Iowa

   With my home state's Supreme Court making it’s now famous decision the other day, gay marriage is on the cusp of the lip's of many. A few days before the gay marriage decision, I was thinking about as Young Republicans, what do we want of the world? What do we want to see? What do we want our image to be? A thought from the brilliant William F. Buckley came to mind. He described people whom he viewed as "Small C Conservatives" and "Big C Conservatives." In our modern political climate, where our party has been hijacked by the religious right, Mr. Buckley's words were like a gust of fresh air. Buckley is my new hero. Plain and simple. According to the father of National Review, a Conservative (or "Big C") is one who concerns themselves with fiscal issues and stands as a libertarian on the social ones. This is the true follower of the ideology. As for gay marriage, I'm going to take Mr. Buckley's advice and forget it. I've got a U-Bill due Tuesday. 

Promoted. -Patrick

Let me begin by thanking Patrick, Soren, Jon, and the guys at the Next Right for understanding the importance that the internet can play in shaping the future of our party. As Republicans, we should be using forums such as blogs to shape and mold policy.

I have had a front-row seat to the Republican Party over the past several years. I've been a volunteer, a grass-roots candidate for governor, a lieutenant-governor nominee, chaired Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign in Iowa and was an elected delegate to this year's National Convention.

This has provided me a unique perspective of the status of the Republican Party. Paraphrasing Jerry McGuire, "I've been to the puppet show, and I've seen the strings.

There are many fingers being pointed and many excuses being offered in the Republican locker room after the staggering 2008 losses. As a result, we are searching for leaders in the Iowa Senate, the Iowa House and for Iowa's Republican Party. In addition, nonelected leaders are giving explanations for the party's demise and offering prescriptions for the future. So, please permit me to offer mine.

Jesus Christ, whom many Republicans claim to follow, summoned his followers to be either hot or cold toward Him, because a "lukewarm" commitment makes Him want to vomit. I believe this accurately reflects the mood of voters in the past several elections where Republicans have witnessed consecutive defeats.

We have followed the misguided advice of "experts" to abandon our principles and move to the middle so we can supposedly win. In essence, we have become "lukewarm" on life, on marriage, on the Second Amendment, on limited government, on balanced budgets, on lower taxes, on parental rights in educating and raising children, on faith, on family and on freedom. The net result is that voters have spit us out of their mouths.

Republicans are losing because the voters don't trust them. The first key to any leadership position is trust. No one cares how competent someone is if they can't be trusted. The last thing any state or entity needs is a competent liar.

The party's platform is clearly pro-life, but we fill out surveys and use focus-tested words to validate our overriding interest in winning versus a sincere commitment to core principles. Republicans rev up their base by declaring marriage to be between one man and one woman only to walk away from the issue when it poses a threat to personal ambition. The result is no trust ... no vote.

Republicans promise to balance budgets, but citizens are strapped with the largest deficit in history. Republicans passionately discuss limited government but deliver Medicare D, No Child Left Behind, stimulus plans and state value funds. The result is no trust ... no vote.

Some in the GOP are bold enough to refer to their party as "God's Own Party," indicating unswerving commitment to faith, family and freedom. Even so, voters witness disgusting text messages to young pages, solicitation of prostitutes, adulterous affairs, improper advances in airport restrooms and acceptance of money in exchange for power. The result is no trust ... no vote.

The "elite" politicos and Iowa's dwindling Republican establishment are now convening committees and strategy sessions to advise their "flock" to abandon the party's principles and move even further to the middle if they hope to win again. The voter sees and tastes the "lukewarm" and compromising attempts to gain positions and power. The result is no trust, and the voter, like Christ, wants to throw up.

If Republicans are to win again, they must authentically embrace their core principles and effectively communicate a compelling message of bold-color conservatism that inspires faith, family and freedom.

Each year, we hear more and more praise for President Ronald Reagan. So, let's embrace the unyielding words of our party's icon when he said, "Let us raise our bold colors high." And, for those who are willing to exchange their values for shallow victories, as Reagan said, "let them go their way!"

On thenextright.com, there were a series of blogs talking about the importance of the states in the Big Ten Conference. After reading that series, having time to reflect, and the commencing of the shortest general election campaign in history, I felt that it would be appropriate to point out another conference: The states in the Big 12 Conference.

I am not doing this blog series to put down the Big Ten (though I’m not sure I’d want to be a math major from the 11-team league), but I am doing this to show that the Big 12 states will play a central role in the 2008 Presidential Election. I should also point out that there are a number of reasons that the Big 12 may be overlooked in favor of its sister conference to the east.
 

1. The Big 12 is made up of smaller media markets compared to the Big 10. The five biggest media markets in the Big Ten are Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Cleveland, and St. Louis. The ones in the Big 12 are Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, St. Louis, Denver, and Kansas City. The St. Louis-area is included twice because it sits on the border of Big Ten state Illinois and Big 12 state Missouri.

    

2. The volume of electoral votes in Big 12 states is largely concentrated in one state. Outside of Texas (three of the six largest Big 12 cities are in Texas), no other Big 12 state has 12 or more electoral votes. The Big Ten region has four states with more than 12 electoral votes. Of course, the larger pot gets the most attention.
    

In short, the size of the composition of voters from the two regions draws large attention to the Big Ten and away from the Big 12. However, size isn’t the only thing that matters. Consider that George W. Bush, on his way to 286 electoral votes in 2004 won every Big 12 state. While the race came down to Ohio, imagine what his chances would have been if he had lost Iowa and Colorado. Take away Missouri as well as Iowa and Colorado and John Kerry is President.

Also, consider that the last time that a Democrat won three of the seven states was Bill Clinton in 1992. Clinton won 370 electoral votes and won Colorado, Iowa, and Missouri. Meanwhile, the last time that a Democrat swept the Big 12 states was in 1964 with Lyndon Johnson’s landslide win over Barry Goldwater. In short, the Big 12 is an important hold for Republicans and a chance to win an election for Democrats.

The states that make up the region are Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas. As of today, it appears that Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas are likely to go for John McCain. For the purposes of this blog series, I want to focus in the coming days on the three swing states from this group: Colorado, Iowa, and Missouri.

Over in camp Huck we keep an eye on polls.

Not so much on the unscientific internet kind, (although those are fun too) as much as on the national polling done on the state of the race between the two presumptive nominees.

We're not so blind in our support of Huckabee and our platform, as to not realize that McCain's eventual pick for veep will be the one who can help him win, based on the strategic play for state flips between the two.

We were, as a result, pretty bummed to read after Ted Strickland announced he was taking himself off the table for democratic vp, that Obama seemed to be ceding the rustbelt to McCain and had started to float the idea of a strategy of trying to flip Nevada, New Mexico,Colorado, and other mountain west states. http://patriotroom.com/?p=432

Anybody with a political brain knows that's advantage Mitt territory.

(And Nooo I'm not hating on Mitt, I'm just saying Mike's my guy, so it didn't feel great to see his chances appearing to slip away.)

Some may well say that the rustbelt blue states also play to Mitt's strengths, and that may be true, but only if he runs in them as a 'populist,' fairly similar to how he ran in MI, and that didn't go over so well with the fiscon wing of the base. And I don't think he'd want to 'sully' his conservative credentials for the future in taking that rout, but that's just my opinion.

We think Mike is actually the stonger veep pick for the Penn/Ohio heartland pickups because of his significant appeal to Hillary's blue collar crowd. (Mike's true base was always more working class than 'evangelical'.. class was the lowest common denominator across all of his support groups)

In fact, you could almost lay John King's democratic and republican big boards over one another on primary nights and find an exact match between Mike and Hillary and Obama and McCain. There is no doubt that Hillary's rural vote is going to be a serious game changer here.

But I digress..

Word was, McCain was holding the rustbelt on his own without veep help and Obama was turning his eyes west. It looked like Mike would get to keep his new day job at Fox after all.

And then came the latest round of polls: Former congresman John Leboutellier on his blog comments: http://leboutillier.blogspot.com/

The new spate of Quinnipiac polls from Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania have rocked the GOP political establishment.

Here is the brief overview from Quinnipiac:

This is the first time Sen. Obama has led in all three states. No one has been elected President since 1960 without taking two of these three largest swing states in the Electoral College. Results from the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University polls show:

Florida: Obama edges McCain 47 - 43 percent;

Ohio: Obama tops McCain 48 - 42 percent;

Pennsylvania: Obama leads McCain 52 - 40 percent.

In the three states, Obama leads McCain 10 to 23 percentage points among women, while men are too close to call. The Democrat trails among white voters in Florida and Ohio, but gets more than 90 percent of black voters in each state. He also has double-digit leads among young voters in each state. "Finally getting Sen. Hillary Clinton out of the race has been a big boost for Sen. Barack Obama. He now leads in all three of the major swing states, although his margins in Florida and Ohio are small," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Believe me: these results - especially in Florida (thought to be secure for McCain) and Ohio (very winnable for the GOP - especially with Governor Ted Strickland stating he would not accept the Veep slot from Obama) - have shaken the McCain campaign and renewed the fear that an anti-GOP, anti-Bush tsunami is rolling in this fall - and it may take not only McCain along with it but dozens of GOP House and Senate hopefuls, as well.
 

It appears that Obama may be neutralizing some of McCain's opportunities to pick up blue states. That leaves us status quo until you discover the progress that Obama is making towards flipping some states that went red in the last general election.

First, Iowa. Mccain didn't really campaign there during the primaries, focusing his energies on NH. But it was unlikely,'white as the driven snow' Iowa, that gave Obama his first big win and set him on the path to the nomination. They 'know' him, and like him there, a lot.

James Barnes in a National Journal article today reports:

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/pi_20080621_5575.php
 

“Because Iowans have a relationship [with Obama] they’re less likely to buy into the negative imaging attacks that McCain and, especially, the [independent] ‘527s’ will do in Iowa,” Norris said. “Iowans are going to say, ‘This guy is not that; he won the caucuses.’ ”
 

And on Mccain's chances:

If his campaign has sometimes created the impression that McCain is indifferent to Iowa, his opposition to popular subsidies at times has made him seem downright hostile to the state’s interests.

In opening a town hall meeting in Des Moines last month, McCain attacked another economic boon to the state, the farm bill with its many crop supports. Playing his favorite role of maverick, the Arizonan told Iowans that if he were president he’d veto the measure.
 

Iowa, is one reason McCain should give Huckabee a secod look for veep. The only way he is going to hold Iowa red, is if he can maximise the turnout in Iowa's rural conservative base, and Huckabee has proven that he can do that on a dime.

Another recent polling indicator that may shift the veep winds Huckabee's way, is bad news out of the south. Obama is now in a polling dead heat with McCain in Georgia, and showing signs of strengthening his positions in other swing states like Missouri.

From Insider Advantage 6/19: http://www.southernpoliticalreport.com/storylink_619_444.aspx

June 19, 2008 — A New InsiderAdvantage / PollPositionsurvey conducted June 18 of registered likely voters in the November presidential contest shows Sen. John McCain leading Sen. Barack Obama by a single point in Georgia, making the race in Georgia a statistical tie. Libertarian Bob Barr, a former Republican Congressman from Georgia, received 6 percent of the vote.  The telephone survey of 408 registered likely voters is weighted for age, race, gender, and political affiliation. The survey has a margin of error of +/- 5%. It was conducted with InsiderAdvantage’s research partner Majority Opinion Research. PollPosition is InsiderAdvantage’s new branding name (look for additional information and expansion of PollPosition in the coming months). 

The Results:

McCain: 44%

Obama: 43%

Barr: 6%

Undecided: 7%

My view is that Georgia, the 9^th largest state in the nation with 15 electoral votes, will remain a major new battleground state through November. This changes the landscape of electoral politics as Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and perhaps another surprise southern state, join Florida as potential “swing states,” that cannot be presumed to vote Republican in 2008.”

Now granted, earlier polling did not reveal as much strength for Obama on the southern front, but as they say, time heals all wounds, and some of Hillary's voters may be going home.

There is a chance that the winds of change may blow through the polls once again, but as emotions stabalize after the bitter democratic primaries, I think the trends we are seeing will hold fast and expand.

That means, as of now, Mccain needs a vice presidential pick who can help him hold Iowa, as well as southern states that are trending Obama, he also needs someone with enough blue colar appeal to stengthen his chance of taking the rustbelt to counter any losses that he may absorb in the south/mountain west, (although, for the record USA Survey polling showed that Huckabee polled extremely well in many swing states not traditionally considered his forte. ) http://www.teamhuck.com/

SurveyUSA Polling Strongly Indicates that Voters Prefer Huckabee
6/3: Massachusetts Polling vs. Obama (see how results were calculated)
Best: Huckabee, 2nd: Lieberman & Romney, 4th: Pawlenty

6/3: New York Polling vs. Obama (see how results were calculated)
Best: Lieberman, 2nd: Huckabee, 3rd: Romney, 4th: Pawlenty

6/3: Iowa Polling vs. Obama (see how results were calculated)
Best: Huckabee, 2nd: Romney, 3rd: Lieberman, 4th: Pawlenty

6/3: Kentucky Polling vs. Obama (see how results were calculated)
Best: Huckabee, 2nd: Romney, 3rd: Lieberman, 4th: Pawlenty

6/3: Alabama Polling vs. Obama (see how results were calculated)
Best: Huckabee, 2nd: Lieberman & Pawlenty, 4th: Romney

6/2: Minnesota Polling vs. Obama (see how results were calculated)
Best: Pawlenty, 2nd: Huckabee & Romney, 4th: Lieberman

6/2: Oregon Polling vs. Obama (see how results were calculated)
Best: Huckabee, 2nd: Romney, 3rd: Lieberman, 4th: Pawlenty

6/2: Washington State Polling vs. Obama (see how results were calculated)
Best: Romney, 2nd: Huckabee, 3rd: Lieberman, 4th: Pawlenty

6/1: Nebraska Polling vs. Obama (see how results were calculated)
Best: Huckabee, 2nd: Romney, 3rd: Lieberman, 4th: Pawlenty

5/30: Wisconsin Polling vs. Obama (see how results were calculated)
Best: Huckabee & Lieberman, 3rd: Romney, 4th: Pawlenty

5/29: Kansas Polling vs. Obama (see how results were calculated)
Best: Huckabee, 2nd: Romney, 3rd:Lieberman, 4th: Pawlenty

5/23: Ohio Polling vs. Obama (see how results were calculated)
Best: Huckabee, 2nd: Lieberman, 3rd: Romney, 4th: Pawlenty

5/21: California Polling vs. Obama (see how results were calculated)
Best: Huckabee, 2nd: Romney, 3rd: Lieberman, 4th: Pawlenty

There are many conservatives who do not like Huckabee on a personal or political level. But I think those seeking to put forward the argument that he brings 'nothing' to the table as a vp pick are living in dreamland.

Huckabee supporters  are prepared to accept the outcome if the path to victory overlooks picking Mike as vp. We may not like it, but would embrace any clearly pro-life vp in a heartbeat. The question is, would the rest of the GOP base get on board if the path to victory included accepting Mike Huckabee as VP. Sadly, I'm not so sure of that.

Time will tell the tale.