Erick Erickson, editor of the conservative blog RedState, helped bring down the Iowa straw poll and has begun dancing on its grave.
Erickson organized the “RedState Gathering” in Atlanta, Ga., and scheduled it to overlap with the original Iowa straw poll date. As presidential candidates began backing away from Iowa and climbing into bed with Erickson, the straw poll looked to be on life support before the Iowa GOP pulled the plug on Friday morning.
“It [the straw poll] brought many captives to Iowa whose ransoms brought wealth to the Iowa GOP,” Erickson wrote upon news of the straw poll’s death. “What started as a political novelty in the seventies became a mafia-like shakedown of Republican candidates, bleeding them dry in the run-up to a presidential election in a state whose influence matters less and less.”
Erickson’s event lists former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker among the presidential contenders scheduled to speak in August. Bush and Huckabee both decided to forego the straw poll in advance of the Iowa GOP’s decision, and Walker reportedly chose not to send his aides to a straw poll planning meeting.
“Now you guys have no choice,” Erickson wrote on his blog. “Come to the RedState Gathering … We worked with the Iowa GOP. But when they decided to change, they suddenly decided to stop returning our phone calls. Well, maybe now they might answer the phone.”
On his blog, Erickson took credit for his “small part” in the straw poll’s undoing. On Twitter, he promoted other conservatives who acknowledged his triumph.
“I want on my tombstone ‘Killed the Iowa Straw Poll,'” Erickson said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “It was past time for it to go. But the reality is that this was more the hubris of the Iowa Republicans. We tried to work around them and they chose otherwise. Pride tends to come before the fall.”
But the straw poll appears to have suffered more from its inability to determine future GOP presidential nominees and weed out lesser candidates in past elections. The previous two GOP presidential nominees did not win the Iowa straw poll.
After unanimously voting to hold the straw poll in January, the Iowa GOP’s board voted unanimously to cancel the poll on Friday morning, as the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard noted.
“Through the whole process we’ve listened to Iowa activists and our Republican candidates,” Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufman said in a statement. “Now we’re listening again. Many candidates are still concerned about participating in an event that carries significant media-driven expectations well ahead of our First in the Nation Caucuses. While we still deeply believe that the straw poll offers a fantastic opportunity for candidates, we need to focus on strengthening our First in the Nation status and putting a Republican back in the White House.”
And Erickson appears to be having a good week. Before the Iowa GOP acknowledged it was dumped in favor of the man The Atlantic has called “the most powerful conservative in America,” he guest-hosted for Rush Limbaugh on Thursday.
The 2014 midterm elections changed when talk radio host Laura Ingraham helped Rep. David Brat supplant then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Erickson can similarly shake up the debate as 2016 approaches.
But some Republicans think the elimination of the straw poll will fail to make any difference. Former Minnesota Gov.Tim Pawlenty, who finished third in the 2011 straw poll and ended his presidential campaign the following day, told the Washington Examiner that the straw poll has outlived its usefulness.
“I don’t think it [the end of the straw poll] will make any difference because history revealed the straw poll to be largely irrelevant,” Pawlenty said. “I would just say good riddance to the event. It’s revealed itself to not be a good predictor of the caucus results or the ultimate nominee, and had been viewed as lacking credibility in terms of what its value was.”
