Iowa and Beyond

My older brother is a born-again right-wing Biblical-inerrancy Christian fundamentalist. The the good news is that he's not particularly inspired by the GOP Presidential field and seriously doubts that anyone – with the possible exception of Romney – is a plausible actual President.

I concur, but for reasons you can imagine are based on slightly different criteria. With the batshit quotient now out of control as Perry, Bachmann, Gingrich, and Santorum battle to get into the top three or breakout, we need to settle on what Iowa means for the nomination and the campaign.

It's virtually meaningless. You can safely ignore Iowa. The results – no matter what they are – are unlikely to alter the situation. The nomination is Romney's to lose, and the election has been and will be a referendum on the President's leadership.

Romney can do or say pretty much anything and the result will come down to a thumbs up or down on Obama's tenure. Should any of the other GOP contenders win the nomination, that would heighten the contrast between Obama's calm no-drama one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach, and help him make his own case for the value of his policies and accomplishments.

Another reason to ignore Iowa is that the results of the Caucus over the past several cycles have not been terribly indicative of how the contest for the nomination would go thereafter. The Iowa winner has gone onto the GOP nomination twice in the past five contested races: George HW Bush beat Reagan(!) in 1980 and failed to get the nod; in 1988 Bob Dole and Pat Robertson beat the eventual nominee (Bush I); Dole won in 1996, and George W. won in 2000, and the 2008 nominee came 4^th in Iowa behind Huckabee, Romney, and Fred Thompson (!!)  On the DEM side the Iowa result tracks the eventual outcome more closely, but it's still true Bill Clinton was 4^th in 1992, and Jimmy Carter in 1976 came second to an uncommitted slate.

Unless Bachmann or Santorum wins and Romney is 6^th, the fundamental dynamic of this race is hardening fast: Romney limps to nomination, blabs or flips-flops at will about anything he likes, and awaits public's verdict on Obama's first term.

Obama can lose this election. Never forget that. Mission one is to stand up against the blistering irrationality of the new Repug consensus that defends the abject failure of the Bush tax cuts, and an insane race to the bottom on a wide swath of social and economic issues best described as inspired by Leviticus, Laffer and Looney-Libertarianism. I'd suggest a little Churchillian wisdom: Let us brace ourselves to our duties in this matter, and act so as to ensure that if our Republic lasts for a thousand years, people will still say “offered an easy path upon which to retreat, they held steady to the American dream of creating a more perfect union”