If you hold it, they won't come.

Iowa held its traditional Republican straw poll last weekend. As expected, Giuliani, McCain and Thompson sat this one out and as expected, Romney won fairly easily. The absence of three of the four leading candidates pretty much rendered the straw poll pointless. There was one bit of fallout, however: Tommy Thompson is out of the race (not that he had much of a chance anyway.) Unfortunately, there will be very little fallout as a result of this: he had so little support that it's not going to help anyone else's candidacy.

Another interesting development is the Ron Paul conspiracy: he finished 5th in the straw poll with 9% of the vote, something the major media outlets universally failed to mention (along with Tim Tancredo's 4th-place finish.) While one normally wouldn't want to devote much press space to a 5th-place finisher, it is odd in light of the fact that the other 9 candidates on the ballot all got a mention. Furthermore, when Paul's supporters are shown in the media, they tend to be shown in very small numbers and isolated from the goings-on, while homemade video of the same event shows decent numbers and organization. It sort of reminds me of Dick Lugar's abortive Presidential bid back in 1995-96, when pretty much everyone of any import agreed he was arguably the best-qualified GOP candidate, but gave him absolutely no press.

Thinking about it, that's an extremely dangerous and powerful position the media holds. Yes, a candidate can spend millions of dollars getting his name out there, but nobody will give money to someone he or she has never heard of. If the AP and Reuters decide you're not news-worthy, you have no chance of getting elected, even if you have Reagan's vision, Clinton's personality, Lincoln's integrity and Roosevelt's will, all rolled into one. While the news media can't decide who will be the next president, they most certainly can decide who will not.