Those Wacky Iowans

Strategic Vision’s new Iowa poll has some interesting numbers.  First, they ask about candidate preferences:

1. If the 2008 Republican presidential caucus were held today between Sam Brownback, Jim Gilmore, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Chuck Hagel, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo, Fred Thompson, and Tommy Thompson for whom would you vote? (Republicans Only; Names Rotated)
Mitt Romney 20%
Rudy Giuliani 18%
John McCain 16%
Fred Thompson 10%
Tommy Thompson 7%
Newt Gingrich 5%
Mike Huckabee 3%
Sam Brownback 2%
Tom Tancredo 2%
Ron Paul 2%
Duncan Hunter 1%
Jim Gilmore 1%
Chuck Hagel 1%
Undecided 12%

Then they ask about the war:

5. Do you favor a withdrawal of all United States military from Iraq within the next six months? (Republicans Only)
Yes 54%
No 37%
Undecided 9%

It is obvious that approximately half of these pro-withdrawal voters must be supporting some candidate who has no intention of supporting withdrawal in the next six months or in the foreseeable future.  85% of all Iowa GOP voters claim to support a candidate who is in favour of remaining in Iraq for some considerably longer period of time than six months.  Of pro-withdrawal GOP voters, plainly only the 2% backing Ron Paul (and, I suppose, the 1% behind Hagel) are expressing candidate preferences that match with their preferred Iraq policy. 

Either the war is of significantly lesser importance to Iowan Republicans than it is to other kinds of Republicans (doubtful), or these voters have no idea that all but perhaps two of the named candidates in this poll (with some mild qualified dissent from Tommy Thompson) want to stay in Iraq “as long as it takes” or their candidate preferences bear no relation to the candidates’ stated views on the war.  Voter irrationality is fun, isn’t it?