As the hour of actual caucusing drew closer, Ron Paul’s campaign trumpeted his endorsement by a pastor who, as it happens, has spoken of executing homosexuals. Rick Perry pledged to devote predator drones and thousands of troops to the protection of the Mexican border, making the mission to keep every last illegal immigrant from crossing sound as urgent as rooting out terrorists in Pakistan.Why is the GOP field so beyond the beliefs of mainstream America? Because the more moderate among them (Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, etc.) didn't want to run against an incumbent president who won't have to spend a penny on a primary fight and will have a war chest of hundreds of millions to spend when the battle really begins this summer. That left the field open -- even after the press stopped falling for fake-outs from Sarah Palin and Donald Trump -- for every level of circus performer, from Herman Cain to Newt Gingrich. Thus Mitt Romney appears to be the only reasonable person in the field, but that's damning with faint praise.
And Rick Santorum, bringing his "Faith, Family and Freedom" tour to this eastern Iowa town on Thursday, promised never to be cowed by all those craven secularists who believe that a stable, healthy household needn’t be headed by a God-fearing mom and dad.
None of these three men is likely to win the Republican nomination. But before they exit stage right — stage far right, that is — they and a few of their similarly quixotic, similarly strident competitors will do no small measure of damage to the Republican Party and no great favors to the country as a whole. What happens in Iowa doesn’t stay in Iowa: it befouls Republicans’ image nationally, becomes a millstone around the eventual nominee’s neck and legitimizes debate about some matters that shouldn’t be debatable.
Labels: politics