Talk about going back to the good ol' days.

Way back in the day (as they called it back then), regular people didn't have the right to vote. Only property owning regular people did. Actually, only property owning regular men did. And if the regular man happened to be black, well, he didn't get to vote either. And neither did the Indians (who, like the blacks, weren't even considered human, much less regular) or anyone else the property-owning regular men wanted to keep from having a voice.

It wasn't so long ago. This was after 1776 and before 1865. And even after 1865, a lot of the people in this country still weren't allowed to vote. It wasn't because these masses of people didn't know what was going on in the country, it's just that, well, if you keep the power in a small group of hands, the less likely something out of the ordinary will happen. Like Michael Dukakis becoming the Democratic nominee for President.

So on Saturday, regular people who were either 1) willing to pay $25 to vote or 2) invited by individual candidates who paid the $25 for them cast their "votes" in a straw poll for President (the real vote takes place over a year from now) in Ames, Iowa.

In some ways, I guess it doesn't matter if a political organization (the Republican Party of Iowa in this case) wants to have a fund raiser to go along with their poll. It will certainly fuel the statewide races on the Republican side (the straw poll grossed nearly $600,000). I guess a group of people who like to point out that their party was formed to free the slaves and now wants to free the rest of America from the bonds of--taxes--can have a party if they want. Of course the process excludes most of the people they say they want to (or already have) set free, which makes sense I guess. When someone is vulgar enough to equate the slavery of a race of people with being taxed, they can be as hypocritical as they want.

And most of the speeches were about cutting or abolishing taxes outright (except for Pat Buchanan, who joked about having to learn Chinese if we don't put up some more walls or build more bombs or something like that). Nothing like a millionaire (or several millionaires) talking about the burden of taxes when they themselves are part of a straw poll that taxes people to vote. The only Republican candidate who didn't show up for the straw poll was Orrin Hatch, who criticized the method (making people pay $25). Orrin Hatch got the least votes (duh).

George W. Bush (don't forget the W., it means "What?" I think) got the most votes, around a third of them. Apparently his win was supposed to be more resounding, because he talked about having a lot of work to do. But he didn't talk about cocaine use (personally, I don't care, I'm not voting for him anyway), which was the favorite question of some guy in the press corps for all the candidates (the rest of them said, unequivocally, that they never had used that or any other "hard" drugs). Bush used the question as an opportunity to scold the media about hounding the lives of private citizens.

Steve Forbes came in a surprising second. Well, surprising except for the amount of money he spent "campaigning" for paid votes. It would be a sad day for American politics when the guy with the most personal wealth couldn't buy himself a decent showing in a paid vote. Forbes spent most of the time with an eerie grin on his face, which was the only indication that he was telling a joke--this guy makes Al Gore look like Chris Rock.

Elizabeth Dole came in third, but mostly she was barely leading the pack of also-rans. She said she had a lot of fun. And when asked about abortion, she said she'd already answered that question.

Already answered the question? It's not even the year 2000 and we have to start referring back to earlier interviews?

There's a new scary right-winger in the Republican ranks and he came in fourth. Gary Bauer (although, quite inexplicably, I keep thinking his name is Eddie Bauer), who thinks that private organizations (like Boy Scouts and churches) have the right to exclude whoever they want. Because God and nature, apparently, cannot be appreciated with both straight and gay people in the same room. He also scolded Bush and Dole (round II) for not answering or being evasive about drugs and abortion.

Pat Buchanan, Lamar Alexander, Alan Keyes, Dan Quayle and the aforementioned Orrin Hatch rounded out the standings (in that order). Alexander has taken his sixth place finish as a sign that it might be a good time to drop out. Quayle took his eighth place finish as a sign to blather on like a teenager in a 50-year-old body to explain that he was the only candidate able to bring the disparate sides of the Republican party together. Although he didn't use the word "disparate," he said something like "all those people over there and those people over there standing with themselves away from those other people I was talking about earlier."

So what does all this mean?

Nothing really. I just like making fun of Republicans.

The election is over a year away. Get a life.

Matt Worley hasn't really thought about who he's going to vote for in the 2000 Presidential election because it's still 1999.