Media malfeasance in Ames

The "Iowa Straw Poll" held in Ames yesterday was hardly the model of democracy. Not only did Iowans have to get to the Ames fairground, but they had to pay $30 to participate in the process. Hardly a good way to get a representative sampling of Iowa's electorate, or even of that state's Republicans. Which makes sense, because it's really a fund-raising dinner for Iowa's Republican party.

But the even comes loaded with hype, and the media are eager to cast it as an important test of candidates' appeal in the presidential "horse race." So what should be seen as an unimportant partisan fund-raiser takes on a significance far beyond anything that can be justified.

Anyway, a grand total of 16,584 made the drive to Ames (did anyone take public transit or bike there?) to ante up their $30. And the media anointed the results with suggestions of those magical terms "mandate" and "momentum." The front-runners had a lot to gain, and any candidate who didn't do as well as the pundits thought they should was condemned to marginality.

So Michele Bachmann got the support of the grand total of 4,823 ticket-buyers (fewer than three in ten of the attendees) and is declared the winner. By contrast, Tim Pawlenty finished third with nearly half as many, but the media called that a "major setback" him and it must have been, because he immediately dropped out of the race.

I'm not great fan of Pawlenty's, but shouldn't we as Americans be alarmed that such an inconsequential event as this minor small state partisan fund-raising event should be deemed so important that it can knock a candidate who has governed a fairly large state out of the race because he trailed another candidate by the support of a mere 2,530 people who decided to spend their Saturday traveling to Ames to pay $30 so they could hobnob with the candidates?

This is not how a democratic republic should work. Those in the media should be ashamed of what they have done, and we in the electorate should be appalled at how we allow them to twist, undermine and emaculate our electoral process.