In December of last year, Iowa erupted in a convulsion of controversy following the publication of Stephen Bloom’s article “Observations from 20 Years of Iowa Life.”

Iowans, for the most part, were incensed that this journalist, who, it seemed, had never actually ventured beyond the U of I campus in his entire 20 years of residing here, would elect to pass judgement upon their beloved homeland. And to a large extent, this anger was justified. Bloom certainly painted with too broad a brush when portraying Iowa, and a lot of his facts were either ill-researched or summarily untrue. Within a couple of weeks of its publication, Bloom’s opinion was totally discredited and condemned by many among the mainstream press.

This is to say nothing of Iowa’s population, who initiated a spirited campaign decrying the accusations made by the piece. And to a large extent they were successful. But then, in an ironic twist, a funny thing happened. Iowa’s conservatives, in a display of political and religious puritanism, decided to go ahead and do everything in their power to lend credence to Bloom’s viewpoint. They did this, of course, by throwing their support behind the inscrutable and bigoted Rick Santorum during the Iowa Caucus. Thanks, guys.Though the views expressed by Mr. Bloom in his article were both debased and inaccurate, the fact is that a lot of his target audience doesn’t know that. In their eyes, Iowa conservatives merely vindicated their perception of the corn state as being one of intolerance, and as not being representative of the rest of America.

You’re not helping your reputation with the average schmo in Boston when you throw your support behind a candidate who has been documented as comparing homosexuality to incest and pedophilia^1, and has taken the stance that women should not enter the workplace^2, as well as all but making a campaign promise to start a war with Iran if elected president^3. Of course, this was all avoidable. Were Iowa’s voters to have done some rudimentary research on whom they were voting for, they would have known that Mr. Santorum is probably better suited to be a director of the “Hell and Brimstone” department at Focus on the Family than he is to being the nation’s president. But alas, in their frenzied pursuit of a candidate who espoused “real conservative values,” they ended up voting for the guy who A) has no chance of winning the nomination (thereby devaluing Iowa’s place as the first election to be held) and B) makes it look as if Iowa’s voters are a lot more out of touch conservative than they are in reality.

Of course, we Iowans will have the opportunity to redeem ourselves in the general elections, hopefully continuing the tradition of being on the cutting edge of progressive politics. But for now, we will have to live with the dubious distinction of being one of the few states to even consider voting for Rick Santorum. I suppose the moral of this story is that “if you want to disprove the assertions made by Mr. Bloom, don’t vote for people like Mr. Santorum.” All that said, it’s true that only a small percentage of the electorate propelled Santorum to his near-first place finish. However, they’re still casting the rest of Iowa in a poor light. So, I guess what I’m really saying to Iowa conservatives is “thanks for making the rest of us look bad.”