Will Iowa Make the Right Choice?
First off, congratulations and thank you to all the candidates, from the front-runner Mitt Romney to those holding up the rear, like Michele Bachman, for putting their views out there and taking on the grueling task of running for President. You have to have a variety of skills and talents, along with very thick skin, to take on a Presidential campaign and the country is better off for them doing so. Tonight they get to see the fruits of what has been months and for some years of labor.
While Iowa is only a small piece of the election puzzle, it will be interesting if they choose the “right candidate.” What do we mean by that? Well, the right candidate by our definition is the one that has the best chance of competing with Barak Obama. Kimberly Strassel, in the Wall Street Journal today, has a column entitled Mr. Good Enough, that states that Mitt Romney is that choice. She grinds through the list of other candidates and where they fell short and how Romney has moved his way to the top of the heap. We agree with everything in the article with the exception that she appears to feel like Romney will win the Iowa Caucus. We are not so sure.
Iowa can afford to take a flyer since they are the first of many primaries, and they may want to express themselves and stray out of the mainstream thinking and make a different choice. The Santorum surge is an example of far they might stray from making a conventional pick. We hope they don’t, but picking up the papers today and seeing his face and name everywhere has us worried that they might.
Rick Santorum lost his last election battle in Pennsylvania, which was for a 3rd Senate term, back in 2006 by a margin of 59% to 41% according to Wikipedia, where we visited just to get a brief overview of his record. Reading through it was enough for us to be convinced that whatever you think about Rick Santorum, he is not the man to beat Barak Obama.
The only conventional wisdom that we are bought into tonight is that Ron Paul’s supporters will be out in droves moving their candidate into the top-tier. What happens to the rest is still an unknown and very much up for grabs, and we look forward to seeing what choices Iowa makes.
One Person has left comments on this post
An interesting post. A few things to consider…
1. The idea that Mitt Romney is a front-runner in Iowa is accurate to some extent, but only insofar as Ron Paul is also considered an equal front-runner in this particular state. Romney and Paul’s ground work in the state of Iowa has left the other candidates jealous, and until Fox News anointed Santorum the surging candidate two days before any polls indicated such (interesting huh?), he was considering dropping out with a last place finish in Iowa…yeah he was reallyyy expecting this!
2. Where is the journalistic integrity of Rupert Murdoch? This is the man who owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, and he doesn’t think its unfair to the democratic process for him to endorse a candidate for President of the United States? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by these actions, but I’m allowed to be outraged.
3. Rick Santorum’s surge was strategically placed for mere days before the caucuses because his record when vetted is going to be chewed up and spit out by fiscal conservatives faster than Gingrich after Ron Paul’s “serial hypocrisy” ad campaign. The mainstream media, in an effort to either sensationalize the caucus or to dilute the vote of the anti-Romney field (the former is more plausible), propped up Santorum’s poll numbers to justify increased face time on major network programs. All of this under the guise of an Iowan electorate that was “still making up their minds.” The ironic truth is that Iowans have heard from Santorum, more than any other candidate in fact, so the idea that he was polling in the low single digits because of lack of exposure is nonsense.
To the point about who the “right candidate” is to go up against Obama:
There are a lot of things to consider here, but I’ll give my take on a couple of things that I’ll be looking to play a role in the general election. First, the Republicans that voted for McCain in 08 will vote Republican in the ’12 election almost undoubtedly. The same cannot be said about the Obama supporters of ’08. This is a man who promised change, and had a devoted group of supporters that expected him to deliver and in lots of areas he let them down. The Republican candidate is going to need to capitalize on these disenfranchised Obama supporters by appealing to the independent population of America (the heavily majority of America, by the way). So who is the right candidate to vie for the independent vote? Well, statistically its Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, with Ron Paul with a pretty healthy advantage. I consider the right candidate to be someone who is going to be able to contrast with Obama on economic and monetary policy, as this is where the election will be framed around. Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney almost accidentally, endorse the economic and monetary policy of Austrian economics, an economic perspective vastly contrary to Obama’s keynesian approach of stimulus market-steering and deficit spending. These two, whom I believe will be the Romney vs. anti-Romney after these first few caucuses and primaries take place, will have to frame the debate with Obama as “the government tried, now let the market have its chance!” It should be a very interesting election, and one that I believe sees Ron Paul as the “most right” candidate to take on Obama on issues that matter the most to the citizens of the United States.