If a candidate’s positions on the big issues actually mean much in the Iowa ‘straw poll,’ then the number of votes received by the honorable Ron Paul of Texas ought to reflect the percentage of Iowa Republicans who have turned against the war. Paul is the sole Republican running for the White House who has opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq consistently, from the first, without wavering or obfuscation. He predicted the big problems with the war accurately, too, along with taking the right stand on moral grounds. He should be getting more credit from these people; he is very nearly the only public figure who could save their political party from the moral ignominy associated with slaughtering little girls in Iraq.

Opinion polls are currently reported as giving Ron Paul 2 percent of the vote in Iowa.

Logically – if a candidate’s positions matter much – that should mean that 98 percent of Republican Iowans favor the war. I think that proportion sounds a bit high, myself, even given the go-along-to-get-along mentality, euphemized as ‘Republican activist,’ that does seem to characterize many of the people who turn out for the straw poll. In any case, this kind of calculation is complicated by the fact that GOP fora and the other candidates have pretty much done their level best – if that’s the correct term – to shut Ron Paul out of public view. Even so, these opinion polls, which the public seldom to never sees in their raw-data original form, do sound highly convenient for the saber faction.

This kind of guessing game can be played with other determinants, of course. If a candidate’s ‘character’ and consistency really matter as much as people sometimes claim in the opinion surveys, and if most Iowa Republicans really support the war, then John McCain should be their man. He’s the only historic figure in the race, the young fellow in the service who refused to leave his mates in a Vietnam prison when offered the release himself.

On another hand, if relentless self-promotion and a fathomless deafness to the promptings of shame make for a winner, then former New York mayor Rudy Holy-Moly has the win, hands down. Only in America, as they say . . . could someone run for higher office on grounds that he was mayor of a big city when it was struck by terrorists who killed more than 3,000 people. One-upping Fiorello “the little flower” LaGuardia exponentially, when Giuliani makes a bogus claim, it’s a beaut.

And if, as the media outlets seem to have concluded, big money is the key determinant, then Mitt Romney should blow past all other candidates, present or absent, declared or undeclared.

Romney is actually the smart pick in the ‘straw poll’ for a number of reasons, only one being his having focused so much on Iowa, and poured so much money into it, that both McCain and Giuliani saved money by sidestepping the event. Romney is also the pod-person candidate, the type of nicely suited android with money and a political pedigree that the Republicans always pick when they can, except when they went out on a limb and nominated Goldwater in 1964, and look how that turned out. Now that the GOP establishment has tossed John McCain aside, Romney is also the default next-in-line, like Nixon and Dole et al. A cluster of eligibilities and proprieties, as Jane Austen would put it, running as a candidate.

A couple of the other candidates have their own factors. If the pro-life position were actually the be-all and end-all it is touted to be, Sam Brownback of Kansas would be a strong contender – behind, once again, Ron Paul. Brownback’s articulation of the anti-abortion stance always comes across as more sincere than Romney’s.

If winning against a Democrat in the general election were the deciding factor, Mike Huckabee would get the nod. Huckabee often sounds very good, when he’s not pettily sniping at Michael Moore. In the recent GOP candidates’ forum, Huckabee sounded particularly good, because he employed several of Ron Paul’s positions and turned them into deft sound bites, speaking just before Paul more than once. That 46 percent of Republicans polled reportedly consider Huckabee their "most underrated" candidate does not augur well for Romney.

Funny how the general election seems to be left out of the equation at this point. Mitt Romney is obviously the placeholder par excellence, an eligible candidate for good loser like Bob Dole in 1996, for an election cycle the GOP fears it has a good chance of losing.

BUT I wouldn’t give much for Romney’s odds on becoming the nominee, if the Democrats actually start looking dumb enough to nominate Hillary Clinton. Experts including Newt Gingrich and Charles Krauthammer have indicated clearly – by boosting her – that they consider Clinton the best Democratic nominee the Republicans could hope for. If she ever starts to look solid for the nomination, Romney will have a fight on his hands in the GOP primaries. A placeholder will no longer be wanted.