DAVENPORT, Iowa — “Ron Paul! Ron Paul! Ron Paul!” The chants
were loud and persistent.
Mitt Romney came to town Monday and a Ron Paul rally broke
out. As the Massachusetts governor left one of his relatively rare
campaign appearances in Iowa, some two dozen supporters of the
Texas congressman lined the sidewalk along outside the Hotel
Blackhawk. Romney stepped out the door and heard the crowd
expressing their enthusiasm for his GOP rival. Romney chuckled and
waved before boarding the bus emblazoned with his slogan, “Believe
in America.” As the bus pulled out and turned onto East Third
Street, the Paul fans chanted louder and waved their signs, some
occasionally yelling, “Liberty!”
In one of the multiplying oddities of the 2012 Republican
presidential campaign, neither of the two candidates leading the
polls in Iowa is the kind of conservative champion that has
traditionally won the Hawkeye State’s first-in-the-nation caucus.
Between them, however, the moderate Romney and the libertarian Paul
combine more than 40 percent of the GOP vote here, according to the
latest
RealClearPolitics average of Iowa polls. And though they are
neck-and-neck in the polls, there is no doubt which of the two
current front-runners here generates the most fanatical support.
When Ron Paul holds an event in Iowa, no Romney boosters are
standing outside in the cold December wind maniacally shouting,
“Mitt! Mitt! Mitt!”
Undaunted by his inability to inspire fanatical
enthusiasm, Romney keeps campaigning like the inevitable Republican
nominee, with a message aimed squarely at the Democrat he expects
to face next November. He quoted a speech that Obama gave in
Davenport four years ago, when the Democrat told Iowans, “This is
our moment. This is our time.” That time is over, Romney told his
GOP audience.
“Well, Mr. President, you have now had your
moment. We have seen the results. And now, Mr. President, it is our
time,” Romney said to cheers. He blamed the nation’s economic
plight on the president who campaigned in 2008 on a unifying
message of hope and change, but who now seems determined to seek
re-election on a platform of class warfare.
“Once, Barack Obama appealed to our better angels,” Romney
told his Davenport listeners. “Today, he demonizes fellow
Americans.”
Nearly all conservatives in Iowa and elsewhere in America
could cheer Romney’s anti-Obama message, but remain doubtful that
he is the Republican most capable of effectively delivering that
message. On a series of issues ranging from health care to global
warming to abortion to gay rights, Romney has previously been on
the same liberal side as Obama. Although Romney is now running as a
conservative — another slogan on the side of his campaign bus is
“Conservative, Businessman, Leader” — it is difficult for him to
out-run his own record. Neither, however, can the other Iowa
front-runner.
Controversy continues to surround Ron Paul’s newsletters,
which in the 1980s and '90s served up a mix of melodramatic
messages, including warnings
about “the coming race war” and “the Israeli lobby.” The
American Spectator’s Jeffrey Lord has written
extensively about these skeletons in Paul’s closet. Former Paul
aide
Eric Dondero wrote this week that he “never heard
a racist word expressed towards Blacks or Jews” by the Texas
congressman. Yet it is not difficult to imagine what use Democrats
would make of those old newsletters were Paul somehow to
miraculously emerge as the GOP presidential nominee — a result
that no analyst currently considers feasible. Paul’s
anti-interventionist foreign policy views (which his critics call
“isolationist”) make him an indigestible lump in the 2012
Republican field, and the main question seems to be how much damage
he will inflict on his more conventional rivals during the course
of the campaign.
That damage will begin next Tuesday in Iowa, and the two
most likely victims are both erstwhile front-runners in the
Republican field, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former House Speaker
Newt Gingrich. Should Paul finish first or second in the Jan. 3
precinct caucuses, neck-and-neck with Romney, the best hope for
Perry and Gingrich would then be to finish third. However,
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick
Santorum have both campaigned here longer and more often than
either Perry or Gingrich. If either Santorum or Bachmann finishes
as high as third next Tuesday, Perry and Gingrich would then be
fighting for fourth place — a humiliation, considering that both
of them were once nationally recognized contenders, with much
larger budgets that Santorum and Bachmann. And the
most recent Iowa poll shows all four of those candidates —
Gingrich, Bachmann, Santorum and Perry — separated by a
statistically insignificant margin in a four-way dogfight for third
place behind Paul and Romney.
All of which is enough to remind conservatives of other
polls, which show President Obama struggling to defeat a so-called
“generic
Republican” challenger in 2012. And it may be that the man
whose bus rolled past the chanting Ron Paul supporters here in
Davenport last night will end up campaigning next fall as exactly
that: Mitt Romney, Generic Republican.
Not a very inspiring slogan, but perhaps Americans are
tired of inspiring slogans.
