{"id":4303,"date":"2011-05-30T10:11:23","date_gmt":"2011-05-30T14:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=4303"},"modified":"2011-06-01T08:50:17","modified_gmt":"2011-06-01T12:50:17","slug":"should-rural-voters-get-first-say-again-in-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/05\/30\/should-rural-voters-get-first-say-again-in-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Should rural voters get first say (again) in 2012?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve blogged a lot about the small-town centric structure of America&#8217;s political system, which gives voters in places like Iowa and New Hampshire the first swipe at presidential hopefuls.<\/p>\n<p>This morning, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/iowa-republicans-worry-about-their-relevance-in-2012\/2011\/05\/27\/AGXkXFEH_story_1.html\">Washington Post is asking<\/a> whether it makes sense for 200,000 mostly white, older, and rural people in Iowa to hold that kind of power.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When the rest of the country is focusing on the economy, will  Republicans in other states take their lead from the outcome of an  eccentric process that has been dominated by social conservatives?<\/p>\n<p>And  as the GOP looks to defeat an African American president who mobilized  record numbers of young and minority voters four years ago, how relevant  are the preferences of 200,000 or so caucusgoers in a rural state that  is overwhelmingly white and significantly older than average?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Post notes that some of the leading candidates, including Mitt Romney, seem to be giving Iowa short shrift this year.<\/p>\n<p>The article also points out that the Iowa caucuses just aren&#8217;t a very good measure of how strong or durable various candidates will be.\u00a0 Most of the non-incumbent candidates who win in Iowa flop later in the season.<\/p>\n<p>Even some other rural activists are thumping on Iowa.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Post, a former New Hampshire GOP chairman wrote an op-ed piece claiming that important issues don\u2019t get debated in Iowa, because \u201cthree quarters of the audience wears tinfoil hats.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So what do you think?\u00a0 Too much power for small towns voters?\u00a0 Or is it healthy for rural America to dominate the national conversation for a few months every four years?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve blogged a lot about the small-town centric structure of America&#8217;s political system, which gives [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4303"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}