If you are reading this at dinner time today the Iowa caucuses are only minutes away from being decided.
And as the sun sets on the first voting day of the 2012 nominating campaign, a great many Iowans say they may not know who they will vote for until they must decide or go home without making a difference.
The pollsters say Gov. Mitt Romney will win. But they also say Rep. Ron Paul of Texas will be second.
Ron Paul? He’s a Libertarian, a fringe candidate with views that can be most kindly characterized as quirky. Just last week he said 80 percent of what the federal government does is technically unconstitutional. He is an isolationist who would pull the U.S. military back from every station outside the country.
Last week the United States announced that it would not permit Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz and drive up the price of oil to ruinous heights. The U.S. Navy has a fleet there to back up those words. It would not be there if Paul were president. Nor would he send warships in response to an Iranian blockade.
A president, remember, is commander in chief of the armed forces and can make such decisions unilaterally.
Paul would eliminate the Federal Reserve Board, the nation’s first defense against inflation. His promise is to reduce the size of the government by a third or more. Which third? Medicaid? Medicare? Social Security? National defense? The national parks? Aid to the elderly? Flood controls? Farm programs? Children’s health? Paul’s answer to these questions is “probably.” If a program wasn’t in place when the framers wrote the Constitution, he’s against it.
Paul has been in Congress 20 years. He has been advocating radical surgery on government for all of those 20 years and has managed to get exactly one bill passed. He is, in other words, a Washington laughing stock. If he were the Republican nominee, the party wouldn’t carry a state. Not even Kansas.
But, to repeat, pollsters put him in second place in Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses.
What an insult to others in the race. Gov. Romney can take no comfort in beating the Texas clown. The rest of the candidates can only shake their heads and mutter bad words under their breath at such an absurdity. Any one of them would make a more credible candidate.
If the polls are accurate, Wednesday’s punditry will declare that Iowa sent a solemn message to the country: the public, they will declare, has had its fill of “big government” and wants to do away with the world-beater that the American people have created over the past 236 years. America, Iowa has said, should give it up, crawl into a corner and quit. What sick nonsense.
IF IOWA DOES say Rep. Ron Paul would be an acceptable president, then the rest of the country should laugh both Paul and Iowa off the stage and the voters in the primaries to come should be warned to do their homework before they go to the polls.
Deciding who will lead the most powerful, richest, most generous, most dedicated to individual rights and freedoms among all the world’s nations is a serious business, not a political game of pin the tail on the donkey. It calls for open eyes and study, not whimsy and blindfolds. Those who participate should know — really know — who the players are.
Voters have no excuse to be ignorant of a candidate’s platform, philosophy or experience. An ocean of information is available to everyone who makes even half an effort to be informed.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
