Happy New Year, American voters

The holidays are over, my brief relationship seems to have ended, so I'm back and I'm cranky, very cranky.

Just so we are clear: the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary election are a racket to boost the economies of both states at the expense of the nation as a whole. This comment comes from a guy who lived in NH for 30 years and tripped over more presidential candidates than most.

Once, having breakfast in a diner in Milford, NH, we were visited by three candidates while our eggs got cold. My brother John, from Massachusetts, finally asked if we ever considered shooting them.

And I have to admit it was fun sending my daughter out to get info for her school report by visiting with an unknown presidential candidate from Arkansas (Bill Clinton). Retail politics the pundits call it and it is a ridiculous concept in this day and age.

Do you really think all those fat, white, well-off, pig farming, ethanol producing social conservatives from Iowa are making a choice for president that the rest of this nation will follow? So far they have been wrong every time.

The local TV stations make a ton of money off the candidate’s ads. So their talking heads go wild spouting the critical importance of every statement, misstatement, and declaration of a group of people who will end up as foot notes to foot notes in history books. Whichever candidate is spending the most at the time is seen as the new front runner.

Everyone with a grain of sense has known since 2008 that Mitt Romney would be the Republican Presidential candidate in 2012. There is no mystery, no question. But that approach does not generate ad dollars and the false hope required to get these candidates to spend all that money for nothing.

New Hampshire and Iowa will never give up this golden goose that fills second rate motel rooms and greasy diners as well as newspaper and television coffers voluntarily. The national parties and the voters as a whole will have to finally put this dog down.

Restricting national political campaigns to a 6 month period with one national primary would be a good start.