RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/iowa_caucuses_legitimate_disaster_or_cover_for_a_more_nefarious_plan.html

This year’s Iowa caucus ought to have gone more smoothly than any caucus ever before in Iowa history. Then, a gremlin threw the whole caucus into utter chaos. Or was it just a gremlin? At this point, inquiring minds are getting paranoid about whether the DNC is desperately trying to run away from Bernie’s apparent momentum.

The problems started with that elusive Des Moines Register poll. Keep in mind that the Des Moines Register already brought shame on itself late last year when one of its reporters doxed a 24-year-old sports fan did a cute tweet, got lots of beer money, and then generously donated it to a local children’s hospital. Anheuser-Busch joined into the donation.

That was when one of the Register’s reporters decided to troll through the man’s tweets, going back 7 years to his teens, and finding two racist tweets. If that wasn’t sleazy enough, it turned out the reporter had his own history of nasty tweets. The Register fired the reporter, but by then the whole episode had become irrecoverably ugly.

That was bad. This weekend, though, the Register went one worse. Working with CNN, the Des Moines Register commissioned a poll in the lead-up to the Iowa caucuses. However, owing to some confusion about whether Pete Buttigieg was among the candidate choices offered to those taking the poll, CNN and the Register decided to pull the poll. That’s the official story.

https://spectator.us/why-the-iowa-voting-fiasco-matters/

The Monday night caucuses were the biggest moment in four years for Iowa Democratic Party. They screwed it up beyond belief. They had one task: to produce timely, accurate, and reliable vote totals, and they failed completely. TV anchors sat around filling time, waiting for Godot to show up with election returns. None appeared. The candidates themselves began flying off to New Hampshire for next week’s primary.

It was a fiasco, a huge embarrassment not only for state officials but for the national party. It denied the winners their big moment before the TV cameras on election night—and the fundraising bonus that goes with it. It left the losers wondering if they’ve been robbed. It left Iowans questioning whether they will ever hold caucuses again or keep their prime spot as first-in-the-nation. The bitterness over this mess will linger, and the Republicans will exploit it.

To begin with, this failure makes the Democratic Party look ridiculous. The damage is compounded because they are the “party of government.” That’s their brand, and it been since Franklin Roosevelt proposed the New Deal. Democratic policies almost always call for more government, run from Washington. When people point to social or economic problems, Democrats reflexively respond with laws, regulations, and bureaucracies to tackle them (and taxes to pay for them). That prospect looks a lot less appealing when you can’t count the votes in a high school gym. It doesn’t encourage people to say, “These are just the people to handle my healthcare.”