It’s cau­cus time in Mis­souri. You remem­ber Mis­souri, don’t you? This was the state that had the beauty con­test a month ago, which for­mer Sen­a­tor Rick San­to­rum won hand­ily, as part of his sweep of states for the day, which included wins over for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney in Col­orado and Min­nesota. It was that hat trick that turned San­to­rum from a dis­tant also-​​ran into the lead­ing NotRom­ney can­di­date, a posi­tion he has retained every day since.

Today, though, the “Show Me” state is hold­ing cau­cuses. Non­bind­ing cau­cuses, at that, which is the favorite fla­vor of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ron Paul (R-​​Lake Jack­son, TX). For the most part, every­one out­side of Mis­souri has aban­doned the state, focus­ing instead on the next bat­tle­ground of Illi­nois, which holds its pri­mary on Tues­day. Intrade has no mar­ket on today’s out­come, and there are no recent polls of poten­tial cau­cus attendees.

One key rea­son for this is that the Mis­souri Repub­li­can Party is releas­ing zero results. Accord­ing to the state Repub­li­can Party, “Caucus-​​goers will be vot­ing for del­e­gates, and with few excep­tions, these del­e­gates will not be bound to a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date. Because there is no vote on can­di­date pref­er­ence, nei­ther the Mis­souri GOP nor any elec­tion author­ity will have or release any data regard­ing the ‘win­ner’ of the caucuses.”

Most of the ink spilled on this con­test has assumed that San­to­rum will walk away with a win. After all, he won the ear­lier con­test in Mis­souri, and has won all sur­round­ing states to date. But Rom­ney made sev­eral appear­ances in the state this week, hop­ing to blunt Santorum’s expected vic­tory by con­tin­u­ing to col­lect a sub­stan­tial num­ber of del­e­gates. Regard­less, we won’t know the result until the state party con­ven­tion, at which point nobody will care.

This means there’s no momen­tum shift to come out of today’s caucuses.

And this leads us to the cur­rent media conun­drum. Rom­ney is cer­tain to have a plu­ral­ity of del­e­gates in his pocket by the time the last vote is cast in Utah on June 26, and he col­lects all of Utah’s 40 del­e­gates. He’s likely to have a major­ity of del­e­gates by then as well.

But the momen­tum story is the one that gets the most airplay.

Part of the rea­son for this is so many Repub­li­cans wish Rom­ney weren’t the lead­ing can­di­date. And part of the rea­son is that the media don’t get to col­lect eye­balls when there’s no drama.

Today, though, there are 52 del­e­gates at stake, to be divided in some way that none of us will learn until much later, and few of us will care about when and if we do. Oh…speaking of the stuff nobody cares about, Puerto Rico has its open pri­mary elec­tion tomor­row. It’s winner-​​take-​​all, for 23 delegates.

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