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Opinions/Editorials Title: Iowa and the Future of the GOP Judging by some of the television images of the 2012 Republican presidential race in Iowa, the contest is among a bunch of small-bore candidates courting farmers and born-again Christians out on the chilly prairie. Look again. The 2012 Republican contest in Iowa is very much a battle over what the GOP should stand for in the years ahead. Just as Republican leaders in Washington can't seem to reach a consensus on what they're for, so can't rank-and-file party activists here. Throughout this campaign, a variety of candidates have risen and fallen as caucusgoers have fallen in love and then been struck by buyer's remorse. Today most leads in polls of the race are within the margins of error. One thing pollsters agree on: A majority of likely caucusgoers say that even in this 11th hour, they could be persuaded to change their minds before Jan. 3. Why this softness? Many on the left snicker and say it's because the field is so weak that Republicans are having a hard time deciding. Watching some of the gaffes and stumbles of the race, there is an element of truth in that. We saw much the same thing in the 1980 caucus campaign. What was the party offering? An aging B-list movie actor? An unknown former United Nations ambassador? There were ideological conservatives, a former Texas governor, Washington insiders and members of Congress from the party's fringe. Democrats loved to use phrases like the "seven dwarfs" to describe them and chortle about how they'd love to run against that old former movie actor. George H.W. Bush won the 1980 caucus, getting a bounce that launched him to the GOP vice-presidential nomination and eventually the presidency. Ronald Reagan, that ex-actor, lost Iowa but reconfigured his campaign and staged a comeback in New Hampshire. He went on to defeat Jimmy Carter in a landslide (but one not obvious until the closing weeks of the campaign). This race feels a bit like 1980. Democrats and some pundits tee-hee about the "dwarfs" in this race, but perhaps their snickers are premature. Can "has-been" politicians stage comebacks? Yes. Can new stars emerge? Yup. With the right candidate, can the party pick off a sitting Democratic president with weak poll ratings? You betcha. Some insights to consider as the contest enters the final days: • No matter the outcome, Ron Paul's strength indicates a resurgence of the libertarian and isolationist wings of the Republican Party. Hard times and unpopular wars will do that. It's always wise to watch which candidate is attracting new people because they—or their message—are on to something. That was true with George McGovern in 1972 and Pat Robertson in 1988. In this race, the one candidate attracting hordes of new people is Mr. Paul. Many of them are young—and while Mr. Paul is unlikely to become the GOP nominee, those young adults will mature into a political force, just as Mr. McGovern's antiwar factions and Mr. Robertson's religious conservatives have done. • The Iowa contest will also help the party chart its course on immigration—and it may not be a successful or wise one. Candidates are falling over themselves to bash illegal immigration. While that plays well to GOP activists, it fuels the fire of nativism that burns so hot inside the GOP today. It also alienates people of Latino ancestry and is driving them and their children into the Democratic Party. That shift will have a huge impact in the fall campaign, since many toss-up states could be decided by the votes of Latinos. You'd think the GOP would learn. Just as the Yankee Brahmins drove the Irish into the Democratic Party generations ago, many GOP leaders are pushing Latinos there today. • Too much is made of the power of social conservatives, perhaps because both politicians and pundits tend to fight the last war. Polls show that only about 40% of likely caucusgoers describe themselves as evangelicals or born-again Christians. That would mean 60% aren't. (In 2008, some polls had it 60%-40% the other way.) This year's polls also show social conservatives caring more about jobs and the economy than about abortion and gay marriage. And, unlike in 2008, social conservatives are divided among several candidates. There's no Mike Huckabee to rally around, nor is there an Iowa political machine that strongly influences voters. Making a presidential choice is highly personal, and in Iowa especially, nobody will "deliver" anybody but themselves on caucus night. • The final challenge for a candidate in Iowa is to win without alienating voters he or she will need in the November election. After all, the purpose of this exercise is picking a presidential nominee and winning a November election, not making ideological statements. That is a real peril in a race as fluid and high stakes as this one. The Republican nominee must attract social conservatives in the Iowa caucus without scaring women and moderates in November. He or she must also be one who can bring together the internationalist and isolationist wings of the party and of the country. Bridging the divides on immigration is another requirement. The danger in Iowa is if the party looks as though it's been hijacked by one faction or another. Whenever that happens, the outcomes in November are often devastating. See the McGovern campaign in 1972 or the Goldwater campaign in 1964 for evidence. While those candidacies had a huge impact on the politics that followed, in the short term they led their parties to crashing defeat. Get these balances right, and the GOP nominee can easily brush Barack Obama from the White House as Reagan did Jimmy Carter. Get it wrong by overdoing it in Iowa and the party can wander in the wilderness for another four years.
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Oops...the author is David Yepsin.
The dirty little secret is that when push comes to shove the majority of social conservatives care very little about abortion. What more, the Republican party knows this. As proof I would submit the actions of social conservatives and the Republican Party during that portion of the Bush Administration when the Republican Party had full and complete control of the entire federal government. During that time only one Republican submitted legislation addressing the abortion issue - Ron Paul. The legislation was called the Sanctity of Life Act. It had the backing of every anti-abortion group in the country yet was buried in committee by the "pro-life" Republican Party. What is more telling though is that out of all the hyperbolic pro-life rhetoric spouted by members of the Republican Party, the Sanctity of Life bill only had five cosponsors. It seems to me that if social conservatives really gave a damn about abortion they would have worked to get every Republican in the House of Representatives to cosponsor the legislation and then forced them to vote on it. Bar that, they would have worked to vote out of office every single Representative refusing to cosponsor and vote for the bill. Did that happen? Nope. The Act died without a whimper and the social conservatives ignored the behavior of the Republican Party, just like they ignored the Republican Party's out of control spending and expansion of government. Instead of punishing them for betraying the Republican Party platform and conservative values, social conservatives worked with the neocons and other RINO's to reelect more than 90% of the very same people who shit on them over and over again, reinforcing the Republican Party belief that they can ignore the social conservative base because that base will vote for incumbents no matter what. This is what I love about Ron Paul. He has written so many common sense conservative bills that have been ignored by "the party of small government" that he has single handedly shown the complete and utter duplicitousness of the Republican Party. This is why the Republican Party and its partisan sycophants hate him so much. Ron Paul has spent a career exposing them as liars and frauds simply by writing and submitting conservative legislation. People should think about this the next time some big government/fake conservative Republican asks "what has Ron Paul done?"
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