It's Nothing but Straw.........................

With Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul leading the Ames Straw Poll and Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum and Herman Cain next -- ahead of Rick Perry and Mitt Romney -- only the local buttermilk cows should be holding their heads high.
Sometimes Iowa picks 'em -- and some times not. Today NOT.
In the GOP-sort out straw poll held in Ames, Iowa, Tea Party diva Michele Bachmann bested libertarian favorite Ron Paul as the winner. But more importantly, no one in the top 5 had any real chance of leading a 2012 GOP ticket. Iowa is making itself irrelevant in the hard political choice department.
When Michele Bachmann performed well above expectations in the first Republican presidential candidate debate, she destroyed Sarah Palin's chances for the GOP nod. With Texas Governor Rick Perry's lethally-timed announcement of his candidacy, he has wrecked any real hope Bachmann had of spending time in the political sunlight. She never could have clinched the title.
But what this straw poll really says something about is the State of the GOP in the State of Iowa. This straw poll result shows that a group of people are willing to place bets on people who have virtually no chance of really winning on a national ticket. My view anyway.
Let's look back at butter cow territory history and see what Ames has produced in the past.
In the first straw poll in 1979, most of the straws went to the Kennebunkport-sculpted George H.W. Bush. Ronald Reagan came in 2nd. Both of these guys were legitimate, possible contenders for the top GOP slot, and the Ames poll did what it was supposed to do -- tried to sort out for a Iowan Republicans a serious choice. While Bush did not win the nomination ultimately, he was the real thing....Tea Party diva Michele Bachmann bested . . . no one in the top 5 had any real chance of leading a 2012 GOP ticket . . . Michele Bachmann . . . destroyed Sarah Palin's chances for the GOP nod . . . Bachmann . . . never could have clinched the title . . . people who have virtually no chance of really winning on a national ticket. My view anyway. There's a lot of loaded phrases here, but nothing more serious than hateful wishful thinking, at best. What I don't see is any effort at rational thought or encouraging others to think. There's no "you shouldn't vote for a patriotic fiscal conservative because ___________" (insert logical reason here). It's all slime, which is the writer's profession. Pathetic. .

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