Iowa Commentary From Around The Net This Morning That Caught My Eye

“If Biden and Dodd Depart, How Long Can Richardson Stick Around?

Lamest spin of the night:

“We made it to the final four.” — Bill Richardson.

Final results:

Senator Barack Obama: 37.58%
Senator John Edwards: 29.75%
Senator Hillary Clinton: 29.47%
Governor Bill Richardson: 2.11%

I’m reminded of the Sesame Street song: One of these things is not like the other… three of these things are kinda the same… — The Campaign Spot

“It didn’t take Hillary long to re-message the campaign in the wake of her stunning third-place loss to Barack Obama and John Edwards in Iowa. Instead of insisting on change, a theme more amenable to her opponent, Hillary will instead work on the inexperience of her opponents — and use a tack that Democrats often claim Republicans use against them.

…These are serious times, and it takes a serious leader to address them — preferably one with a proven track record of public service and executive experience. Fortunately for Hillary, this doesn’t describe Barack Obama or John Edwards. Unfortunately, it doesn’t describe Hillary Clinton, either.

She has certainly tried to sell herself as a mover in the Clinton administration, realizing that seven years in the Senate only gives her one more year in public office than Edwards and three less than Obama. Hillary attempted to cast herself as someone who got tapped whenever it got too dangerous for the President to handle a situation abroad. The only example she gave of this supposed policy was a trip in which she accompanied the comedian Sinbad, singer Sheryl Crow, and her own 15-year-old daughter to a USO show in Tuzla. If nothing else, it shows that the Clinton impulse for hyperbole, exaggeration, and flat-out untruth didn’t just come from Bill.” — Captain’s Quarters

“I watched the Iowa Democratic caucuses on C-SPAN last night, and so I must rant about the stupidity of the process: 400 Iowa Democrats wandering around a high-school cafeteria, harassing each other for two hours by repeating the same worn-out lines we’ve heard a million times before about each candidate. This frequently produced unintentionally hilarious scenes like the following, in which an Obama supporter tries to convince an undecided voter to join him by employing a familiar rebuttal to the charge that Obama is too inexperienced: Abraham Lincoln, he assured her, assumed the presidency with less experience than Obama has now.

“He got shot!” the undecided voter cried.” — Stephen Spruiell at The Corner

“Defenders of Iowa’s racket make it sound like theirs is a tradition hallowed by time consecrated, a custom straight from the bosom of the American heartland, like maypole dancing and barn raising. Poppycock. Iowa’s first-in-the-nation boondoggle began in 1972, and according to Mark Stricherz, author of Why the Democrats are Blue: Secular Liberalism and the Decline of the People’s Party, has its roots in the New Left, not Norman Rockwell. The “participatory democracy” of the Port Huron Statement informs the arcane procedures that eschew “one man, one-vote” and discriminate against people who can’t afford to spend two hours jibber-jabbering about whether Barack Obama’s nationalized health-care plan is better than John Edwards’ nationalized health-care plan.

Iowans claim that they deserve to be kingmakers because they take the “process” so seriously, measuring the candidates, debating every issue, etc. Uh huh. Then why has turnout, at least until this year, hovered around 6-percent of registered voters? Is that a benchmark to which no other state could aspire?

More important, if Iowans are so deadly serious about the issues, why is ethanol the third rail of Iowa politics? It’s hard to reconcile the idea that Iowans are exemplary custodians of civil virtue with the fact that they are rabid defenders of welfare checks for government moonshine.” — Jonah Goldberg

“I don’t want to jinx it, especially given the Clintons’ knack for comebacks, but in this dark conservative hour we need a little light. So take heart in this — as bad as I thought she’d do this afternoon, she actually did worse. With only 60 precincts left to be counted, she’s eight points behind and destined for the third-place finish Bob Novak and Chuck Todd declared would likely be “fatal” and a “near-disaster” for her candidacy. The only dark lining in the silver cloud: She’ll probably finish near second, within a point of Silky, who desperately needed to win and probably isn’t long for this political world after South Carolina despite his vow to fight on. He’s still around to bleed Obama for her, and who knows?” — Allahpundit at Hot Air

“Hillary Clinton, the inevitable, the avatar of the machine, lost.

It’s huge. Even though people have been talking about this possibility for six weeks now, it’s still huge. She had the money, she had the organization, the party’s stars, she had Elvis behind her, and the Clinton name in a base that loved Bill. And she lost. There are always a lot of reasons for a loss, but the Ur reason in this case, the thing it all comes down to? There’s something about her that makes you look, watch, think, look again, weigh and say: No.

She started out way ahead, met everyone, and lost.” — Peggy Noonan

“As of this moment, the zionist neocons in the media are claiming that Ron Paul has finished next to last in the Iowa Caucuses, and that he is trailing the imperialist Bush lackey pig Mike Huckabee by almost 30,000 votes. However, we at RedState have learned from reliable sources that there is a media conspiracy afoot to not report votes for Ron Paul! That’s correct, although Ron Paul actually received over 40,000 votes, we have reason to believe that the corporate media is simply refusing to report on the last 30,000 votes that Ron Paul received so that they do not have to mention Ron Paul’s name over their capitalist pig airwaves anymore.” — Leon Wolf, Redstate

“Everywhere I turned last night, from television to the blogs, people were marveling that a state as “white” as Iowa would vote for a black man, Barack Obama. Is this not a sign of change for the better? Well, it is and whites and blacks should rejoice in it, but it is not surprising that Iowa would do such a thing. In the 1970s, more than 30 years ago, Iowa City’s state senator was an African American named Bill Hargrave. In a town with 45,000 residents and fewer than 500 blacks, the voters sent Hargrave to Des Moines because he was a great guy (there’s some background on the Hargrave family in this story about one of his coaching sons). Yes, Iowa City is more liberal than most of the rest of the state, but the students do not really vote. Hargrave was elected by the townies, most of whom are as Iowan as the day is long.” — Tigerhawk

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