The Iowa Reality

As we approach the Iowa straw poll this weekend we have heard a great deal about how Romney is going to win this easily. Rudy had backed away, McCain has backed away, Rudy has been back in a little bit, Huckabee has been moving up, etc. This is all well and good but Romney has literally spent millions on Iowa, and has staked his entire campaign on it. The problem for him now is that most of the top tier has stayed out and so most won’t give Romney much of a benefit for winning Iowa. So now we are in a position of managing expectations, in all reality Romney should win this with a spread of 15-20% given the time he has spent there, the money he has spent there, and the polling that shows him doing well there.

So what happens if he doesn’t win by 15%? Is it less of a win, is it possible to win and have it be viewed as a failure? In politics, anything is possible. If Fred Thompson finishes within 5-10% of Mitt having spent virtually no money to do it then that will be a huge win for Fred and a really big problem for Mitt. Romney has staked his entire campaign on the premise that he is more conservative than Rudy or McCain and while that may be true he doesn’t come across as conservative to the people that matter most, conservatives. He says the right thing, he dances around every issue, he’s polished, etc. Basically he’s a smarter version of John Edwards but with all the polish and fancy suits will Iowans really get behind a moderate from Massachusetts?

I have a feeling we are in for a few surprises this weekend when it comes to Iowa. There seems to be a surge of Fred Thompson chatter there lately, and Mike Huckabee has been moving up as well. My biggest hope for this weekend’s straw poll is that it finally dawns on three or four of these candidates that they have no hope and they back out of the race after. This is important, we need to get down to two or three candidates so that those candidates with the best shot at the nomination can show not just differences between themselves but start illustrating the differences between Republicans and Democrats. The MSM lately has been playing up this Hillary / Obama feud in hopes of showing that Hillary can be tough. They fail to realize that the public already knows Hillary can be tough, we remember the ninety’s when she fired travel office personnel for no reason, we remember the FBI filegate where she acquired the FBI files of not only her enemies but also people in congress who were less than enthused with the first lady taking over 1/7^th of the nation’s economy, and lest we forget Vince Foster.

So it’s time that we get down to a few candidates, I hope McCain realizes that he’s got no hope of getting this nomination and decides to pack it in after Iowa. There are a few who will hang on forever I am sure, Ron Paul is likely to stay in this until the convention but in reality he never had much of a chance. I think Duncan Hunter, Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo are great conservatives and should be on the short list for VP but they just couldn’t get much traction out there, I know Huckabee has moved up lately but I don’t think it’s enough to move him to the first tier. Some of them may do ok and be able to keep going for a while but others like Tommy Thompson and Sam Brownback should move on and get behind a top tier candidate.

In the end we have to support the candidate with the best chance of defeating Hillary. To do that we have to look at elections and we have to understand elections, Republicans do well when they stand behind their conservative beliefs. As we have heard Rush say on countless occasions, “conservatism wins every time it’s tried”. When we look at the top tier candidates we have only one conservative in the group and that’s Fred Thompson. I hope our friends in Iowa remember that this weekend.

Brandon

http://www.conservativesuperiority.com

http://www.fredthompsonnmo.wordpress.com