Look Who's Dissing On Iowa Now

Editors Note: First, it was The Atlantic and the "journalist" Stephen Bloom, who dissed Iowans with a piece of lazy writing that called us everything but human. Our own Brian Morelli, Iowa associate regional editor for Patch, responded to that one.

Now we've got a New Hampshirite going at us. Our friends at Patch in the Granite State carried the opinion piece below from Jim Splaine, a former state representative and senator. He tries to make the case that the January 3 Iowa Caucus doesn't mean much. His piece is a lot more reasoned than The Atlantic drivel. Still, we'll have to respectfully take exception to his thoughts.

Iowa goes first for a reason, Mr. Splaine: Reason.

What do you think of what this guy has to say? Tell us -- and him -- in our comments section below.

By Jim Splaine
 
Once again, New Hampshire's First-In-The-Nation Presidential Primary is shaping up to be the major early decision-maker in the nation’s presidential nominating process, and the Iowa Caucus is likely to be essentially meaningless this time around.
 
While there is no action on the Democratic Party side this time with President Obama running for a second term, whomever eventually gets the Republican nomination will get a boost in the state that has had the lead-off primary for almost 100 years.
 
Two factors in this cycle lead to that. First is a half-year series of lackluster candidate debates and forums held to showcase the Republican wannabes. All the exchanges have done is allow one candidate or another to stumble and trip their way through the weeks and months leading to the voting events that begin right after the new year.
 
The two Iowa debates in the past week have been washes where no one shined brightly. “Polls,” which at this point are still too early to predict anything, have only shown the flavor-of-the-week and who’s-on-first-at-the-moment. That only gives talking heads something to show their teeth about.
 
The second factor this cycle is the schedule. In 2008, the Iowa Caucus was held just four days before the New Hampshire Primary, which was on Jan. 8. Barack Obama had stunned Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side, with John Edwards squeezed in between them.
 
Among the Republicans, John McCain was nowhere on the radar screen in Iowa as someone named Mike Huckabee turned in a surprise 11 percent win over Mitt Romney, with Fred Thompson and Ron Paul way behind. Rudy Giuliani, who had been leading in the national polls a short time earlier, received 4 percent of the caucus-goers.
 
But with the New Hampshire Primary held less than 100 hours afterward in 2008, Iowa’s results quickly became a non-story as McCain topped the ballot with 37 percent to Romney’s 31 percent, and Huckabee falling to just 11 percent. Giuliani's showing here was embarrassing, and he soon faded.
 
On the Democratic side, Clinton stopped Obama’s rise 39 percent to 36 percent, and Edwards just about fell out of the race with 17 percent. With no major contest for another two weeks, the winners from New Hampshire had national momentum. Clinton turned her New Hampshire victory into a several-month race with Obama, and McCain had launched his comeback for the Republican nomination.
 
This time, if Iowa’s results between Newt Gingrich and Romney are indecisive, as they may be with the smash of other conservative candidates in the mix, like Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum receiving a share of the caucus participants, and Paul pulling a gulp from all, it’s likely it will be a brand new game the day after Iowa as the candidates get off their planes at New Hampshire airports.
 
And this time, yet again, there is over a week and a half period after the New Hampshire Jan. 10 election for the winner to benefit from a success. Next is South Carolina on Jan. 21, then Florida on Jan. 31 and the Nevada Caucus on Feb. 4.
 
Leading into New Hampshire – which is the first real election in this process, since Iowa’s caucus event is just a series of party meetings to choose delegates to the national conventions – Romney remains the candidate to beat. I don't see Gingrich going anywhere, as his real core positions become better known, and the campaigns of most of the other Republican candidates might well evaporate before the other states get into the action later in January.
 
Jon Huntsman, who has focused on New Hampshire and all but ignored Iowa, might turn in a “better than expected” performance in the primary and turn that into something – as the New Hampshire Primary has shown before, there can be surprises. And as long as their money holds out, Paul and Perry might hang in there. So I think what is sure is that while the nomination won't be sealed after New Hampshire, someone’s going to get some fuel for their rocket here. And Iowa’s caucus just becomes a fizzle of a non-event that will hardly be a footnote to political history. 
 
The lesson of all this for the Republican candidates is this advice: spend more of the next three weeks in New Hampshire, because this is where it counts. Iowa is a waste of your time. 
 
What this cycle’s debates and forums have proved is that the more voters hear from the Republican candidates, the less they like any of them. For Democrats and President Obama, that’s good news leading to an election in November, 2012 which is just 325 days from now. New Hampshire will have been as relevant to the process as it ever has been, and the real winner of all these Republican debates and forums might well have been the man now celebrating Christmas in the White House.
 
Jim Splaine is a former New Hampshire State Representative and Senator. He is a longtime supporter of New Hampshire's First-In-The-Nation Presidential Primary and sponsored the law in 1975 and several updates since then that guarantees the state’s lead-off primary status by mandating that the Secretary of State set its date “7 days or more” before similar elections.

The Iowa caucuses -- which matter -- are January 3. Patch will provide live coverage of the results as they come in.