Is Iowa a good place to start the election season?

It is a complete farce that we let IOWA set the tone for the Presidential elections, IOWA!!! IOWA with a 91.7% white population, far from a microcosm of the country. IOWA, where if every citizen voted for one candidate, would be less than the number of the metropolitan Detroit population. IOWA, that doesn't even have a primary, but uses the caucus system which is easily dominated by small factions of a party in any state, let alone one as small as IOWA.

Is it any wonder that we get candidates leading in the polls whose views target such a narrow audience that the Republican party can not win a general election. We get VP candidates like Sarah Palin, who can only muster fervent support from those who will already be a lock to vote Republican. Presidential candidates like Michele Bachmann who is skilled at looking good, and using sound bite slogans to give the illusion of substance, but has really done nothing in actual deeds to distinguish herself as someone that should be president.  Newt Gingrich, who courts the family values voter, but divorced his wife in favor of a staffer he was having an affair with.  Oh did I mention that he did this TWICE.  Now apart from my feelings on divorce and cheating on a spouse, it is the hypocrisy of his stance on family values that I take issue with.  He basically gave any opponent in any election ammunition to use against him.  Why should the Republicans waste a nomination on someone that has such a slim chance of overcoming his own past.
 
The Republican party needs to have a less myopic view to have a real chance of effecting change that is needed in this country.  When the Reagan revolution hit the country in the 1980's was it because of the republican voters? No.  If that were the case then the term "Reagan democrats" would not have worked its way into our American lexicon.
 
I think that the Republican party, and it's candidates will do well to remember this during a presidential election season that holds so much importance to the future of this country.