Iowa seems a generation ago, doesn’t?

Remember? Gingrich was toast, Ron Paul was “fading”, and Rick Santorum was “coming on strong” in the final polls before the actual voting began….

And these final Polling Prognostications?

Romney, 22.1%, Paul, 19.5%, Santorum 17%, Gingrich, 12%

Of course, this was all it took to officially proclaim the Inevitable Romney as the Crown Prince of Frontrunnerdom. The final poll mattered more than the actual results, which had Santorum a scosh north of 24%, Romney 34 votes behind him, and Ron Paul checking in with 18%.

Ah, yes, the margin of error.

What I would give to outlaw polling, and allow candidates to rise and fall on their merit….  Now, because of the endless polling, sampling and focus-grouping, we are treated to this Romney-Ignited vicious, vile, disgusting, foul cock-fight of a campaign that is primarily about poll-jockeying, and destroying whoever is in front of the Mittster. Romney can’t run on his political philosophy –at best, he’s a social-climbing technocrat of no particular political stripe, at worst a mealy-mouthed East-Coast patrician good-government liberal– and thus, he must catastrophically smear and destroy his closest poll-buddy. If Mother Theresa herself was leading Mitt Romney in the Florida Poll, he’d spend the Queen’s Dowry to electorally butcher her.

What an asinine way to choose the person that will save this country from the abyss. Thanks, Mitt.

Just remember what the final poll was before Iowa, too…