall breathless coverage about how hugely important Iowa is. I won’t be saying much about Iowa because I think its dumb. As Ezra Klein points out, the turnout in 2008 represented 0.04% of the population of the country, and yet what that incredibly small group of people thinks is treated as a subject of huge national importance that will change the direction of the campaign. But should it? No. Because the importance of the Iowa caucus will be… whatever journalists decide it will be.
My $0.02? Every state should primary at the same time, to keep the press from writing these inane “Ron Paul will be strong in Iowa, which gives him a bump in the polls, but he’s weak in South Carolina, so he will be forced to burn resources there, giving the edge to Romney in who the hell even cares” horse-race stories.
That being said, I’ll be an enabler and link to some coverage of tonight’s results that I find interesting, much like I did with the previous GOP debate.
UPDATE: Maybe the Iowa caucus is even more pointless than I thought. One of Kevin Drum’s readers reports that the vote tally reported to the press doesn’t have any real bearing on how delegates are apportioned. In other words, much like Whose Line is it Anyway, everything is made up and the points don’t matter.
520 Chestnut 
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