Hawkeye Caucus Results

Imagine my surprise Thursday night when we pulled within a quarter mile of our Republican-only caucus site last night and came to a grinding halt because traffic was overflowing. Republicans are uninterested in the race for 08? I guess not everyone got the message.

We arrived 30 minutes early to avoid traffic. Instead, cars already lined the side street to Antioch Christian Church in every direction available. We chose to park on the shoulder of a 65 MPH highway and walk quickly through the ice and wind to avoid getting locked out (must be in the caucus by 7 p.m. OR ELSE!). Once inside a sanctuary-turned-precinct site, we quickly surmised that the 500 or so seats were already 90 percent full. We found two chairs and sat, while the sanctuary filled to overflow.

An hour later we drove home listening to the radio announce that Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama were already being declared winners. Our precinct votes had yet to be counted and called in. I thought, "These two must be winning big."

Turning on Fox News, we quickly learned that they were, in fact, winning big. In the end, both Obama and Huckabee won by wider margins than the polls had predicted. Both must be pleased beyond peaches that they won the way they did.

One big story coming out of Iowa is that a record number of Democrats turned out to caucus, about 225,000. That's about the number that the pundits predicted would come out for the two parties combined. It was a record total for Dems. But lost in the shuffle was that a record number of Republicans also turned out -- about 120,000. This is 36 percent more than the previous Republican record set in the 2000 George W. Bush caucus. So, both parties set records, and of course, the 345,000 or so total voters (about 17 percent of Iowa's registered voters) was a record. In other words, Iowans from both parties were excited about their candidates and did their job well.

Though I did not and will not vote for Barack Obama, many did. It is exhaustively reported that Iowa is not representative of the country because we're neither red or blue -- we're vanilla -- 95 percent Caucasian. Yet the black-American Obama was the leading vote-getter. That shows that Iowan's do listen to the candidates and evaluate their merits beyond more superficial characterictics. If that's true of the Obama vote, it is also true of the Huckabee vote.

So, coming strong out of Iowa are a black man and a Southern Baptist preacher, who six months ago were defined exclusively in just those terms. Today they wear a new labels -- winner, and legitimate candidate. Those are terms not applicable to Chris Dodd and Joe Biden (both dropped out immediately following the vote tally) nor Bill Richardson and Duncan Hunter (both will surely fall away within the week). Another job well done by Iowans -- winnowing the candidate pool to a formidable number for future debates.

The cameras and talking heads all boarded their planes at midnight to move to New Hampshire. Not one candidate will be back in Iowa until late summer when the general election swings into gear. Even then, the visits will be few and far between. So, we take a breather until March 2011 ... the likely timeframe for the beginning of the 2012 election.