Screw Iowa: There’s No Reason for Any Candidate to Drop Out After Tonight

Pundits are doing their quadrennial roasting of Iowa today, in advance of the state’s first in the nation caucuses. One of my favorites thus far has been Jonah Goldberg’s piece for USA Today:

There’s been a lot of chatter in recent weeks that if Texas Rep. Ron Paul wins the Iowa Republican caucus today, the Iowa caucuses should be eliminated once and for all.  That’s unfair. Even if he loses, we should get rid of them.

After all, Iowans have voted heavily for colorful characters in the past.  Is Ron Paul crazier than Pat Robertson?

It’s nice that Iowa is the Saudi Arabia of corn, but there’s no reason for presidential aspirants to kowtow to Big Corn’s interests every four years. Even worse, every politician who even fantasizes about sitting in the Oval Office pays obeisance to the preservation of government moonshine.

Goldberg is right, particularly about Iowa. These caucuses always have horribly low turn-out figures compared to the later Presidential primaries. For all the talk of Iowans carefully sizing up candidates like ripe melons at the supermarket, very few actually proceed to purchase anything. And yet the media feeds into this garbage. Tim Pawlenty’s poor showing at a nonsense pay-to-play straw poll in Ames really forced him out of the race? I mean… seriously?

Of course, tonight if Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann poll in the mid-single digits — and it looks like they will — there will be howling from the media hounds that they must go at once. Exit the race now, stop wasting our time!

Despite securing perhaps one or two fewer delegates than a candidate like Newt Gingrich, the talking heads will insist that Bachmann and Perry’s campaigns are no longer viable — as dead as Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. Murdered in the Iowa snow.

This year, the rules are different and there are many reasons a Bachmann or Perry ought to solider on, even if they only get 3% or 4% of the vote tonight. In fact, I can think of at least 5 reasons that no candidate should even consider dropping out of the race after tonight’s caucus…

REASON #1: NO ONE IS HAPPY – The entire Republican electorate hates this field of candidates. More than two-thirds of Republicans don’t want Mitt Romney as the party’s nominee, but they can’t settle on which of the other highly flawed candidates they’d rather have instead of him.

REASON #2: TV DEBATES – If you hang around, you get to appear in a pair of nationally televised presidential debates. Anything could happen at these events and they’re worth millions of dollars in free, national advertising. Come up with a zinger, you might just create the soundbite of the night and cause a few million people to give your campaign a second look. Why not roll the dice?

REASON #3: YOU’RE BROKE, SO WHAT? – We keep hearing about how Bachmann’s campaign is running on fumes. Who cares? It doesn’t cost a lot to continue a presidential bid if you’re already widely known. Rick Perry has enough outside cash that this isn’t really an issue for him. But any lagging candidate can afford to fire most of their staff, rent a bus and just drive around South Carolina for a few weeks eating BBQ sandwiches with volunteers and getting interviewed on Fox News.

REASON #4: THE RULES HAVE CHANGED – Unlike in past years, a frontrunner is not going to begin building a huge delegate lead until later in the Spring.  Republicans have stopped the practice of using winner-take-all states, at least before April 1. Even if you don’t win, picking up delegates through some of these early primaries and caucuses will give you useful chips that you can trade in later, throwing your backing to another candidate when the time is right.

REASON #5: SCREW IOWA – If you perform poorly in the Iowa caucuses and then you drop out of the race, you give the Iowa caucuses more power. You reinforce this nonsense of there being a certain number of tickets out of Iowa. If this election comes and goes and the only thing at stake is a handful of delegates, maybe some in the media will start to wake up. It’s only Iowa, it’s not the end of the world.

Jon Huntsman may have the right idea, skipping the state entirely and starting his campaign next Tuesday in New Hampshire. It worked for John McCain in 2008.