Finally it comes to an end

Today is the day all these months of suffering will come to an end for us Iowans. It's bad enough we cannot escape their television commercials but Mitt Romney has even invaded Hulu. Enjoy more suffering New Hampshire.

A close friend who is an academic comes to Iowa every four years to study our train wreck - which always includes as many visits to campaign rallies as we can get. Yesterday's travel to a Paul rally demonstrated the nature of the state's alleged retail politics as we tick down to the caucus. The Des Moines Marriott conference room held about 250 people, at least half them media.

All hail glorified participatory democracy as the media reports how large the crowd was...if you count the media.

Further, we got to hear sincerely accurate statements like this:

Ron Paul dinged rival Rick Santorum Monday for being a "very liberal" candidate

We just missed a chance for the response when we arrived too late at the Santorum rally...and what a meeting to miss:

Pizza Ranch manager in Boone, Iowa, has renamed the restaurant’s chicken salad “Santorum Salad”

Thanks to Dan Savage it is not too hard to make a lot of statements about Santorum into double-entendres, but Republicans do seem to go out of their way to help, they seem to back right into them.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]