GOP Race to Toughen and Tighten
by Patrick J. Buchanan
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Mitt Romney won his anticipated victory in the Iowa Straw Poll, with 32 percent and 4,500 votes, but fell short of expectations. Ex-Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, with 18 percent, exceeded them, and is the man of the hour to the political press.
The results from Ames, and South Carolina’s decision to move its primary to Jan. 19, are fraught with portent for the GOP and the party’s hopes of holding the White House.
First, the turnout at Ames, with 14,000 voting, was modest, in comparison to 1999, when George Bush finished first with 7,500 votes out of 23,000 cast.
The diminished turnout suggests the GOP is not as hungry as it was when Bill Clinton was ending his second term, or as excited as it was about its candidates or prospects.
Second, the 18 percent showing by Huckabee and the 15 percent by Sen. Sam Brownback mean both will be in the race to January. And, as both are strong social conservatives competing for the pro-life and Christian vote, both will be jostling each other—and both will be tearing down Mitt Romney’s credentials as a social conservative.
That Huckabee came in a strong second and Brownback a close third, however, is not bad news for Mitt. It means both will be in the race until January, and neither can wholly unite pro-life and Christian voters against him. As they split the vote in Ames, they will likely split it in January, to Romney’s benefit.
There is other good news for Romney in the returns from Ames. Because his victory was not overwhelming, because Huckabee made a strong showing, the Iowa race—with its prospect of an upset—becomes far more interesting to the national and world press.
Here is where the new calendar comes in.
As South Carolina has moved its primary to Jan. 19, New Hampshire will move up to Jan. 12 or before, and Iowa, which has said it will hold the caucuses in the new year, will thus have to hold them in the first week and perhaps the first few days of January.
This means the national and world press, a day after Christmas, will be heading for Iowa and camping out to cover the GOP race, as well as the Clinton-Obama-Edwards showdown that same day.
Especially if the GOP race appears close, the coverage of the candidates—particularly Romney and Huckabee—will be intense. Left out of that coverage will be any GOP candidate not competing in Iowa.
Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Fred Thompson each thus face a major dilemma and crucial decision. Given their pathetic showings at the straw poll, where their names were on the ballot but they did not speak, if they contest Iowa, they will have to spend time, energy and money even to be competitive. And they would risk a third- or fourth-place finish. But if they skip Iowa, they could face a media blackout for the 10 days between Christmas and the caucuses, while Romney and the rest in Iowa are all over the national news.
If all three wait in New Hampshire, all three could be in the dark until the news from Des Moines rolls over the country and propels the winner of the caucuses to the forefront in New Hampshire.
Moreover, South Carolina, by tightening the schedule and pushing Iowa and New Hampshire closer to New Year’s Day, and crowding them closer together, increases the momentum value of an Iowa victory.
Perhaps the best hope McCain, Thompson and Giuliani have of stopping Romney is to have Huckabee or Brownback defeat him in Iowa. And the surest way to do that would be for Brownback or Huckabee to drop out and stop splitting the social conservative vote.
But given the strong performance of both, that appears unlikely.
Bottom line: The front-runners, Thompson and Giuliani, and McCain have left their destiny in other hands. If none of them is going to contest Iowa, and try to take Romney down there, all have a vital interest in helping Huckabee or Brownback tarnish a Romney victory with a strong finish, or defeat him in Iowa, which might finish him. For today it does not look like any of the three—Thompson, Giuliani or McCain, who ran seventh, eighth and 10th—can do it themselves.
For the front-runners, this would be the best of all possible worlds. For even if Brownback or Huckabee emerged with the moral victory in Iowa, neither has the resources for a national campaign, though the checks would pour in, in the event of an Iowa victory.
All of which raises an interesting question.
Did Romney hold down the score at Ames to make the race more exciting, to give a victory there in January greater drama, perhaps to lure Giuliani or Thompson or McCain or Newt Gingrich back into the state, where in that country of the Sioux, he could scalp them all?
The Republican race has suddenly gotten more interesting. The Iowa Straw Poll has a way of doing that.
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
1 Comment by russell on 14 August 2007:
Screw all of those blow-dried, roboticuns. The sum total of what these losers know couldn’t cover the bottom of a small tea cup. The only man in the race that could think his way out of a wet paper bag is Ron Paul…and he is dead last. Give up the ghost, the lizard queen shall rule us all. And we deserve her.
2 Comment by Philip Candido on 14 August 2007:
Give up the ghost, the lizard queen shall rule us all. And we deserve her.
Well, nice to know there is spirit left in the world! Sadly, I agree. I’m holding out hope for Obama, only because I know as horrid as he will be he won’t be as bad as the Lizard Queen as you so aptly name her.
3 Comment by John Q. Public on 14 August 2007:
Obama? I think he’d be worse than our lizard girl. (He’s too much the fresh prince, they’d have a field day with him – blindfolding him and spinning him around, stopping him just before he walked out a window) Hills is at least jaded and she’s already assured us, she’s our lizard girl! What more do we want? At least when she screws us we’ll know she knows we know. She’s our girl!
4 Comment by Ron Paul on 14 August 2007:
What happened to Ron Paul ?
Mr. Pat Buchanon.
He was shafted in Iowa, robbed.
And you do not even mention his name.
5 Comment by Allen Wilson on 14 August 2007:
Mr Buchanan’s article is insightful as always. However, I disagree that Huckabee is a social conservative. No one who would ramrod a tyrannical law that bans smoking in bars or restaurants can be called a social conservative. He is an arrogant, condescending scoundrel with no principle and no integrity, who will sell himself out and sell us all down the river to whomever has the money.
6 Comment by Lord Karth on 14 August 2007:
Time to commit the day’s ration of heresy…….
Is it really and truly going to matter who gets suckered into the White Palace next year ? Whichever poor slob winds up getting handed the sack is going to face several insoluble crises, to wit:
1) Entitlements. The current Imperial spending structure, thanks to the Baby boomers and their immediate generational predecessors, is out of whack and is going to stay out of whack. It is simply a matter of time before Medicare and Medicaid overwhelm the tax structure and crash the economy—I am making NO investments with a maturity date after 2020 in US securities. Social Security’s collapse will finish off whatever is left after that. (See Prof. Kotlikoff’s books for the proofs of my thesis.)
2) Immigration. Thanks to our elite’s refusal to recognize the Mexican elite as America’s foremost enemy, we commoners have another dozen years of posturing and show-piece raids in place of serious border enforcement. Her Royal Hillaryness will come under pressure to do something about the flow, in a sort of Nixon-goes-to-China fashion. She, however, does not have the inside-baseball clout with the Mexican elites to take the serious actions required to stop the Invasion. (Obama will be an even bigger flop–albeit a funnier one, some of his notions would be amusing if His Numinous Negroship wasn’t a serious candidate for high office–should the Empire see fit to elect him.) Look for open irredentist movements to go public (even more so than MALDEF and La Raza already have) the next time any sort of immigration-control measures are proposed. But do take heart, mes amis….after the crash, the flow of people will be in the other direction.
3) The Eurasian (Russo-Sino-Iranian) axis. Thanks to the biggest foreign-policy mismanagement since Gavrilo Prinzip got his man, there is virtually nowhere for the Empire to go except towards “more of the same”. The problem here is that there is now active military cooperation between the Red Chinese and the Russians, and both of them will back Iran against any further efforts to maintain an Imperial military presence in Iraq. The Empire is also vulnerable on the financial front, thanks to the prescription-drug entitlement and related health-care costs that will be kicking in after 2008. (It will prove far easier to reduce spending on an unpopular foreign war than to reduce spending on health care bills for parasitic retirees.) Crossing the Mandarins in Pei’ping will probably lead to them calling in the trillion or so dollars in bonds that the Treasury Dept. has sold them–which would, in conjunction with an Iranian sealing of the Straits of Hormuz (and, for good measure, a Russian embargo on oil exports to Western Europe) lead to $ 200/barrel oil, $ 10/gallon gas and a new Great Depression that will make 1929 look like a day at the beach.
I see no way for ANY of the candidates—even the redoubtable Mr. Paul–to prevent any of these crises from exploding; these are systemic problems that arise from the basic structure of American society as it has grown since this country went National-Socialist in 1917. What passes for political “leadership” may be able to soften the blow in one area, or possibly delay the inevitable for a few (not more than 5) years. But the works is coming apart, and the question is more one of “which disaster comes first ?” than of “will disaster happen ?”. That being the case, would it really be worth it to have a soi-disant “conservative” occupying the White Palace when the meltdown happens ?
Submitting these notions for consideration, I remain
Your servant,
Lord Karth
7 Pingback by Volunteer Voters » A Viable Huckabee Helps Romney? on 15 August 2007:
[...] Pat Buchanan thinks that Huckabee’s strong second place showing in the Ames Iowa Straw poll is actually a good thing for Romney because it helps make the Iowa caucuses a real race: Here is where the new calendar comes in. [...]
8 Comment by Bernie on 15 August 2007:
I’m surprised he didn’t mention Tancredo’s strong 4th place showing. Tom and Ron Paul are the only candidates worth voting for. I wish one would drop out so the votes would be united. Go, Tom, Go!
9 Comment by John Q. Public on 15 August 2007:
“I see no way for ANY of the candidates—even the redoubtable Mr. Paul–to prevent any of these crises from exploding; these are systemic problems that arise from the basic structure of American society as it has grown since this country went National-Socialist in 1917.” -Lord Krath … Your Lordship, ditto. We failed a la 1913/17 put the start date wherever you like in that range, just like the soviet union failed because placing that kind of power in the triunity of (big biz)-(govt. quislings)-(inevitably their Media) … no matter how great the ’system’ looks on paper always becomes top heavy like an inverted pyramid & inevitably implodes down upon itself. When 1% of the population every year corals 80% of what the nation produces and the top 1/10th of 1% corals more than the other 9/10ths of the 1% it’s farce. Thus, you are absolutely correct it’s systemic and systems don’t change themselves until they are played out or as it were find their death as a system. (In the meantime in the twilight period they in fact tend to move toward saying you’re either with us or against us.) … However the world is rigged that absolute or perfect balance is not possible; though it is also rigged that approximate balance is Requisite. But it’s useless to attempt to whisper that to hogs at the trough…And I wonder Lord is there any good time to whisper that to them?
10 Comment by P. Stewart on 15 August 2007:
Allen Wilson – They will ALL sell us down the river to whomever offers the most money, except for Ron Paul. Because Ron Paul will have no allies in Congress, he will be a lame duck president from the get go.
For the reasons that Lord Karth mentions, it will not matter who is elected in 2008.
11 Comment by John Q. Public on 15 August 2007:
I do agree with P. Stewart since it matters not at this point – had I my druthers I’d prefer yourself to be prez Ron Paul.
But I’m a caring feeling person and so if you are sincere I worry about you…what’s the point?
“All this the world well knows, yet NONE knows WELL
“To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.” -W.S.
_________
12 Comment by Robert Bruce on 20 August 2007:
Well Ron Paul overwhelmingly too the Alabama and New hampshire straw polls. Funny how it is not reported at all even on the internet news sources. The fix is in. All I am looking to do is get the hell out of here before Jan 2009. Anybody been to Uruguay?
13 Comment by Robert Bruce on 20 August 2007:
Well Ron Paul overwhelmingly won the Alabama and New hampshire straw polls. Funny how it is not reported at all even on the internet news sources. The fix is in. All I am looking to do is get the hell out of here before Jan 2009. Anybody been to Uruguay?
14 Comment by Ed Roberts on 21 August 2007:
Mr. Buchanan, your attempts at legitimizing the GOP’s current sham of a primary are as futile as usual. The Gang of Plunderers puts on this show every 4 years. They collect millions of dollars from the federal treasury and loot all 50 states by sticking them with the tabs for their phony primary voting, when their candidates have been chosen long in advance by the party’s upper echelon.
Rudy Guiliani is the republican candidate, just as Hillary Clinton is the candidate of the democrats. All the two of them have to do is to stay alive until the election to be their party’s annointed ones. Anyone but a blind GOP straight ticket voter can spot the candidate before the first straw poll. If you still believe that there’s a chance of anyone other than Guiliani becoming the final candidate, then you’re more deluded than the average scalawag.