Eugene Robinson: The Real Iowa Straw Poll Winner Is ... Obama

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AMES, Iowa - Strolling through the pageant of unhealthy food and unsound ideology that is the Iowa Straw Poll, amid the good-natured Republicans who swept Michele Bachmann to an impressive victory, I couldn't help but reflect that this quadrennial exercise is one crazy way to pick a major-party candidate for president.

You'll note that I used the words "Michele Bachmann" and "president" in the same sentence. That someone with views as extreme as Bachmann's could win - and that Ron Paul, who seems to inhabit his own little reality, could finish second - would seem to rob the straw poll of all but comic value, making it analogous to the opening joke a dinner speaker might tell to warm up a stone-faced audience. But the ritual is serious business, as poor Tim Pawlenty found out. Less than 24 hours after he finished a distant third in the straw poll, "former candidate" became his new honorific.

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Eugene Robinson: The Real Iowa Straw Poll Winner Is ... Obama

Long before the results were tallied, it seemed clear that Pawlenty was in trouble. Like the other candidates who participated Saturday, he had a big tent on the grounds of the Iow...

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