My Iowa Pet Peeves (They’re Not What You Think They Are)

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

As the results begin trickling in, it would be easy for me to join the insistent chorus of critics today who are ridiculing the Iowa caucus as a quaint anachronism and the state itself for being too white, too rural and too parochial (and not a very effective bellwether given that, since Iowa’s rise to political prominence in 1972, only one winner of the Caucus has ever gone on to become President –- the sublime George W. Bush in 2000) to wield so much electoral influence over the next leader of the free world.
 
But what’s the point? No less than the legendary Des Moines Register columnist David Yepsen admits today that 2008 might be Iowa’s last hurrah. And, besides, as a Midwestern expat who cut his political teeth on the mean streets of Indiana, who am I to cast corn?
 
No, my friends, I have two Hawkeye state-related pet peeves of far greater urgency...