Iowa Hall of Pride netINS, Inc. Butler House on Grand B&B Sam's Barber Shop Douglas T. Bates III, Attorney KMA Radio's ''Chuck & Don Show'' Barack Obama story & coloring book The Monks of New Melleray Abbey RELATED LINKS About Offenburger.com Biographies Want to Reprint? Want Updates? ARCHIVES Chuck Offenburger's columns Christie Vilsack's columns Carla Offenburger's columns Carla's book reviews Jared Strong's columns Guest Columns The Simple Serenity Farm columns Farm Photos, 2006 - 2008 Our Iowa News Digest Along Our Way  What’s the deal with the black & white saddle shoes?  Click here for the story of our farm in Greene County, Iowa. Here's looking at life at Simple Serenity Farm  We Offenburgers spent Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and a weather-enforced extra night at the home of Carla's sister Chris Woods and her family in Des Moines. It was a fun gathering that featured nine-month-old Arianna, the Woods' granddaughter, in the starring role! Click here for larger format Earlier photos in this series 
|
|
 Shouldn’t we Republicans be feeling happier than we do after our Straw Poll on Saturday? By CHUCK OFFENBURGER August 13, 2007 COOPER, IOWA My eight years as a Republican have been framed by the rise and fall of President George W. Bush, so I guess I shouldn’t expect to be having a whole lot of fun right now in the party.  I thought I’d probably be supporting former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee in this 2008 campaign. He’d been a fun ally in the Alexander camp in 1999. I wrote later he was the funniest Baptist preacher I’d ever been around. But Huckabee seems to me to have veered to the right – even for a conservative like he is – with his rigid positions on the war, the Middle East, immigration reform. I think he has pandered to the Fair Tax crowd and the National Rifle Association. Still, he has run a fun campaign here, using his strong sense of humor, his exceptional speaking ability, stories about how he lost 110 pounds in recent years, and his playing the bass guitar in his own rock ’n’ roll band. All of that must have helped him on Saturday, when he finished a surprising second in the voting with 18.1 percent. The best line written about that Straw Poll outcome came from Douglas Burns, columnist for the Carroll Daily Times Herald in western Iowa. Here is Burns’ opening line in a story he wrote Saturday night for the Iowa Independent news site on the Internet: “Apparently anyone who can lose 110 pounds shouldn’t be taken lightly.” I voted for the winner, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, on Saturday. He has indeed excited me, at least somewhat. I really like the fact that he is a fresh face on the national political scene, although maybe only a 60-year-old columnist would say a candidate that is 60 years old could be a “fresh face.” And I have confidence that his background has prepared him well for the presidency – his governmental experience in Massachusetts, his success in business, his having saved the Salt Lake City Olympics from initial poor management, and the compassion I see in him coming from his Mormon faith and missionary work. I believe him in his pro-life position. Romney has out-hustled and out-spent all his Republican rivals in Iowa, and he came into the Straw Poll as everybody’s clear favorite. Maybe my expectations were too high. But am I the only Romney supporter who was disappointed that he got only 31.6 percent of the vote on Saturday? I was expecting him to poll up in the high 40s, maybe even 50 percent. Also, I look at Huckabee’s 18.1 percent and then the percentage of the third and fourth place finishers – ultra-conservatives Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas at 15.3 percent and Congressman Tom Tancredo at 13.7 percent. Total up the percentage of those three candidates swinging from the right, and they’ve got 47.1 percent of the vote. You’ll remember that Senator John McCain of Arizona, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson – all of whom I view as somewhat more moderate – chose not to participate in the Straw Poll. Had they, the Huckabee surprise might have been more profound – he might have won it all. Clearly, my man Romney must run even harder here before the Iowa Caucuses, which for now are still set for January. My feeling is that if the Republican Party winds up nominating a Huckabee, Brownback or Tancredo, we’ll be looking at 1964 all over again. That’s when President Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic incumbent, was a landslide winner over conservative Republican Barry Goldwater.  I’ve been thinking about that a lot the last 10 days, after hearing from Mike Fassino, a supermarket owner in Audubon in southwest Iowa. Fassino, a Giuliani supporter who was bummed by his candidate’s decision to skip the Straw Poll, dropped in at my own sample precinct, Sam’s Barber Shop in Audubon, when we were conducting our “Barber Poll” discussion there on August 3. “In the future, if the Republican Party is going to become the party of the people again, some of our hard-right positions are going to have to be tempered,” Fassino said. “We’re not going to win national elections with hard-right positions anymore.” Other observations from my Straw Poll experience on Saturday: -- Our Republican Party is just too white and, at the top, too male. -- I’ve loved seeing all the young people involved in Brownback’s campaign. -- Brownback is only 50 years old. My own feeling, after seeing him give an uninspired speech on the Greene County Courthouse square in Jefferson earlier this summer, is that he is going through the motions this political cycle, running for the future. But then, rock ’n’ roller Huckabee is only 51. So maybe he’s got future runs in him, too. -- Meanwhile, regardless of the temperature, the turnout Saturday of only 30,000 people – compared to 38,000 in 1999 – was a very bad sign. It might be “Bush fatigue” among us Republicans, as some observers were saying, or it might be a general political fatigue among all us Iowans. Neither would be good. -- As for the Straw Poll no-shows McCain, Giuliani and Fred Thompson? No way will I vote for any of the three, nor should any other Iowa Republican. -- And as for former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, who dropped out of the presidential race today after his dismal showing in the Straw Poll on Saturday? I extend my thanks for his good citizenship in running, and my sympathies that he got only 7.3 percent to finish sixth. I’ve been there, Governor Thompson. I feel your pain.  You can reach the author by e-mail at chuck@Offenburger.com.
|
