- A Catholic former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania
once rated the dumbest man in the US Congress crested Tuesday night in
Iowa's see-saw battle among candidates for the Republican nomination and
ran a virtual tie with Mormon millionaire Mitt Romney. Well after chilly
midnight on caucus night in the Midwestern state, Iowa's Republican Party
declared Romney the winner by 8 votes. Each hovered just below 30,000 votes,
with libertarian Republican Ron Paul of Texas running third with a respectable
26,000-plus votes.
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- Only a couple of weeks ago Newt Gingrich seem poised
for exactly the same unexpected surge that blessed Santorum across the
last week. But battered by volleys of viciously negative campaign ads financed
by big Republican money backing Romney, Gingrich ran fourth with just under
16,000 votes. Hobbling along in the rear came Texas governor Rick Perry,
Tea Party star Michele Bachmann and with 668 votes Utah millionaire
Jon Huntsman.
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- Exactly four years ago, Santorum's surprise showing last
night was prefigured by the upset victory of a Protestant evangelical,
former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee who won with 41,000 votes, Romney
came second on that occasion with 30,000 votes, a little more more than
he managed yesterday, with a similar 25 per cent of the vote. Third, with
15,000 votes came the man who actually won the Republican nomination, John
McCain.
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- So, as far as Republicans are concerned, Iowa can be
a poor predictor. On January 10 the surviving candidates will be going
head to head in New Hampshire. Romney has spent months in the state and
has one of his several dreary homes there. Santorum, who committed months
of seemingly fruitless effort clasping the hands of countless Iowans, has
little presence in New Hampshire and a tiny war chest of campaign cash.
Romney's big-money attack dogs who were too busy battering Gingrich in
Iowa to notice Santorum's late surge, will unleash a torrent of abuse via
TV and radio. New Hampshire is a must-win for Romney if he is to escape
the charge that he simply can't clinch any race. Two debates are scheduled
and an embittered Newt Gingrich, no slouch in the campaign-debate setting,
will be quivering to get his revenge.
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- Watching the Iowa results with some satisfaction are
Obama's campaign chieftains. To them, the Iowa contest showed that Iowa's
Republicans simply couldn't figure out who to vote for. No one pleased
them for long. Bachmann, Perry, Cain and Gingrich each had their moment
in the sun, then faded. A week ago Ron Paul seemed set to win. Had the
Iowa vote been held a week from now, Santorum might too have been eclipsed
and Huntsman limped to the front.
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- The Republican high command decided some time ago that
Romney is their best chance of beating Obama. Though infinitely elastic
in political doctrine he's not a nut. It's imaginable that the all-important
independent voters in the general election in the fall could vote for him. Romney
made his millions buying and selling companies, very often firing workers
in the process. He governed Massachusetts without egregious failure, passing
the precursor to Obama's health insurance reform, which achievement has
been a red rag to the conservatives, who regard him as (a) a crypto-liberal
and (b) an agent of Satan, since he is a Mormon. No Mormon has ever been
president and reservation about the Church of Latter Day Saints extends
beyond conservatives. For example, Mormon theology is not friendly to the
children of Ham.
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- Troubling to this same Republican high command is Ron
Paul, who has won passionate adherents across the political spectrum. The
right likes him for his libertarian economics, which prompt Paul to denounce
the basic elements of the social safety net Social Security and Medicare.
He would abolish the Federal Reserve ( a laudable objective). He's a gold
bug, and in his speech to his supporters Tuesday night he shouted a line
which I'll hazard has never before been uttered on an election night podium
"We're all Austrians now" thereby proclaiming his
allegiance to the economist Ludwig van Mises and parodying the line actually
coined by Milton Friedman, though often attributed to Richard Nixon, "We're
all Keynesians now."
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- A lot of leftists like Paul because he really is an ardent
anti-imperialist the only one in the race vigorously denouncing
America's wars, its overseas bases and its alliance with Israel. He's
also an eloquent foe of the imperial presidency and of constitutional abuses
such as the law signed by Obama on December 31, giving the military a role
in domestic enforcement against terrorists and opening US citizens to military
detention without benefit of counsel, without charges, and without trial.
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- Part of Paul's vote in Iowa was undoubtedly leftists
who, under Iowa's rules, could cross over and vote in the Republican caucus.
Republicans fear that if Paul gets sufficiently incensed at his treatment
by their party, he might bolt and run on the Libertarian third party ticket,
thereby draining votes from the Republican candidate next November. For
their part the Obama forces similarly fear that Paul would steal vital
left votes from those thoroughly disillusioned with the President. In the
run-up to the Iowa vote The New York Times ran more than one
aggressive onslaught on Paul for newsletters, racist in content, which
ran under Paul's name twenty years ago, and which he has since disavowed.
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- It's hard to imagine Santorum getting long term traction.
He's a very conservative Catholic who crept into the US senate in 1998
after the incumbent Pennsylvania senator, John Heinz. It's hard to imagine
him cutting a wide swathe through the Baptist south, though against Romney,
who knows?
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- Santorum says that as president he would bomb Iran tomorrow.
Romney and Gingrich don't lag far behind in their ravings against the Islamic
Republic. Obama ratchets up sanctions against Iran while supposedly telling
Netanyahu that the US will not endorse any attack by Israel on Iran. Only
Ron Paul stands out against this deranged chorus. Given a chance, I'll
vote for Paul, even though he hasn't a prayer of taking over the Oval Office.
One has to draw the line somewhere, though I don't feel in the least Austrian.
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