In the days since Republicans lost an election many in the party thought was theirs, chatter has been bubbling about what the GOP should do to recover.

For Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, it starts with the smallest of actions: abandoning the state's now-infamous straw poll.

Once a festive checkpoint on the road to the leadoff Iowa caucuses, the poll has devolved into a full-blown sideshow, Branstad and other critics contend. They say it's an unfair and false test that has felled good candidates and kept others from competing in the state.

"It's just something that's gotten totally out of control," said veteran GOP presidential campaign consultant Charlie Black. "It's been bad for years, but no one has had the guts to say it until now."

The poll, which morphed over the decades into a closely watched early test of caucus campaign strength, had "outlived its usefulness," Branstad told The Wall Street Journal this week. Some activists contend it amplifies the voices of candidates lacking broad appeal.

Branstad says he has widespread support for a different event to replace the poll, held in Ames the summer before every contested presidential caucus since 1979. It has become a lavish affair where campaigns spend heavily to wine, dine, entertain and chauffeur their supporters by bus to the Iowa State University campus.

Critics have increasingly called it a shakedown. Not only do campaigns buy up thousands of tickets for their supporters to attend the event, they bid thousands of dollars for prime spots to pitch tents near the voting area on the college campus.

It's all to show early support in Iowa, where the precinct caucuses traditionally lead off the early-state nominating march, even though only a fraction of caucusgoers turn out for the straw poll.

"It's a tedious effort. It costs a lot of money. It's totally irrelevant at the end of the day. It used to be a test of organization," said Ed Rollins, who managed Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign at the time she won the 2012 straw poll. "Today it's a lot of effort and a lot of energy that really is not worth the effort."

Bachmann spent $2 million on the August straw poll and edged Texas Rep. Ron Paul with heavy support from religious conservatives...

Only about 17,000 turned out for the straw poll, one-seventh the size of the roughly 120,000 who voted on caucus night in January...

Advocates of the straw poll argue the money helps finance the caucuses, which are party-run, not state-run, elections.

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Editor's Note: It's about freakin' time...In fact, it's time to rearrange how the entire Primary calendar is slated, rewarding actual Red States with being able to choose the front runners rather than States that consistently vote Blue...Really, how incredibly stupid is it to allow Blue States to bestow advantage onto Conservative candidates??...And you wonder why we have had two milktoast candidates the last two elections...