Seth Ackerman wrote:
>
> I don't think this is actually *why* the primaries start in Iowa and New
> Hampshire. According to Wikipedia, the Iowa caucus attained its current
> status as a result of the machinations of the McGovern campaign. And New
> Hamphire has been the first primary since 1920 but it only started
> getting special attention when Eisenhower unexpectedly beat Taft in 1952.
This is, I think, a historicist fallacy (the assumption that an entity's genesis explains its nature). What needs explaining is _why_, at the end of the twentieth century, these two primaries (indepentently of how they got started) are looming larger and larger (as seen both through the 'eyes' of the mass media _and_ through the resources candidates throw into them.
And the only _historical_ fact* (it would seem) in respect to them that has explanatory power is their whiteness and 'rurality.'
Carrol
P.S.
a) Historical Thinking: The anatomy of man is a key to the anatomy of the ape.
b) Historicist (ahistorical) thinking: The anatomy of the ape is a key to the anatomy of man.