Disappearing Iowa?

UPDATE – A really good question from a Carly Fiorina supporter over the weekend in the Des Moines Register.

Why are Republicans letting CNN pick our president?

Why are Republicans letting CNN pick our presidential nominee? Fox I might understand, but CNN?

Confused? Not a surprise. Most in the GOP don’t realize what is happening — except those in the highest level of the establishment in Washington, D.C. Us folks out in the cornfields, well, we’re just going about our regular lives blissfully unaware how the game, I mean nomination process, is being taken away from us.

It used to be that Iowa played a prominent role in selecting the next president. But a lot of folks have been working hard over the years to take that away from us. Too Midwestern, too conservative, too white, too — pick whatever adjective describes an Iowan, like maybe hard-working or thoughtful. Several states have tried to leapfrog us and our friends in New Hampshire, yet we have staved off those attacks. Now the “we can’t let Iowa decide” crowd has a new method. If they can’t leapfrog us, they will decide which candidates we may choose from.

Case in point: The move by the Republican National Committee and the major television networks to decide on their own which candidates we will be able to watch debate in prime time. By ignoring candidates’ standings in Iowa and New Hampshire, they are moving us toward a national primary, thereby negating our role in the nominating process.

I have long argued that the RNC has been in collusion with the national media, including Fox News, to sideline or eliminate certain candidates.

I criticized, well, lambasted Fox after the last debate, for paneling Megyn Kelly, a commentator and establishment apologist, and for defending her near combative questioning of Donald Trump. Yes, Trump was rude. Hello, he’s Donald Trump? But without question, Kelly tried to Candy Crowley Trump from the beginning.

In his column Christopher Rants, who is Carly Fiorina’s Iowa chairman, goes on to say that Fiorina is the object of the RNC’s latest move to sidestep the traditional Iowa-New Hampshire process.

Who is the GOP establishment and CNN conspiring to keep off the stage? Carly Fiorina.

As Rant points out, putting Fiorina with the B-Team during the first debate may have been justifiable, but now she clearly belongs on the big stage with the “big boys.” Yet CNN doesn’t think Fiorina rates our attention.

Au contraire.

In fact, Fiorina is probably one of the few candidates who does rate our full attention. I mean, does anybody but Mrs. Christie honestly believe President Obama’s huggy bear is going to be the nominee?

The better question would be, Why are we even having national debates this early in the process? Primary elections are a state and regional process; by effectively circumventing them the GOP has increased its stranglehold on state parties . Candidates topping the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire should be debating in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Why don’t we just coin a phrase here and call this, the RNC’s Shut Up Sarah Palin strategy.

By beating Iowa-New Hampshire to the jump, Rant rightly points out:

Now the “we can’t let Iowa decide” crowd has a new method. If they can’t leapfrog us, they will decide which candidates we may choose from.

It is what the GOP and its media allies do whenever they run across a new conservative voice that is a little too “folksy” for the party elitists’ taste.

In fact, if a Donald Trump candidacy has any redeeming value it may be that this RNC-media charade has, at least partly, backfired.