Amid the pre-Jan. 3 buzz, it's worth remembering that Republicans in most states, for better or worse, haven't been doing much in the way of following Iowa's lead in selecting a GOP presidential nominee.

Why is Romney ramping up in Iowa? If a quarter of his support in New Hampshire can melt away as Newt Gingrich surges (which did not happen during the Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain surges), then his firewall in the first primary state is not nearly as solid as everyone has been thinking. 

Winning the Tuesday trifecta gives Rick Santorum a second chance to make a first impression. This will give him the momentum that his delayed Iowa victory could have given him.

Mitt Romney's impressive victory Tuesday makes it very likely that we will look back on the Florida primary as the contest that determined the 2012 Republican nomination. To be sure, the campaign fight will go on, and Romney is by no means assured of a sweep of the relatively few February contests.

Why Iowa? Nothing in the Constitution says that Iowa gets to vote for president before any other state. It just does.

Rep. Ron Paul is in a dead heat with Mitt Romney for first place in the Iowa caucuses. If he does pull out a win on Tuesday, Iowa Republicans will have chosen as their commander in chief a man who says it was wrong to kill Osama bin Laden.

Poll results and reports of political events on the ground, suggest that opinion is shifting and that the caucus results could look a lot different from the pre-Christmas polls.

There has been much handwringing recently about super PACs and their potential to doom the American political system. As the argument goes, super PACs mean that corporations or wealthy individuals can make unlimited contributions to groups that are thinly-veiled surrogates for candidates, so candidates can stay positive while the PACs function as attack dogs. Trouble is, this argument isn't true.