So it’s tempting to dismiss the broadside he leveled against Karl Rove and his Conservative Victory Project earlier this week as typical Gingrich grandstanding. And to a degree, that’s all it is. In a Human Events Op-Ed, the former House speaker and failed 2012 White House candidate accused Rove of employing “the system of Tammany Hall and the Chicago machine.” Anyone who’s been following Gingrich for a while is surely familiar with this line of attack; here, for example, he is in the summer of 1993 castigating Bill Clinton and “the Democratic machine” for forcing a tax hike bill through the House (a bill that ended up playing no small role in the balanced budgets of the late ‘90s – but that’s a story for another day).

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“I think the straw poll has outlived its usefulness,” Branstad said of poll, which is 33 years-old and has traditionally been used as a dress rehearsal for the Iowa caucuses. “It has been a great fundraiser for the party but I think its days are over.”

The Wall Street Journal points out that even Bachmann aside, the poll has only correctly predicted the winner of the caucuses twice: Bob Dole in 1995 and George W. Bush in 1999, though only Bush went on to win the election.

“You saw what happened the last time,” Branstad said. “I don’t think candidates will spend the time or money to participate in a straw poll if they don’t see any real benefit coming out of it.”

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