Iowans are headed to their local caucus headquarters tonight, getting ready to shuffle about from one room to another in an interesting and slightly antiquated display of choosing a candidate. Personally, I think the whole thing is completely over-hyped, and more than a little annoying.The caucus itself wouldn't be so bad (hey, every state needs to have a nominating procedure) if it weren't for the constant jockeying for position between Iowa and the other states for the position of first caucus/primary in the nation. If they push things much further forward, we'll be having them in a completely different year from the actual elections. As it stands, this whole messed up process is already mucking up how we elect our leaders in this country. The people of Iowa shuffle their way to a nomination and thus influence the votes of their impressionable fellow citizens in other states--people who might have been inclined to throw the lever for a more impressive but, say, second-tier candidate but are now convinced that they're unelectable and will instead settle for the uninspired old white guy picked by the first three states to vote.
I have an easy solution for all of this. We ask ourselves: what would Cthulhu do? Frankly, the answer would probably involve a lot of earthly destruction and human sacrifice. But the way I figure it, we take the good and discard the bad: destroy the primary system, but leave out the baby eating. Everybody wins.
Used to be, the major party's national conventions really were a place for candidates to prove their mettle and win the nomination. Nowadays, the candidate is all but picked and primed by the time the convention rolls around. Heck, they're pretty much agreed upon well before half of the states even make it to their primaries. And that, ladies and gentlemen, really does make the baby Jesus cry (because we saved him from Cthulhu's merciless clutches).
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