Today’s Iowa Caucuses Look to Be Close

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Presidential hopefuls hedged their bets heading into the Iowa caucuses, declaring Thursday that “anything is possible,”"it’s too close to call” and all now depends on getting the people who’ve been cheering their words to come out to vote and arm-twist neighbors to do the same.

Republican Mitt Romney ramped back expectations, at least for public consumption, saying he’d settle for second in the opening contest of the 2008 election season - as well as in the New Hampshire primary only five days after Iowa. The one-time leader in Iowa polls was fighting Mike Huckabee for a win in Iowa on Thursday night.

Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in an equally unpredictable three-way race, said: “I feel good, but it depends on who comes out, who decides to actually put on their coats, warm up their cars and go to the caucuses.”

Her rival, Sen. Barack Obama, echoed the sentiment. “Anything is possible at this point,” he said. “We’ve put a lot into Iowa and our efforts here. We feel good about what we’ve done, but this is the beginning and not the end.” Candidates spoke on the morning talk shows before a final round of campaigning as Iowans prepared to put their stamp on the wide-open presidential race. The night forecast called for cold, clear weather, in the teens to low 20s.

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Today’s Iowa Caucuses Look to Be Close

Today is the big day, some real opinions get stated tonight and maybe we’ll all begin to get a clearer picture of the temperature of this nation…

–noun
1. U.S. Politics.
a. a meeting of party leaders to select candidates, elect convention delegates, etc.
b. a meeting of party members within a legislative body to select leaders and determine strategy.
c. (often initial capital letter) a faction within a legislative body that pursues its interests through the legislative process: the Women’s Caucus; the Black Caucus.

I wasn’t sure how this caucus thing worked so I turned to Google and Wikipedia for some clarity…

Republican Party process

For the Republicans, the Iowa caucus follows (and should not be confused with) the Ames Straw Poll in August of the preceding year. Out of the five Ames Straw Poll iterations, 1987 is the only year in which the winner of the Ames Straw Poll has not gone on to win the Iowa caucus.

In the Republican caucuses, each voter casts his or her vote by secret ballot. Voters are presented blank sheets of paper with no candidate names on them. After listening to some campaigning for each candidate by caucus participants, they write their choices down and the Republican Party of Iowa tabulates the results at each precinct and transmits them to the media. The non-binding results are tabulated and reported to the state party which releases the results to the media. Delegates from the precinct caucuses go on to the County Convention, which chooses delegates to the District Convention, which in turn selects delegates to the State Convention. Thus it is the Republican State Convention, not the precinct caucuses, which select the ultimate delegates to the Republican National Convention in Iowa. Iowa caucus

Now the Democrats have an entirely different process, and it’s much longer in explanation but can be found at this same link if anyone is interested, and quite frankly, I wasn’t…

So, let the games begin, this will be interesting, politics, religion, Hollyweird libbers, Conservatives, Repubs and Dems, all of come together in Iowa tonight and the course our nation takes is being set in motion and if what I am hearing on MSM TV reports is correct, this should yield some results tomorrow, I can hardly wait…

I hate to poo-poo tradition but maybe someone needs to make the fine folks of Iowa aware, we have electronic voting now a days, and this caucus stuff is really pretty antiquated…

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