Iowa Republican Debate – Straw men on a tightrope

By Jeffrey A. Rendall, 8/05/07


The nine surviving Republican candidates for president (mercifully, Jim Gilmore withdrew a few weeks ago) met for their first debate in Iowa, the first state in America to cast ballots (in a caucus) for party nominees next January.
 
In a campaign season that’s already been half a year in the making, and with official balloting still five months away -- if you figured there would be no sense of urgency amongst these men on a stage, you were very wrong. There was very much to gain for most of the competitors, and very much to lose for one of them, Mitt Romney, who was announced at the beginning of the program as the front-runner amongst Iowans with a double-digit lead (26% to Rudy Giuliani’s 14%).
 
Further, the Iowa Republican Party is about to conduct a straw-poll, basically a beauty contest designed to test a candidate’s early popularity but is more of a test of organizational strength (and the willingness to spend large amounts of cash to win it) – and that’s just a few days away, set for August 11th.
 
This wasn’t any ordinary Sunday morning talk show news event, being hosted by former Clinton advisor and current ABC News pundit George Stephanopoulos (with the Des Moines Register’s David Yepsen contributing questions) – this was largely a final, desperate attempt for half of these candidates to stay afloat and on the campaign trail.
 
In contrast to the recent Democratic/CNN ‘YouTube’ debate, the Republicans took part in a much more structured question and answer session with Stephanopoulos and Yepsen, which also included a few ‘video’ questions, but lacked the controversy of the internet-based YouTube format, which included queries from co-habiting lesbians, an assault rifle toting gun lover, a guitarist wielding tax complainant, and even a fake snowman wondering about global warming.
 
Stephanopoulos announced that he was going to try and expose the differences between the candidates, and to the extent they allowed it, some distinction was accomplished. While that was the case, conservatives still aren’t seeing much substance behind the flash of the leading candidates – Giuliani talks like a fiscal conservative, yet his social issues bear no resemblance to the Republican Party’s platform, and he’s even resorted to making jokes about his stances in a lame attempt to cast attention elsewhere.
 
Mitt Romney’s record contradicts his words on nearly every important conservative issue, and all the good looks and slick verbalization in the world can’t bend the truth far enough to fall in his corner.
 
John McCain is looking pretty pathetic these days, but I can even see him regaining some of his prior support, simply out of sympathy and loyalty to a man who’s given many, many good years to the GOP with little more than a ‘maverick’ label and two fizzled presidential bids to go along with them.
 
The ‘lower tier’ candidates are in some ways more intriguing, but they aren’t allowed to speak long enough, or lack the ability to make an impression on their own. Duncan Hunter has a solid conservative voting record, yet he virtually disappears once the cameras go on. He doesn’t spell out a ‘vision’ that would sway anyone.
 
Mike Huckabee continues to be the ‘nice guy’ candidate of the group, but he’s becoming less distinguishable as time goes on. Sam Brownback’s somewhat controversial campaign ads attacking Mitt Romney bought him the first question in the debate (concerning Romney’s evolving abortion stance(s), and even mentioned Romney’s wife’s contribution to a family planning group), but he’s another one who just seems to blend in.
 
Ron Paul does stand out, but not necessarily for reasons that he’d appreciate. Paul’s sincerity comes through at every opportunity, but he also seems to say one thing too many. For instance, Paul drew applause when he was asked to speak on his strategy for ending the Iraq War (one of the citizen video questions), and he simply answered ‘Just come home.’ 
 
Paul supporters broke into loud applause, and you couldn’t help but think he would’ve been better served by stopping there, but the Texan continued on with a diatribe about the war being an undeclared illegal war, that it wasn’t any different than such unsuccessful actions in the past, and finally that we are losing the war and should come home.
 
You could sense the air leaving the room at that moment. Conservatives and Republicans who consider Ronald Reagan a champion of everything that is American would never hear him say such a thing – America doesn’t lose at anything. We may not always accomplish what we set out to do, and the Iraq War is a constitutionally challenged foreign policy blunder, but are we really losing? And who is ‘we,’ the military?
 
Paul is an intelligent man, but he must realize that there are better ways to phrase his positions on this hot button issue. He may realize that he has no chance of winning the nomination, but he doesn’t want his legacy to be that of a disgruntled, negative curmudgeon who spreads a very Democrat-like negative message.
 
Harry Reid announced ‘we’re losing’ on the floor of the Senate, and certainly must have realized the error as soon as he said it – but Paul seems completely oblivious to the notion that Americans don’t flock to someone with such a dark message. Reagan is immortalized for his eternal optimism – and while Paul’s beliefs (or many of them) are something conservatives can latch onto, he’s just not the man for the office.
 
Observations
 
First off, for some reason, spectator applause was permitted in this debate which was highly distracting as well as somewhat ‘phony,’ in the sense that everyone in the auditorium probably was in there to support one candidate or another. Every candidate drew applause at some point when they articulated something that sounded patriotic and seemed to make sense, which is a pretty low threshold for someone running for president.
 
Winner? Mitt Romney.
 
Not because he articulated the purest conservative message, but simply because he ‘wears the suit.’ Romney looks like a president should look. That’s a completely shallow statement, but Americans tend to gravitate towards someone who looks strong, and that’s Mitt Romney.
 
Romney fumbled through many answers, and persistently refuses to address any questions head-on, but for these debates, such truth-telling doesn’t appear to matter to voters who may be seeing these candidates for the first time.
 
Losers? Oddly enough, none.
 
Rudy Giuliani still looks somewhat like an undertaker, but the nervousness that was so prominent during the first three Republican debates has subsided. Maybe it’s because Giuliani isn’t leading in Iowa (or participating in the straw poll), maybe it’s because Fred Thompson had deflected much of his intense news scrutiny – but Giuliani is now calm and relaxed, and happy that he’s able to talk about his office-holding experience without a lot of challenge from the moderators or anyone other than true conservatives.
 
John McCain is trapped in his nearly 71-year-old body as well as his intractable issue stances, has criticized his rivals roundly in the past for departing from positions and can’t change his viewpoint on an incredibly unpopular war. He clings to every bit of positive news that comes from Iraq, and is doing whatever he can to portray an image of strength – but as noted above, all he’s likely to get is sympathy.
 
The rest? Tommy Thompson stands out – as a loser. His ’18 state’ Iraq idea is interesting, but everything else smells uncomfortably bad like big government, especially when he talks about ‘reforming’ health care, which is supposedly his specialty.
 
Tom Tancredo is a good man, a good Congressman, and has excellent conservative credentials. All that, and you still wonder why he’s up there. He’s probably the worst of the candidates on stage, because he can’t put coherent sentences together that piece together to form an idea. He’s got so many ideas going through his head, but what comes out is often not what he’d want it to be.
 
A good example of Tancredo’s inability to articulate his positions occurred when he was asked about his position on Iraq, and if it differed with the Romney/Giuliani/McCain front-runner ‘stay the course’ positions.
 
Tancredo, already flustered because the others talked for a full twenty minutes before he was even allowed to speak, replied that he was concerned about the military’s rules of engagement in Iraq, and how he would allow our combatants more freedom if he was president. He then said “we shouldn’t allow anyone to go into a battle and be actually at risk.”
 
After saying this, he paused briefly and probably realized what he said was completely absurd, for he blurted out a few more words about a Navy SEAL from his district who had been killed – but the point had hardly been made.
 
You sense that Tancredo’s got real convictions, and he’s been an outspoken leader on the immigration issue, but he’s simply not articulate enough to be president. Many a candidate has had his heart and head in the right place, but that doesn’t mean he’s a good fit for the most demanding job in the world. George W. Bush is living proof of that (not that his head is where it should be on most conservative issues).
 
This observer gives Tancredo major credit in one area – he, along with Ron Paul, is the candidate who is an outspoken advocate for limited government. Tancredo remarked flat-out that he doesn’t believe the government should provide health care, and accurately suggested that every one of the leading competitors’ plans included some sort of government control in healthcare. 
 
Tancredo speaks up for small government, which is extremely refreshing after suffering through a decade-plus of big government Republican rule, people who’ve essentially adopted a liberal welfare-state ‘let’s help them’ mentality, and passed a series of federal power-grabbing initiatives that have just been Democratic spending under a different name.
 
Thoughts on each candidate:
 
You know you’re in trouble when it’s fifteen months before the presidential election and you’re already heartily sick of the candidates. All of the Republicans (as well as the Democrats) are getting old, and for someone who’s been following the campaign since the beginning, all we’re really looking for is something new, and inspirational.
 
Candidates in no particular order:
 
Tom Tancredo: According to the most recent poll, Tancredo can count on 5% of Iowans to support him. His leadership in the immigration debate is commendable, and his voting record is a credit, but his campaign is all about bringing attention to one issue, and not about the man’s potential leadership of the greatest nation in the free world. I can see Tancredo as the head of a cabinet post that’s in charge of illegal immigration, but when it comes to the rest of the issue spectrum, it’s scary to think of him in the president’s seat.
 
Tommy Thompson -- The worst candidate still standing. He’s a liberal ex-Bush cabinet member who refuses to disavow big government policies, can’t talk about cutting spending in a meaningful way, and should retire to the lakes of Wisconsin to fish and remain a political curiosity for succeeding generations.
 
Sam Brownback – The invisible man from the great plains. Social conservatives love him, he’s got a commendable record on fiscal issues, yet nobody wants to touch him because of his waffling on immigration and his odd refusal to grasp the concept of small government. Brownback continues to champion his ‘whole life’ position, but what exactly does that mean, that government will protect unborn life – and all the ‘life’ left in a lifetime? Brownback also talks about helping Darfur, but does that mean further complicated foreign entanglements?
 
Rudy Giuliani – The Republican front-runner for months, which sheds some light into the bankrupt nature of the Republican Party. There’s the old saying ‘if you choose security over freedom, you’ll lose every time,’ which certainly rings true with Giuliani. Giuliani promotes his experience during 9-1-1, and his time as a ‘chief executive,’ but what does that really mean to the real world? He’s a political wildcard that still says he supports a ‘woman’s right to choose,’ as well as ‘civil unions’ and various other questionable social positions. His record isn’t deep enough to merit the praise he engenders, and is dangerous to any conservative who contemplates choosing him.
 

Mitt Romney – He’s a Mormon, and for once his ‘faith’ didn’t come up during the debate. Who knows whether his religion matters, but what should be more troubling for people is he can’t really keep track of, much less explain why he’s changed his ‘views’ so often during his political career. For those who value ‘elect-ability’ over everything else, you have to consider that Romney doesn’t really appeal to any constituency, and would be a fill-in nominee for the GOP in a time when a strong leader must be found. If you’re looking for a rich, good looking duck to take the buckshot in the ’08 election, he might be the one.

 
John McCain – One wonders why he’s still considered a member of the ‘top tier,’ when his fundraising is non-existent, his campaign advisors can’t afford to fly, and he’s clinging by a thread to his 35 year-old war record and an unpopular military engagement that shows no end. McCain is the over-the-hill candidate that you wish would just go away (for his sake), but are forced to listen to because he’s put in his time.
 
Mike Huckabee – Scored some points with his answer at the end – about the American public being the ‘boss’ and the president being merely a servant at the public’s whim. Huckabee’s got the presence to be the choice of those who favor limited government, yet doesn’t take the opportunities to reject gas tax increases or those policies that could prove destructive to the American ideal. Huckabee’s a fine man with an admirable personal history, yet days like today remind us of why he can’t get the masses to recognize him.
 
Duncan Hunter – Perhaps the most frustrating candidate in the ’08 Republican field, because you’re literally cheering for him to do something noticeable. His son’s been in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet you’re tired of hearing about it, and his years on various committees in the House doesn’t necessarily make him more able than other candidates for a position dealing with a lot of foreign affairs. Hunter’s said over and over that he’s following in the example of Ronald Reagan, yet there’s only one way to answer that – ‘I knew Ronald Reagan, and he was a friend of mine. Congressman, you’re no Ronald Reagan.’
 
Ron Paul – As observed above, Paul’s not the candidate for conservatives. You can’t help but root for him as the longest shot in the field, but you also wish he might take the advice of some TV political pundit who would tell him to watch what he says. His answer at the end, on how he would ‘restore’ the presidency, was probably the best answer in the entire debate – that he would ‘restore openness to government,’ and that he wouldn’t use executive privilege to deny information to Congress. Paul would be open to a ‘transparent’ government, but if that means he’d open up his thoughts to his anti-establishment bizarre fantasy world, then a Ron Paul presidency suddenly doesn’t sound so great.
 
I didn’t go into this latest GOP debate with any expectations of someone emerging – and the performance of the candidates shows it’s going to be a long season and then some, until the next person is elected president.