Exhibit A: Sarah Palin, on why South Carolinians should vote Gingrich and thus slow-walk the Romney coronation movement: “”I want more debates, more vetting of candidates, because we know the mistake made in our country four years ago with having a candidate that was not vetted to the degree that he should have been.” VDB would point out the painful irony here, but that, of course, would be painful. And, you know, ironic.

Exhibit B: After being told for decades that the American Democratic process desperately needs the first-in-the-nation input of the stunningly white/rural Iowa electorate — on the logic that voters in that state take the retail process very seriously — the state has now followed an under-attended GOP primary caucus with the news that it has misplaced eight precincts worth of information and will therefore congratulate both leading candidates and declare a tie:

“’I can’t speculate without documentation from the missing eight,’ Iowa GOP chairman Matt Strawn told the Des Moines Register. ‘The comments I made at 1:30 a.m. Jan. 4 congratulating both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum still apply. I don’t think the certified vote totals take anything away from either Governor Romney or Senator Santorum.’”

Let’s just examine that last sentence again: “I don’t think the certified vote totals take anything away from either Governor Romney or Senator Santorum.”

Brilliant.