You are welcome. I understand your general complaint about caucus v. primary. Of course unless you are a Republican it is their nominee they are picking.
It is not a national election that is controlled by the government. It is a process constructed by members of a private club to decide who IN the club will represent the club in the general election. It is not surprising to me that a club might not want to be represented by someone who has not been a consistent member of the club.
GOP nominee for president is NOT a public office. It is merely one person one group is putting forth to run for a public office.
As for Iowa, conventional wisdom is that the Iowa GOP voters are more Christian conservatives than the rest of the GOP. So that is probably wrong. If you consider where the GOP wins, the south and the mountain states, I think maybe retail politics of Iowa did not translate easily to the mass media states of Texas, Florida, etc.
Iowa does not have a higher proportion of Evangelicals than the national average, they just turn out more for the GOP. It is proof that Evangelicals can be a force beyond their numbers.
And Iowa does have a higher proportion of mainstream denominations, which, with more Catholic eastern Iowa, accounts for the liberal bent.
That is the disconnect I am speaking of. To the professional party apparachiks, you or I who are caucus goers are not really IN the club, even though we call ourselves Republicans and they let us participate in some of the public rituals. That's why they have the two layers of party insiders between the casual Republican and the insider Republican to decide things.
-PJ