If Rick Santorum Wins the Iowa Caucus, Does It Matter?
The Iowa Caucus is tomorrow and, according to the Des Moines Register poll released on December 30th, the Republican field appears to have narrowed to three: Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum.
Mitt Romney: 24%
Ron Paul: 22%
Rick Santorum: 15%
Newt Gingrich: 12%
Rick Perry: 11%
Bachman: 7%
Jon Huntsman: 2%
(Des Moines Register poll taken 12/27-12/30 of likely Iowa Caucus voters)
The GOP entered 2011 high on their victory of taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives, but promptly fielded the lamest group of dwarfs imaginable in the race for the presidency. The Republican Party may coalesce eventually behind Mitt Romney, but for now we get to watch the Iowa Caucus turn into the Iowa Swamp; a murky morass where the candidates vie to be the most conservative, and emerge trying to shake off the slimy stench of their positions before the rest of the country gets a look at them. From supporting Paul Ryan’s plan to do-away with Medicare, to promising laws that life begins at conception (laws that would criminalize most forms of birth control!), right up to their latest opposition to a payroll tax cut for the middle class, the men and woman who would be the standard-bearer for the modern GOP have taken positions so-far out of the mainstream of American society, that the lead up to the Iowa Caucus may have cost their party a chance at the White House in 2012.
The best example of this is the rise of Rick Santorum in the Iowa Caucus: a man more famous for the profane results of a Google search on his name, than for anything he has actually done in public office. Rick Santorum is the talk of the town right now, the latest of the bumbling archaic dwarfs to rise to the top of the election year cesspool in the days leading up to the Iowa Caucus. He will be skimmed away, after placing strongly enough in the Iowa Caucus to accomplish nothing but the clearing of the way for Mitt Romney…and, if Santorum sticks around long enough, he may potentially make Romney look more acceptable in a general election, by contrast, then Romney actually is. That’s what scares me about Rick Santorum placing in the top three in the Iowa Caucus; he is so far to the right that he makes Romney look like a viable mainstream challenger to President Obama.
Rick Santorum once said that “radical feminism” had made it “socially affirming to work outside the home at the expense of childcare”…in an economy that requires both parents to work to make ends meet; Rick Santorum also wants to privatize Social Security…in an age where our social safety net is the one redeeming feature of our government; Rick Santorum thinks that global warming is “junk science”…while the northeastern U.S. enters the month of January with no snow on the ground; Rick Santorum doesn’t just oppose gay marriage, but he wants to make gay relationships illegal…in an era where the majority of Americans support the right of same-sex couples to marry; and, though he’d like Iowa Caucus goers to forget it, Rick Santorum endorsed Mitt Romney for President in 2008.
Tomorrow, the results from the Iowa Caucus will come in, and the press will be all a-flutter analyzing the results. Does a strong Ron Paul vote in the Iowa Caucus guarantee he will run as a third party candidate, if he doesn’t win the GOP nomination? If Newt Gingrich doesn’t place in the top three in the Iowa Caucus, does that signal the end of his campaign? Will Jon Huntsman and Michele Bachmann drop out, after a poor showing in the Iowa Caucus, and who will they endorse? All of the questions will revolve around negatives; Iowa is becoming known, not for the things it grows, but rather for the candidates it kills.
My own guess for the Iowa Caucus is that Ron Paul will win, Mitt Romney will come a close second, and Rick Santorum will place third…but Mitt has essentially guaranteed himself home field advantage for the rest of the GOP primary season. Romney, after the Iowa Caucus, will now be running against two candidates who are in the race to send a message: Ron Paul, who wants to steer the Republican party to focus on U.S. monetary policy and ending “the Fed”, and Rick Santorum, who wants the GOP to focus again on social issues like abortion and gay marriage. Mitt Romney? He wants to run against foils exactly like Paul and Santorum after the Iowa Caucus votes are in; two candidates who can’t possibly win the nomination, but make Romney look sane and reasonable by contrast. That’s the danger coming out of the Iowa Caucus for supporters of progressive politics…if the Obama campaign doesn’t get in the game soon and start defining Mitt Romney as the millionaire job killer from Bain Capital, Romney will continue to be defined by what he is not: not as right-wing as Santorum or Paul, and not Obama. In a year when the majority of voters think the country is moving in the wrong direction, being not as bad as the other guys may be considered good enough.
Sarah Warden is the author of the novel Three Fifths of Love, available as an ebook from amazon http://www.amazon.com/Three-Fifths-Love-Marriage-ebook/dp/B005EZ3QU2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318174116&sr=8-1
Rick Santorum image by IowaPolitics.com [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Image of Mitt Romney by Gage Skidmore [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Image of Ron Paul by Bbsrock (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Image of Iowa flag and motto by Fredddie (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Image of the seven dwarfs is in the public domain.
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Comments
:-) / r
You're right about every candidate in the race EXCEPT for Ron Paul. Go ahead and look up where he gets most of his donations. His top 3 donors are soldiers and veterans. And he has by far the most donations from individuals as opposed to corporations.
Ron Paul is not a corporate-backed candidate, which is why the corporate-backed media have attacked him left and right trying to discredit him leading up to primary season.
Ron Paul is the last best hope for progressives, and that's even when you include Barack Obama in the picture.
I agree with your general point that in the 3 man race Romney will look the sanest.
It only means that Iowa Republicans are completely out of touch with reality and the rest of the nation. Any reasonable person that knows anything about Santorum will see this. If you think Michelle Bachmann is nuts, do a little Santorum research. You will be astounded at the santorum that spews from his mouth.
I feel sorry for the rest of Iowans who get a bad reputation from this clownfest and especially those who would vote for such an out of touch, bigoted, racist.
He is pro-life in his personal life, however his libertarian belief in severely limiting the power of the executive branch means he would not use his personal stance on abortion as president.
As a matter of fact, he advocates limiting the pro-lifers to the state level which is a heck of a lot better than any federal mandate. Even a pro-choice federal mandate is dangerous because it sets up the possibility for some moron in the future to have it overturned, then the entire country is in the fire.
Ron Paul's idea is progressive, and that is to limit such oppressive actions to states only, and not the entire country. Advocating to keep abortion on the federal docket only sets the pro-choice movement up for oppression when the Santorums and Bushes of the world win the presidency (it happens) and then use their fundamentalist attitudes to rule over us all.
And also, for pro-choicers...which is more expensive and more arduous? Fighting for our rights on the national stage, or regionally? Keeping abortion in D.C. makes it harder for us to organize, and raise enough money to affect the changes we seek.