America’s Spoiled Voters, in Iowa and Elsewhere

By Michael Kinsley - Jan 4, 2012

Six days ago, the Rick Santorum boom was still a glint in Mike Allen’s eye. In a Des Moines Register poll published the weekend before the Iowa caucuses, 41 percent of respondents said they weren’t sure whom they were going to support.

And these were people who expressed an intention to attend a caucus. They had an inclination. But, like diners poring over the menu at a fancy restaurant, they might yet change their minds.

Indeed, if the polls are to be believed, many Iowa voters must have changed their preferences multiple times over the past few months, as the electorate as a whole (to lower the tone of the metaphor) seemed to pick up one cantaloupe after another, always looking for perfection, never finding it, putting the melon back and reaching for another. The fruit that started at the bottom of the bin -- Santorum -- got a big squeeze at the end.