Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Notes on a Sojourn in Iowa
How things look with the GOP candidates as Vote Number One in the presidential race takes place.
Posted by Jackson Baker on Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 11:50 AM
- jb
- Santorum, Paul, Romney and Wife Ann in Iowa
A Memphis friend seemed to look at me as if I might be crazy when, at a New Year’s gathering, I suggested that former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum might finish in first place among Republican presidential contenders in this week’s Iowa caucuses. Or maybe she was just horrified.
Actually, I hedged a bit on my forecast, saying that either Santorum or former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney could come out ahead, with the other in second place, a hair above Texas libertarian congressman Ron Paul, a feisty septuagenarian who has a dedicated following that carries over from presidential season to presidential season, looking cultish or mainstream as the times define.
This year the latter was the case, as Dr. Paul (both he and commentators periodically emphasize his medical background) went into the final week looking like a possible winner himself. Accordingly, he did what every other candidate has done whenever they began to look viable. He moved toward the center.
When I saw him at a Sioux City rally last Friday night, Rep. Paul was not playing take-back with any of his somewhat idiosyncratic assertions (regarding the villainy of the Federal Reserve system, for example), but his rhetoric was shaded more toward the forefathers and their regard for liberty — almost as if he was angling for his own place on a coin (preferably a gold one, given his predilections for a return to the gold standard).
One last note about Paul: his potential for winning was dimmed somewhat by the media revelations this past week that a political/economic newsletter he once published had proclaimed sentiments that were racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and redolent of 9/11 conspiracy theory. (For the record, Paul disclaimed personal authorship.)
Yet his residual potential was advertised by the fact that, as the crowd gathered for a Romney rally in West Des Moines that morning, a man and a woman wearing Romney stickers and standing just behind me were spending much of their time extolling Ron Paul and his minimal-government c redo, as if their hearts belonged with the Good Doctor even as their heads inclined toward presumed national frontrunner Romney as their party’s best bet for beating President Obama.
Interestingly, too, these two Iowans seemed to side with Paul in his antagonism toward foreign military commitments — an indication that not just Democrats and commentators but some heartland GOP voters themselves are intrigued by this aspect of the Paul canon.
So why, as we were saying, Santorum and Romney? Romney first: He has a personal fortune and the largest war-chest of any candidate, inasmuch as he’s been running for president since losing out to John McCain for the Republican nomination in 2008. He has used those resources to create a Super-PAC (a term of the nonce) called “Restore Our Future” which has pumped out attack ads against any candidate who threatened to rival or exceed him.
In sequence, that has been Minnesota congresswoman Michelle Bachman (who won the August Iowa Straw Poll); Texas governor Rick Perry (who entered the contest on a white stallion last summer, then promptly fell off his mount via non-stop gaffes in candidate debates) , ex-Godfather Pizza chief Herman Cain, this season’s novelty candidate who ended up with so many female co-respondents going public as to make Bill Clinton look like a Trappist monk and had to drop out; and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, whose campaign had first self-destructed, then rose to dramatic heights just within the last month, then was torpedoed into relative insignificance again by attack ads from Romney and virtually everybody else concerning his personal peccadilloes and multiple deviations from Republican orthodoxy.
Romney seems not to have suffered by virtue of his heterodox religion, Mormonism, though this is conceivably a latent issue. He has held steadiest of all the candidates in various pollings, with few dramatic ups and downs. He has always been at or near the top. That is partly due to his juggernaut of an organization, but partly, also, to a political rhetoric that is clearly crafted to be all things to all people. Not quite a moderate, Romney has been a chameleon, and the rap against him is that, despite a record of success as a chief executive in and out of politics, he lacks core convictions.
The chief exhibit for this shortcoming is perhaps the disingenuous dance he has had to do to join the rest of the GOP candidates in denouncing “Obamacare” even though the President’s health-care plan is virtually the spitting image of one crafted by Romney himself as governor of Massachusetts.
Yet, to give him his due, Romney, more than the others, has pledged to work across the political aisle to get results. He did so again at the West Des Moines rally.
But so has Santorum, fairly consistently, though his declarations to that effect during the endless series of GOP candidate debates were generally overlooked — due both to his clear second-tier status during those affairs and to the sometimes shrill emphasis he gave his hard-core social conservative views. This is the man who once affrighted a reporter some years ago by going ballistic and proclaiming the specter of “man-on-dog” sex during a philippic against the decline of sexual mores in our time. `
But, uniquely among the Republicans in this presidential field, Santorum deigns to add the suffix “-ic” to the name of the political opposition party and makes much of the fact that, before losing his Senate seat badly in 2006, he had prevailed in two prior elections in heavily Democratic Pennsylvania. And he could legitimately point to bills he had co-sponsored with Democrats.
In a well-attended appearance last Thursday in Muscatine, a suburb of Davenport, Santorum won praise for his performance from no less an attendee than Ed Schulz, the firebrand commentator who toils for MSNBC, the “liberal” cable channel. On that occasion, conscious that he had somehow, miraculously won a place on the pendulum swing at just the right time (his chief arch-conservative rivals having all fallen away), Santorum seemed intent on looking as mainstream as possible.
He had even engaged in a gentlemanly dialogue with a woman, evidently a Lesbian activist, who baited him on his stand against same-sex marriage. After making his usual fervent defense of traditional marriage and positing it as a necessary element to generate a strong economy, Santorum actually congratulated the woman for advancing her position and entering into a dialogue on the matter.
Yet he is still far to the right on the social spectrum, and evangelical Iowans know that. Hence his current standing in their eyes as an alternative to Romney, whom they clearly do not trust.
Quickly regarding the rest of the field: Gingrich has crested, and his curve is down, though he appears intent on soldiering on into New Hampshire, which holds the first primary next week. Perry may be there, too, as much on the strength of his still-considerable campaign treasury and his matinee-idol looks (giving him good crowds and an abundance of autograph-seekers) as anything else. He may even come in for a little bump upward in the Iowa results.
The most obvious loser in Iowa is Michelle Bachmann, a candidate who has dropped steadily since her straw-poll victory there in August and an arch-conservative who seems incapable of even faking any mainstream sentiments. (A recent talking point: a proposed bill to strip American-born children of illegal aliens of their citizenship rights.) At her stops last week, the diminutive Bachmann drew almost no onlookers except for a media remnant that badgered her about when and how she would bring her campaign to an end.
“No softballs? She couldn’t get even a single softball?” a dazed campaign aide exclaimed at the close of such a press battering in the west Iowa hamlet of Early. And that said it all.
Comments (7)
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Santorum gives a hell of a good speech, as long as you can ignore what he actually says. He sounds all the right notes, his cadence is good, and he can get loud without coming across as shrill. Plus, he's got that Pennsylvania folksy thing going for him, which goes a long way with the GOP base. Obama's still going to clean the floor with him, but if the nomination were on style alone Santorum would be all aces.
ohpleaseohpleasedeargodletitbesantorumiwon'taskforanythingelseever
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Tweedle dum vs. tweedle dumber. Who cares about this exercise in Kabuki theater? Apparently, not even Iowans. This is, first and foremost, a media event, reported from a media echo chamber.
They all toss about the word "freedom" like a feather in the wind, yet their proposals would remove most of the few and ever shrinking freedoms we have left. Santorum's religious fanaticism, particularly as it pertains to women's reproductive freedoms, is particularly odious. Bachmann is just flat out nuts. The Republican Party of Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and even, Ronald Reagan, is dead. The Pat Buchanan wing of the GOP, as the Tea Party, has taken over. The reactionary chickens have come home to roost.
LEGAL IMMIGRATION—NOT—illegal immigrants? There is a vast difference.
Now that we have the results from the Iowa Caucuses, we must carefully peruse the issues as seen by the candidates and the ever present innocuous problem of the illegal alien occupation.
Mitt Romney during a campaign stop in Iowa on New Year’s Eve, the former governor stated that he would veto the so-called DREAM Act if he was president. And as governor of Massachusetts, Romney allowed state troopers to be deputized to help with the enforcement of immigration laws. He also opposed attempts to allow illegal aliens to pay the lower in-state tuition rates at state universities. Although he opposes the DREAM Act, Romney seems open to grant legal residency status to those who serve in the U.S. military.
Rick Santorum throughout his time as senator, Santorum consistently opposed bills that would grant amnesty or other legalization benefits for illegal aliens. He voted against a bill that would have produced a guest worker program with a path to US citizenship for certain illegal aliens. In addition he voted in opposition to a bill that would allow certain illegal aliens to participate in social security system. Rick Santorum also voted in support of constructing a fence along our Southern border and doesn’t believe in amnesty, although he opposes deporting the millions of illegal aliens already residing in the U.S.
Ron Paul has a similar attitude towards illegal immigration, that he opposes Amnesty, but does not support deporting the estimated 20 million plus illegal aliens currently squatting in the U.S. Paul introduced a bill that would amend the 14th Amendment to the Constitution so that children born to non-citizens within the U.S. could not attain automatic citizenship.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, has the best stance on illegal immigration, but sadly she has stepped down as a presidential candidate. Although Bachman has left the race, she will still carry the banner of the TEA PARTY. As Senators and House members are regurgitated so to speak for reelection. We must insist that they will follow the laws passed down to us by our founding fathers? Not the Socialist movement by President Obama and his rat patrol, assaulting the sovereign rights of individual states. Every politician should promise to uphold the U.S. Constitution, which is the promise to tens of millions of TEA PARTY members of freedom and liberty. To restrain a government out of control and shrink it; to rewrite the antique current tax code and replacing it with a fair and equitable tax for all and no special advantages for those in power; open up our abundant oil deposits and tell the environmentalists, ‘to put a sock in it.’
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich surprised his audience at a town hall meeting in Naples, Florida in November. He said, “I am not for a path to citizenship for anybody who got here illegally… But I am for a path to legality for those people whose ties run so deeply in America that it would truly be a tragedy to try and rip their family apart.” But Rick Perry, the Texas governor has not only granted illegal aliens to pay the lower, in-state tuition at state colleges and universities, he also proposed legislation that allows them to receive tax-payer supported state education grants. In August the Obama administration began a new policy that subject to the illegal alien apprehended, only those with severe criminal records would be deported. Perry at a campaign stop in New Hampshire told the crowd that under his administration, “I call this a horrific policy, but the Obama administration has a catch and release policy where non-violent illegal aliens are released into the general public today. My policy will be to detain and to deport every illegal alien that we apprehend. That is how we stop that issue.”
Just in California, L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich States the illegal alien cost is $550 million for public safety and nearly $500 million for healthcare, the total cost for illegal immigrants to just Los Angeles County taxpayers exceeds $1.6 billion dollars a year. These costs do not include the hundreds of millions of dollars for schools. It’s a sorrowful situation when a news report states that the Democrats in Sacramento are looking for solutions in reducing their uncontrolled 16 to 20 billion dollar deficit? They should ask Mike Antonovich who knows the answer. He’d tell the simpletons in the state capitol—rescind Los Angeles ‘Special Order 40, stopping police for asking the nationality of persons caught. Remove the stigma of the states ‘Sanctuary State label and prosecute the Governor, Mayor, judge and prosecutors for not obeying immigration enforcement laws. Cross-reference people who apply for public entitlements and implement a mandatory state E-Verify until the ‘Legal Workforce Act’ finds passage in Congress.
Notably is the Liberal press using a different stance to promote the millions of illegal migrants and immigrants already here--saying that it’s good for the economy or asserting these people pay taxes. Yes many do, but they are using either stolen Social Security numbers from innocent citizens, or an IRS number known as an ITIN number. A substantial motivation is they have no alternative, if they want to get a payroll job? Then according to the 'Heritage Foundation' the amount of $113 Billion dollars goes to supplementing illegal aliens by hard-pressed taxpayers and every year that amount is rising. The liberal Progressives are also pushing the environmental position, elaborating the issue for no fencing, because it was detrimental to wild life. Of course nothing is said about the crisis situation for ranch owners, who live in fear from the criminals and illegal aliens passing through their land. These parties burglarize their homes, cutting fences and committing other crimes in the four Border States. Equally unappetizing is the mounds of human garbage left in the border regions, with animals caught up in the tangle of plastic bottle holders or other trash.
As released by the IRS, illegal immigrants are returned 4.5 Billion in child/parent tax credits on fraudulent documentation. Little known to most readers is that these foreign invaders send out of the country annually to foreign banks, between 40-46 billion dollars. Yes! They do pay taxes, but it hardly has any impact on the money that is extorted from federal and state taxpayers for children of illegal aliens and drains state treasuries, without compensation. Money going to educate, the massive health care deficit and an overpopulated prison system filled with drug dealers, killers, molesters, pedophiles and a growing proportion of hit and run propagation of drunken drivers; those that are caught.
The Tea Party doesn't discriminate against any nationality or race, this is an offensive plan by the Democrats to undermine the alternative party who are strictly against illegal immigration, but openly welcomes those who patiently legally wait their turn, in becoming part of the opportunity that is America.
If Obama remains president and reigns supreme for another term, he will rescind the immigration laws that make us safe from drug dealers, drunken hit & run drivers and a whole mess of criminals reaching American soil. The Obama mob led by Eric Holder, Morton, Pelosi and Napolitano have divided American society after not only suing starting with Arizona, but have committed their Liberal agenda of using their mismanaged force to go after Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa county whose duty is to enforce his state law. Obama is complicit in not enforcing immigration laws and now suddenly become slack in deporting nationals. Demand your politician’s co-sponsor the ‘Legal Workforce Bill, known statewide, Mandatory E-Verify. Stop the occupation of our country from other nations, before it’s too late. You can by calling your Senator and Congress person in Congress at 202-224-3121.
Our countries laws are being undermined and our sovereignty trashed by Obama's mules in the Department of IN-Justice. Join a constitutional-oriented TEA PARTY near you. Make sure Obama becomes a one term president, before his Liberal henchman erodes away the US Constitution. Join the non-profit pro-sovereignty organization. NUMBERSUSA. Be on your guard as illegal aliens have vote and will again in 2012, unless we institute that every voter posses picture ID--which can be authenticated. After the true double fence is built along the border, then at such times a uniform ‘Guest Worker’ program can be enacted by Congress. The TEA PARTY believes in an immigration ‘Point System’ like Europe, Australia and New Zealand, that welcomes highly skilled workers with exception background in Engineering, the Sciences and Mathematics. We must be more selective and enforce the laws as legislated in the 1986 Simpson/Mazzoli bill.
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