Iowa’s role is not directly addressed under the Republican rules adopted Monday, since the caucuses are a non-binding straw poll.

Like the Democrats, Republicans appointed a commission to study calendar reform. This is the first time Republicans have deferred final calendar decisions to a post-convention body. The big difference is that the GOP has required its commission to keep New Hampshire and South Carolina first in the primary calendar. The Democrats have given their commission a clean slate.

Another difference from the Democrats: The Republicans made their rules stick, enforcing the 50 percent delegate penalty that it imposed on Michigan and Florida for jumping ahead in the schedule. Democrats initially punished those states by taking away all their delegates, but first gave back half, then all, the delegates.

Republicans also punished New Hampshire and South Carolina for jumping ahead. Democrats in those states changed their dates, too, but only in order to keep their place in line.

The GOP commission “pushes back the calendar and it slows it down — and that’s a big gift for us,” Tom Rath, a New Hampshire delegate and member of the convention’s Credentials Committee, told the Associated Press.

Republicans had hoped to push the process back even more and put New Hampshire and South Carolina in late February 2012 with other states starting in March. But the McCain campaign chose not to fight that fight, and it’s now expected that the early states, including Iowa, will vote in January 2012.

That might have a ripple effect into the Iowa Democratic caucuses, as historically the Iowa parties have prioritized keeping the caucuses on the same night. In late 2007, Iowa Democrats seemed to be leaning toward a Jan. 5 caucus until the Republicans trumped them with a Jan. 3 date. The Democrats then quickly followed suit.

Michael Barone reports that the bipartisan effort is now happening on the national level, with Republican National Chairman Mike Duncan and Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean talking on the issue.

The calendar process will likely be driven by the party that loses the presidential election, since it’s likely that the incumbent president will face a smooth, low turnout renomination.

The Republican Party of Iowa is calling it “a vote to keep Iowa first,” though Iowa is not specifically addressed. States that hold nonbinding presidential caucuses or primaries could go early without penalties, and in Iowa the presidential straw poll taken on caucus night is not directly connected to delegate selection.

Still, Iowa Republican chair Stewart Iverson declared victory. “There are still hurdles to be cleared, but at this point Iowa’s Republican Caucuses will be first in the nation for the 2012 Presidential Election,” he said in a press release.

The Republican plan would give primary states New Hampshire and South Carolina an early window in February. Those are the same states the Democrats scheduled early this year, along with caucus states Nevada and Iowa. Other states could not go before the first Tuesday in March. States which violate the calendar will lose half their delegates, as Michigan and Florida did this year.

The plan had the support of the John McCain campaign. A rotating regional primary plan proposed by Ohio failed.

“It’s an endorsement, I think, of the value of retail, grassroots, face-to-face campaigning, for which New Hampshire is so well known,” Republican National Committeeman Sean Mahoney of New Hampshire told the Manchester Union-Leader.

Under Republican rules, the national convention must OK the calendar. Democrats have set up a calendar commission. The Democrats are also seeking to push the beginning of the nomination process into February, but have not guaranteed Iowa an early role.

“Unity,” it seems, mattered more than loyalty, and the Michigan and Florida pols who heaped vitriol on Barack Obama for standing by the rules, and for taking his name off the Michigan ballot, mattered more than the Iowans who actually caucused for him.

Instead of getting tossed out of the Democratic National Convention for breaking the rules, Michigan and Florida were rewarded with front row seats. “Florida’s Rebel Stand Pays Off,” bragged the Fort Myers News-Press. You could almost see Michigan’s Carl Levin sticking out his tongue and wiggling his fingers in his ears at Iowa, and at the rules.

True, we Iowans were up front too. As we damn well oughta, after giving Barack Obama that critical first win on Jan. 3. But what did we get in return? A “reform commission” (that’s Floridian for “Screw Iowa”) led by Debbie Dingell of Michigan, one of Iowa’s biggest foes.

Hell, even Iowa’s most prominent speaking role at this week’s convention went to a Republican.

So what can Iowa expect out of “reform?” The Republican rules committee voted Wednesday to keep Iowa first, but Republicans don’t share the Democrats’ obsession with rules and process. They dealt with their rule breakers swiftly and without controversy, and took away half their delegates. A fine tradeoff, said Michigan and Florida, and everybody just went on campaigning. Iowa can expect little help from a President McCain who has essentially skipped the state in both his nomination bids.

On the Democratic side, if Obama loses, we can expect enraged “told ya so”s from Hillary Clinton’s supporters and from a netroots still mad that we scuttled Howard Dean. We can expect a low-key contest tacked onto our June primaries for state and courthouse offices, last in line.

But even if Obama wins, there are big questions. Is his retreat from a solid pro-Iowa stance to backing this calendar commission sincere change or a tactical maneuver, part of the peace negotiations with the Clinton camp? It’s hard to keep everyone happy when Michigan sees it as a zero-sum game where they only win if Iowa and New Hampshire lose.

Let’s assume that a President Obama decides to dance with them who brung him (that would be us). Even then, look for some changes. At the very minimum, the town meeting nature of the caucuses will end. It really has already. For all the anticipation, the actual magic moment of caucus alignment is crowded and miserable, too many people in too little space with too much noise.

As hard as it is for an Iowan -to admit, Hillary Clinton’s backers had a point when they argued that caucuses left some folks out. Shut-ins and shift workers and soldiers who couldn’t show up in one place at one time were excluded.

Absentee voting at Democratic Party caucuses and conventions has been barred since the McGovern reforms of the early 1970s. It’s considered “proxy voting.” Back in the bad old days the way proxy voting worked was, Boss Hogg cast all the proxy votes for everyone who didn’t show up for the meeting, which was usually held, conveniently, in the back room of Boss Hogg’s saloon and carefully guarded by Boss Hogg’s cousin, Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane. That’s why they were banned.

But now the pendulum is swinging the other way and some kind of absentee procedure is likely. Will it be limited to people with a hard and fast reason for their absence and a notarized excuse? Or will it work like Iowa’s absentee ballots, where anyone can vote early for any reason? That would fundamentally change the caucuses from an in-person gathering to an absentee ballot drive. Every absentee ballot cast is one less person to call on caucus night, and the earlier the votes are cast, the more that name ID will matter and the harder it will be for an outsider to emerge. (Clinton’s backers may have figured that one out.)

How would realignment work for the bodies who aren’t there? Will the precinct captains morph into cleaned up and sincere versions of a modern Boss Hogg, shuffling the proxies around like so many playing cards in a game of real-life poker? What if a candidate drops out before caucus night? (Ask the Super Tuesday voters who cast absentees for John Edwards.)

And if the caucuses turn into a general election style get out the absentee vote operation, will our erstwhile allies in New Hampshire decide that it’s too much like a primary, and try to move in front of Iowa?

It’s not just being first that makes Iowa and New Hampshire special. It’s the soil we grow the voters in: the fertile, idea-rich prairie loam of Iowa and the ornery rocky granite of New Hampshire. The Democrats tried transplanting the caucuses into the desert sand of Nevada this year, and the process dried up and withered under accusations and counter-accusations. We experienced and more or less fair and sincere Iowans had a few problems, an overzealous precinct captain here, an overcrowded room there, maybe, but we got it done. Then the old-timers among us watched in horror as Nevada melted down with misinformation about locations, last-minute legal challenges, and finally a Clark County convention that collapsed under its own weight and had to reconvene.

Iowans have been at this for two generations. We know how to run a meeting, and we know how to look a would-be president in the eye and ask a tough question in a nice way. The attacks on our “lack of diversity” are an insult to our open-mindedness, and our willingness to look at all the candidates as people and choose them based on their merits rather than identity politics. We’re sized at a human scale, “the last place you can campaign without tens of millions of dollars” as Joe Biden put it. What if the rotating national calendar that Michigan says it wants lands on California first? Say goodbye to the Hamburg Inn and the crossroads cafes, and welcome to the era of the airport rally.

You can rotate your nomination calendar, the way Michigan wants, but we Iowans know you can’t rotate your crops to just any random field and expect them to grow. If the ground isn’t fertile, you won’t get the same yield. And whether it’s corn or candidates, Iowa’s got the richest soil in the world.

The DNC’s credentials committee made it official yesterday: The two states that broke the rules on the nomination calendar and caused delegate count turmoil until days before the primaries ended, Florida and Michigan, will get full seating and full votes at this week’s convention.

Michigan Senator Carl Levin, Public Enemy Number One of the Iowa caucuses, declared victory. “We had the guts to take the system on, and we made progress this year,” he said. Levin has made it clear that in his mind, “reform” means “Iowa and New Hampshire don’t go first anymore.”

The DNC is organizing a calender reform commission headed by Michigan’s Debbie Dingell, another caucus hater. “There’s a principle at stake, and we are committed to that principle,” said Dingell.

Unnamed Democratic officials said that Michigan and Florida had, in fact, been punished, noting that the candidates didn’t campaign in those states and that the two states got lousy hotels in Denver.

“Senator Obama continues to believe in the important role that Iowa and New Hampshire have historically played in the process of choosing our party’s presidential nominee,” campaign spokesman Brad Anderson said.

Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Scott Brennan said the party “should always look for ways to improve the nomination process.

“Senator Obama is committed to ensuring the Iowa Caucus will remain first in 2012,” he added.

The calendar commission will meet in Denver this weekend in advance of next week’s Democratic National Convention.

“The creation of this commission is a clear sellout to Hillary Clinton,” said Nagle, who chaired the Iowa Democratic Party during the 1984 caucuses and served in Congress from 1986 to 1992.

Clinton supporters have been critical of the caucuses, arguing that they are too difficult to attend and that Iowa, where Clinton finished third, has too much influence. Obama won 12 of 13 states which held caucuses.

“I got the email from [Iowa Obama campaign chair] Jackie Norris this morning saying this wasn’t a problem for Iowa and we’d all be fine, but it’s a real threat and it’s really disappointing,” said Nagle. “It’s a real disaster for our state, frankly.

“It operates on the assumption that Barack will be the president,” said Nagle, “and there’s absolutely no guarantee of that whatsoever. ”

Nagle says he is certain that Iowa will lose its first in the nation role if Obama loses. “The only way you might get around that is if the mandate creating the commission restricts them from considering the status of Iowa and New Hampshire. It’s all up to Obama,” said Nagle. “I think if he could get Hillary’s permission, then that could go in. But it’s clear that Obama is perfectly willing to let her control this.”

“The highest governing authority of the Democratic Party is the national convention,” says Nagle. He wants to see the convention reaffirm Iowa’s first in the nation role, which would bind the commission for at least the next four years. “If they don’t mandate that, the commission is really free to do whatever it wants.”

The Dingell commission will have 35 members and there is no guarantee that either Iowa or New Hampshire will be represented.

“We should be making the Obama campaign aware that if he breaks his pledge to Iowa or New Hampshire, it could have serious consequences to his ability to carry this state,” said Nagle. “In Iowa, it’s a threat. In New Hampshire, it’s a reality.”

Update: Brad Anderson, an Iowa Obama spokesperson, disputes Nagle’s view. “Senator Obama’s commitment to Iowa and New Hampshire being first in the nomination process hasn’t changed,” Anderson told Iowa Independent.

Three days before the 2008 caucuses, Obama told the Politico that the calendar should “absolutely” stay the same, with Iowa first, in four years.

“Democrats in Florida and Michigan must know that they are full partners and colleagues in our historic mission to reshape Washington and lead our country in a new direction,” Obama writes in a letter to the credentials chairs. “Accordingly, I ask that the Credentials Committee, when it meets on August 24 to approve the delegates for the National Convention, pass a resolution that would entitle each delegate from Florida and Michigan to cast a full vote.”

Concurrence from the Clinton camp: “Today, Senator Obama has requested that the Credentials Committee give Florida and Michigan delegates their full votes,” writes Hillary Clinton in her followup letter. “This is the right position for the Democratic Party and for the country and I urge the Credentials Committee to restore full votes to Florida and Michigan delegates.”

Assuming this happens — and what the nominee says generally goes — Florida and Michigan will suffer no punishment at all for their open defiance of the DNC’s official nomination calendar. Yet Iowa may still be in good shape for staying first in 2012. Republicans have a tentative calendar that keeps Iowa first, and on the Democratic side Obama clearly credits his Iowa win with setting him on the road to the nomination.

“Sen. Carl Levin will be speaking on behalf of Michigan; he wants the entire delegation seated and given full votes, and if he does not get his way, he will likely challenge the RBC’s ruling when the credentials committee convenes unless the rules and bylaws committee promises to strip Iowa and New Hampshire of their privileged status in 2012. (emphasis added)

What that means is that the debate about the size of Michigan’s delegation will not be settled (Saturday).

What we don’t know is whether Hillary Clinton will use Sen. Levin’s ornery desire to punish Iowa and New Hampshire as a pretext for continuing her campaign.”

Also, in a brief, Clinton attorneys wrote: “Rule 20(C)(7) allows the (Rules and Bylaws Committee) to forgive violations when a state party and other relevant Democratic party leaders and elected officials have taken provable, positive steps and acted in good faith to bring the state into compliance with the DNC’s Delegate Selection Rules.”

The key phrase is “Forgive violations.”Early in the campaign, Clinton and her supporters had said the calendar breaking states wouldn’t count. But after she won them, the rhetoric shifted to “count every vote,” and the argument changed to a claim that Michigan and Florida had not violated party rules since Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina had moved their dates up as well. Those moves were, of course, a ripple effect which started in response to Michigan and Florida.

Clinton spokesman Harold Ickes said on the call that Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina acted fully within the rules, and specifically disputed the Michigan Democratic Party’s claim that the DNC had selectively enforced its rules. He also said the DNC has acted within the rules when it stripped Michigan and Florida of all its delegates.

However, despite that acknowledgment, Ickes continued to argue for seating both Michigan and Florida at full strength, with results based on the too-early primaries, was the only acceptable solution.

This week, DNC attorneys argued that party rules require at least a 50 percent delegate penalty for violating the calendar.

Since the Obama campaign is not likely to object, and the Florida Democratic Party now says it’s comfortable with half a vote, this means a half-vote per delegate is the likely outcome of Saturday’s DNC Rules and Bylaws meeting. Writing for Daily Kos, Delaware Dem is more concise: “Therefore, Ladies and Gentlemen, the race is officially over. Barack Obama is the nominee.”

One thing the committee won’t settle is the debate on how to define the popular vote. How much of the Michigan and Florida fight about the delegates, at half or full strength, and how much is about popular vote claims? If the two states are seated in any way based on the too-early primaries, the votes “counted.”

“Count all the votes” is Hillary Clinton’s mantra, as she claims a popular vote lead in an effort to persuade superdelegates. But the formulas that show Clinton in the lead don’t count all the votes — and Iowa is among the states excluded.“We are urging 100 percent of the delegations be seated and that each delegate have a full vote,” said Hillary Clinton strategist Harold Ickes. That’s an unlikely scenario.

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd says one scenario gaining support involves seating Florida at half strength with results based on the Jan. 31 primary, as Clinton wants. But the Michigan delegation, also at half strength, would be evenly divided, as Barack Obama’s campaign requests.

Todd also notes that giving all the delegates a half vote is a better scenario for Clinton than cutting the number of delegates in half. “If Florida delegates are seated in their entirety, but only have their vote counted as a .5, then Clinton will net approximately 19 delegates out of the state,” he writes. “But if the delegation is cut in half, that’s done in every congressional district as well as statewide. Then suddenly Clinton’s advantage is only a net of six.”

This solution makes it harder for Clinton to argue for counting Michigan in her popular-vote math. But the popular-vote math is impossible to calculate anyway and is a matter of definition. We Iowans are one of the problems.

Iowa is among four caucus states (Nevada, Maine and Washington are the others) that release only delegate counts and not raw vote totals. The secrecy is part of Iowa’s long-time truce with New Hampshire. In the 1980s, Iowa and New Hampshire agreed that Iowa would have the first caucus and New Hampshire would have the first primary. If Iowa Democrats would release a raw vote total, the results would be too much like a primary for New Hampshire’s taste, and the truce would crumble.

But with the national popular-vote count now an issue in the campaign, and a linchpin of Clinton’s last-ditch effort to persuade superdelegates, Iowa’s quirky results are now more than just an annoyance to national reporters who want a straightforward vote total. You know, the kind Iowa Republicans provide. If the Clinton rhetoric is consistent, the lack of a raw vote total means… Iowa’s votes aren’t being counted!

Real Clear Politics adds the math several ways and tries to estimate the “vote totals” from Iowa. Those vote totals, of course, don’t exist. Iowa’s county convention delegates are based on realigned totals. Those don’t reflect non-viable groups, like the five people out of 315 in my precinct whose first choice was Chris Dodd. Still, an estimate is something to go on.

Here are the scenarios, with various questionable totals included. This excludes the two states set to vote on Tuesday, Montana and South Dakota, and also excludes Puerto Rico which votes Sunday (though that begs the question of whether a commonwealth that does not vote in a general election should be considered as part of a “popular-vote total.”).

FL	MI	IA-NV-ME-WA estimates	Obama		Clinton		Spread
no	no	no	16,685,941	49.1%	16,227,514	47.7%	Obama +458,427	+1.4%
no	no	yes	17,020,025	49.1%	16,451,376	47.5%	Obama +568,649	+1.6%
yes	no	no	17,262,155	48.3%	17,098,500	47.8%	Obama +163,655	+0.5%
yes	no	yes	17,596,239	48.3%	17,322,362	47.6%	Obama +273,877	+0.7%
yes	yes	no	17,262,155	47.5%	17,426,809	47.9%	Clinton +164,654	+0.45%
yes	yes	yes	17,596,239	47.6%	17,650,671	47.7%	Clinton +54,432	+0.15%

The two scenarios with Clinton ahead both include Michigan, and her best scenario excludes Iowa. Florida is straightforward enough: No one campaigned, and the vote totals may have been lowered by the widespread news that the state’s delegates would not be seated. But at least there’s a vote total for the Obama column.

Michigan is the problem, since Obama took his name off the ballot. Any scenario that argues a Clinton popular-vote victory is based on a 328,309 margin out of Michigan: Clinton 328,309, Obama 0, Kevin Phillips-Bong naught.

That doesn’t account for 238,168 uncommitted votes that were most definitely cast against Clinton. Now, it’s probably not fair to credit those to Obama. John Edwards was also off the Michigan ballot and still in the race when Michigan voted on Jan. 15.

But here’s a formula I’ve never seen applied elsewhere. Credit Clinton for her 328,309 Michigan votes, but then subtract the 238,168 uncommitted votes. That lowers her gain out of Michigan to 90,141 — her margin of victory over uncommitted. Now apply that new math, and Clinton’s best scenario (where Michigan counts but Iowa doesn’t) slips from a lead of 164,654 to a deficit of 73,514.

In the end, of course, delegates choose the nominee, not a mythical national popular vote. The popular vote is only a tool for persuading superdelegates. But Clinton’s strained efforts to selectively calculate the total make it a less persuasive tool.