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" Up until a few mornings ago, there was this idea floating around political chatrooms that &amp;quot;Iowa doesn&amp;#039;t matter&amp;quot; for the Republican presidential hopefuls in 2012. Actually, it&amp;#039;s an idea that floats around seemingly every year between presidential elections, and it&amp;#039;s not so much based on fact as on fancy. What if, the thinking goes, there&amp;#039;s a candidate who owns the independents? Or the evangelicals? They could just skip the Iowa caucuses altogether and wrap up the nomination with wins in New Hampshire or across the South.   And what do you know, in every election cycle there seems to be a candidate who fits one of those fancies, and the &amp;quot;Iowa doesn&amp;#039;t matter&amp;quot; conversation rises anew. This year, Mitt Romney was the one declared Iowa-proof, the guy who could leave the cornfields to the freaks (Paul, Cain) and duds (Pawlenty) \u2014 but still win it, thanks to his relative normalcy \u2014 go on to dominate his &amp;quot;native&amp;quot; New Hampshire, and glide to the nomination on a cloud of anti-Obama rhetoric and Aqua Net. Then Michele Bachmann surprised the field by appearing more or less sane in the early New Hampshire debate. Boosted by a flood of unexpected good press, she has rapidly risen in the polls and now effectively matches Romney in Iowa, is consolidating the social-conservative vote in New Hampshire, and is proving surprisingly popular out west. And suddenly, the conventional wisdom is that Iowa matters again. Well, here&amp;#039;s the thing: Iowa always matters. Or it never matters. You can view it either way. In years when there&amp;#039;s a clear frontrunner for a party&amp;#039;s nomination, it &amp;quot;always matters&amp;quot; as a symbolic coronation, or it &amp;quot;never matters&amp;quot; because the nomination was already secured. In years when there&amp;#039;s no clear frontrunner \u2014 like this one \u2014 it &amp;quot;always matters&amp;quot; because it provides a first indication of who has a real chance and who doesn&amp;#039;t, or it &amp;quot;never matters&amp;quot; because Iowa alone is never enough to secure the nomination. And so in 2012, Iowa would have always or never mattered regardless of whether Romney was running unopposed or whether, as now, he faced a stiff challenge there. What are the lessons here? First, that media narratives are more often, in fact, self-fulfilling prophecies. Iowa &amp;quot;didn&amp;#039;t matter&amp;quot; because lots of media people decided they liked saying that it didn&amp;#039;t matter, not because anything about Iowa&amp;#039;s role in presidential politics had changed. And second, that the sudden rise of Michele Bachmann may really have changed the dynamics of the 2012 Republican nomination. Take a look at back-and-forth battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2008. Now, assuming things remain relatively the same through early next year, imagine something similar between Romney and Bachmann. A month ago, that kind of an idea was laughable. Now it seems like a distinct possibility* \u2014 and for the Republican party, that&amp;#039;s deadly serious. Like Obama and Clinton, Romney and Bachmann have deep pockets and passionate supporters. Unlike those two, they&amp;#039;re ideologically opposed. A drawn-out nomination fight between them would threaten to split the party and its vote. Iowa matters, as it always does. That&amp;#039;s bad news for the GOP, and good news for President Obama. * It appears I&amp;#039;m not the only one thinking about this scenario. Here&amp;#039;s David Axelrod, from earlier today. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a10471/romney-vs-bachmann-iowa-6013232/>