The Iowa caucuses may not have much predictive value but they did a wonderful job of unmasking both elitist whingers on the left and incompetent whiners on the right.
As they do every presidential election cycle progressives of pallor wore their indelible disdain for Middle America on their sleeves. Pale-faced University of Iowa journalism professor Stephen Bloom launched a 6000-word jeremiad littered with factual errors against his home states residents. The abridged version: Raaaaaaaacists! Hicks! Christians! Argggh!
In the safe harbors of The Atlantic just a few weeks before Tuesdays electoral event Bloom sneered: Those who stay in rural Iowa are often the elderly waiting to die. The rest are (a)n assortment of waste-toids and meth addicts with pale skin and rotted teeth or those who quixotically believe like Little Orphan Annie that the sun will come out tomorrow. One of the poison-tongued profs own former journalism students Kirsten Scharnberg Hampton took him to task for citing faulty demographic statistics derisively stereotyping hunters and falsely accusing a local newspaper of splashing the headline He Is Risen across its front page (it was a small boxed quotation marking Easter Sunday).
But the damage was done; the bait dangled. And at the overwhelmingly white NBC Nightly News on Sunday Andrea Mitchell swallowed the Iowa-bashing chum whole -- and then dutifully regurgitated the attack on the state as Too white too evangelical too rural. She was quick to slip in a critics say disclaimer of course. But lets not kid ourselves about the networks prejudices.
This is the same news organization that attempted to conduct Islamophobia stings at NASCAR races to expose how racist racing fans supposedly were; whose Meet the Press host David Gregory smeared GOP leaders as Grand Wizards in November; and whose execs were forced to apologize last month for MSNBC goons who falsely linked GOP candidate Mitt Romney to the Ku Klux Klan.
One local Hawkeye State veteran journalist David Yepsen tried to correct the coastal myth of the redneck-hick-outlier Iowa voter by politely pointing out Barack Obamas triumph in the 2008 Democratic caucuses at the hands of yes mostly white voters. Moreover over the past four presidential election seasons the Iowa popular vote has closely tracked national preferences.
Census statistics show that the majority of Iowans are urban not rural; the median age is 38 (nationally its 36.7); and out of a population of 3 million people statewide some 90000 are farming families. But snobs and demagogues on both sides of the aisle eschewed the facts and instead indulged in racial and class warfare. The Hispanic News website issued a clarion call: In Diverse and Urban Nation Time to Kick Iowa White Racist Farmers to Curb. GOP strategist Roger Stone who spearheaded the bungled bid to turn statist pro-bailout eminent-domain abuser Donald Trump into a Tea Party/GOP Mr. Everyman candidate also jumped ugly. He railed against Iowans as a bunch of hayseeds who are not representative of America today.
More Iowa sins according to Stone: The food is awful the people are stout and a lot of them smoke.
If only a utopian state of non-smoking vegetarian supermodels and Apprentice reality-show contestants had first-in-the-nation status. Imagine how much better off wed all be.
Joking aside Id have no problem with a rotating kick-off caucus slot. But intermingled with the bi-coastal bigotry against Iowa is the distinct odor of sore-loser-dom. Split voters in Iowa simply reflected the wider discontent among grassroots conservatives and tea party activists with the current Pageant of the Imperfects.
Besides Iowa caucus critics have had years to change the status quo. Like some of Tuesdays big losers the whingers and whiners who complain about the process have failed to get their act together. All talk no follow-through.
Take Newt Gingrich. The vaunted intellectual field marshal of the GOP whose campaign bubble quickly burst under the weight of his own gross incompetence blamed his fall on money staff a failed system negative ads and the electorates inability to appreciate big ideas.
But if you cant convert a surge into an electoral win if you cant effectively rebut opponents charges without resorting to tears and tantrums and -- most damaging for Gingrich -- if you cant put people on the ground in places like Iowa and Virginia who can deliver votes and signatures when it counts how can you win a general election? Frankly to use a favorite Gingrich verbal crutch the fault lies in just one place: on Gingrichs shoulders.
When I was a kid we took something called the Iowa Test of Basic Skills -- a nationally standardized test of minimum competence in core subjects. The Iowa caucuses serve a similar purpose. When campaigns fail to meet the most elementary requirements of organizational politics dont blame the messengers. Blame the test-takers.
Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats Crooks & Cronies (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
The Iowa caucuses may not have much predictive value but they did a wonderful job of unmasking both elitist whingers on the left and incompetent whiners on the right.
As they do every presidential election cycle progressives of pallor wore their indelible disdain for Middle America on their sleeves. Pale-faced University of Iowa journalism professor Stephen Bloom launched a 6000-word jeremiad littered with factual errors against his home states residents. The abridged version: Raaaaaaaacists! Hicks! Christians! Argggh!
In the safe harbors of The Atlantic just a few weeks before Tuesdays electoral event Bloom sneered: Those who stay in rural Iowa are often the elderly waiting to die. The rest are (a)n assortment of waste-toids and meth addicts with pale skin and rotted teeth or those who quixotically believe like Little Orphan Annie that the sun will come out tomorrow. One of the poison-tongued profs own former journalism students Kirsten Scharnberg Hampton took him to task for citing faulty demographic statistics derisively stereotyping hunters and falsely accusing a local newspaper of splashing the headline He Is Risen across its front page (it was a small boxed quotation marking Easter Sunday).
But the damage was done; the bait dangled. And at the overwhelmingly white NBC Nightly News on Sunday Andrea Mitchell swallowed the Iowa-bashing chum whole -- and then dutifully regurgitated the attack on the state as Too white too evangelical too rural. She was quick to slip in a critics say disclaimer of course. But lets not kid ourselves about the networks prejudices.
This is the same news organization that attempted to conduct Islamophobia stings at NASCAR races to expose how racist racing fans supposedly were; whose Meet the Press host David Gregory smeared GOP leaders as Grand Wizards in November; and whose execs were forced to apologize last month for MSNBC goons who falsely linked GOP candidate Mitt Romney to the Ku Klux Klan.
One local Hawkeye State veteran journalist David Yepsen tried to correct the coastal myth of the redneck-hick-outlier Iowa voter by politely pointing out Barack Obamas triumph in the 2008 Democratic caucuses at the hands of yes mostly white voters. Moreover over the past four presidential election seasons the Iowa popular vote has closely tracked national preferences.
Census statistics show that the majority of Iowans are urban not rural; the median age is 38 (nationally its 36.7); and out of a population of 3 million people statewide some 90000 are farming families. But snobs and demagogues on both sides of the aisle eschewed the facts and instead indulged in racial and class warfare. The Hispanic News website issued a clarion call: In Diverse and Urban Nation Time to Kick Iowa White Racist Farmers to Curb. GOP strategist Roger Stone who spearheaded the bungled bid to turn statist pro-bailout eminent-domain abuser Donald Trump into a Tea Party/GOP Mr. Everyman candidate also jumped ugly. He railed against Iowans as a bunch of hayseeds who are not representative of America today.
More Iowa sins according to Stone: The food is awful the people are stout and a lot of them smoke.
If only a utopian state of non-smoking vegetarian supermodels and Apprentice reality-show contestants had first-in-the-nation status. Imagine how much better off wed all be.
Joking aside Id have no problem with a rotating kick-off caucus slot. But intermingled with the bi-coastal bigotry against Iowa is the distinct odor of sore-loser-dom. Split voters in Iowa simply reflected the wider discontent among grassroots conservatives and tea party activists with the current Pageant of the Imperfects.
Besides Iowa caucus critics have had years to change the status quo. Like some of Tuesdays big losers the whingers and whiners who complain about the process have failed to get their act together. All talk no follow-through.
Take Newt Gingrich. The vaunted intellectual field marshal of the GOP whose campaign bubble quickly burst under the weight of his own gross incompetence blamed his fall on money staff a failed system negative ads and the electorates inability to appreciate big ideas.
But if you cant convert a surge into an electoral win if you cant effectively rebut opponents charges without resorting to tears and tantrums and -- most damaging for Gingrich -- if you cant put people on the ground in places like Iowa and Virginia who can deliver votes and signatures when it counts how can you win a general election? Frankly to use a favorite Gingrich verbal crutch the fault lies in just one place: on Gingrichs shoulders.
When I was a kid we took something called the Iowa Test of Basic Skills -- a nationally standardized test of minimum competence in core subjects. The Iowa caucuses serve a similar purpose. When campaigns fail to meet the most elementary requirements of organizational politics dont blame the messengers. Blame the test-takers.
Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats Crooks & Cronies (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
