Presidential Election 2008; the Iowa Caucus Circus is over.

Thank God it’s over. No, I’m not talking about the cold spell that ran through the Midwest. I’m talking about the Iowa Caucus. In another fit of I-want-to-be-president insanity, candidates are estimated to have spent upwards of $30 million trying to get the votes of 340,000 Iowans. In other words, every Iowan had $100 bucks popped out of the candidates money chests for each of their votes.

This Blundersome spending is excellent for the Iowa economy. Newspapers, radio and television stations all collected enough money that they all healed their financials for the fiscal year in just a few months. The candidates, who all had entourages big enough to fill the Iowa Hawkeye’s football stadium, also brought along the droves of mindless press who wanted to spend hours reporting on something that really doesn’t mean that much to most of America.

The restaurants and bars and hotels all had standing room only as politicians and their flights of staff flew around the state like hawks over the corn stubble looking for mice and prairie dogs.

Yeh, Iowa is the first mainland primary. And yes, if a candidate wins big some of America’s voters will jump on the winner’s bandwagon. And yes again, a candidate who can’t even get the Iowans living in the cardboard boxes to vote for them might drop out, and they did. This all means something. The problem is the media has turned this “something" into a circus event that has P.T. Barnum rolling in his grave wondering why he never had a caucus in his oddities museum. 

I’m glad this is over because all of us everywhere in the country were forced to be Iowa’d to death as well as Iowans. That’s not fair. Iowans get all the money and the rest of us are forced to watch our cable news programming turn into a pile of political, punditry drivel.

I’ll bet most Iowans would have just preferred the candidates had rang their doorbell and handed the $100 spent on each of them for their vote. Now before you get all sanctimonious on me, there would be nothing wrong with doing that. Just as long as every voter, right after receiving the cash, made a public statement that the dough in no way influenced the way they would vote. After all, Washington set up that little rule years ago when they started taking huge sums from corporations and special interests that in no way affected their votes. Of course both notions are crap but isn’t it time we the people got our own little chunk of all the payola flying around our nation’s politics?

Personally I would use my money to pay off a politician to leave me alone.