This Just In: Santorum Ekes Out Iowa Victory.... Two Weeks Ago!

Iowa announced yesterday morning that Rick Santorum actually appears to have won the Iowa caucuses two weeks ago, by 34 votes, rather than than losing them by 8 votes, as previously believed.   I don't think it would have mattered in the long run -- Romney was still going to win New Hampshire, and Romney still had the best campaign organization, the most money, etc. -- but now we'll never know.   The presidential campaign is an imprecise science, obviously, but does it really have to be this random?   Mark Steyn doesn't think so:

[H]orse-race headlines matter. Just nine days ago, the bigfoot media line on primary night in the Granite State was that Mitt Romney was the first non-incumbent in the history of the planet to win both Iowa and New Hampshire. Wow! Unprecedented! One for the record books! Next question: Will the history-making and increasingly inevitable “Big Mo” Mitt make it three-in-a-row in the Palmetto State?

But this entire narrative rested on nothing more substantial than an incompetent count in a state where votes in eight precincts had gone missing. On the eve of South Carolina, it turns out that Mister Inevitable, Mister Run-The-Board, Mister Sweep-The-Nation has done no more than win one state in which he keeps a vacation home.

If I were Rick Santorum, I’d be feeling mighty irked by the two-week switcheroo. Had he been pronounced the winner of Iowa back when it mattered, who knows the difference it might have made to his fundraising, or to a meaningful surge in New Hampshire, or to the ability to buy airtime in Florida. What First World jurisdiction needs over a fortnight to count a hundred thousand votes? 

Steyn goes on to make a good point.   We give Iowa and New Hampshire extraordinary power over selecting our Presidents.    At the same time, the primary in California, with 37 million residents, has practically no input into the nomination.   Shouldn't Republicans especially be seeking to nominate candidates who can compete in the largest and most important states -- California, Illinois, Texas, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey?   That may mean a more moderate candidate, it may not, but whatever it means, we wouldn't have the charade of letting 120,000 farmers select our candidate.