From AlterNet / By Adele M. Stan
"The surprises served up by Iowa's Republican Party caucuses tend to act as a rebuke to the party establishment, sometimes with a result that seems kind of kooky: Pat Buchanan's near-win in 1996, the Rev. Pat Robertson's third-place finish in 1988.
What seems so shocking to the intelligentsia when the Hawkeye state delivers such head-scratching results is that Iowa is deemed to represent the most normal of normal places in America. It's the heart of the heartland, land of red meat served with mayo on white bread. If you think the normal American is white and midwestern, then you can't get much more normal than Iowa.
So, why, then, do those normal Iowa Republicans vote for such weirdos in their caucuses -- people like Ron Paul, for instance, who they know couldn't possiblywin the presidency, let alone the nomination?
Earth to media: this is what the Republican base looks like. Freed from the constraints of reality -- as in, picking a candidate who can win -- this is who they'd love to see as their president: someone like Rick Santorum, who has made his primary mission the government control of women's reproductive organs, or Ron Paul, who has dressed a largely Confederate and radical Christian Reconstructionist agenda in the robes of liberty."
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