Cedar Rapids, Iowa
GEORGE W. BUSH has little to gain and a lot to lose in Iowa. At a minimum, he ought to do better than any Republican presidential candidate has ever done here. That’s 37 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses, which Bob Dole achieved in 1988. Bush says this is “a good goal to accomplish.” Even if he succeeds, however, he may not get much political credit for it, at least in the media. Since John McCain, Bush’s chief rival, is skipping the January 24 caucuses, the press has down-graded Iowa as a factor in the GOP nomination fight. So a Bush victory is likely to be interpreted as merely setting the stage for the ultimate one-on-one clash between Bush and McCain in the New Hampshire primary on February 1.
In truth, there’s more at stake in Iowa than the press realizes. The caucuses will answer the largest single question in the campaign: Is Bush a strong vote-getter outside of Texas? He’s a proven fund-raiser, he’s done famously well in national opinion polls, and he’s put together an impressive campaign team of political strategists, organizers, and policy advisers. But he’s yet to show he can inspire voters to turn out for him. In a straw vote last August in Ames, Bush’s performance was underwhelming. He was supported by less than one-third of Iowa Republicans — despite a heroic organizing effort and the absence of the McCain campaign. Bush got a prosaic 31 percent. Steve Forbes finished second with 20 percent.
Bush should improve on that in the caucuses. His campaign started late in Iowa, so his team wasn’t fully ready for the straw vote. He’s certainly in a stronger position now. He’s spent more than $ 1 million on TV ads in the state. Best of all for Bush, three competitors for the moderate-to-conservative majority among Iowa Republicans have dropped out, and he is the likeliest second choice for most of their supporters. The question, of course, is whether they’ll bother to go to the caucuses. Elizabeth Dole’s endorsement of Bush and her appearance with him in Cedar Rapids and two other Iowa cities on January 4 was aimed at stirring her backers to vote.
Since the straw vote, Bush has put together a remarkable coalition. His natural base is the same as his father’s in 1980 and 1988: the party establishment that’s fiscally conservative and socially moderate. George W. has captured these folks, and the candidate who does this normally wins the caucuses. He’s also done amazingly well in attracting social conservatives. Operatives for Gary Bauer, the strongest social conservative among the GOP candidates, complain that Bush — not Alan Keyes or Forbes — is their biggest problem in Iowa. He’s capturing the largest chunk of social conservatives, who make up roughly 35 percent of the Iowa Republican electorate.
The best example is state representative Rosemary Thompson of Cedar Rapids. During the Reagan administration, she worked for Bauer when he was an assistant secretary at the Education Department. In 1999, Bauer came to her home to ask for her support for president. “Gary,” she recalls telling him, “I love you, but I don’t think you can win.” Then, she signed on as co-chair of Bush’s campaign in the Cedar Rapids area. “He has the same qualities Ronald Reagan had,” Thompson says. “He can tell a story. He’s upbeat. He’s a people person.”
The breadth of Bush’s coalition was on display at two separate events at the Five Seasons Hotel in Cedar Rapids last week. On the evening of January 4, Bush, Dole, and Iowa senator Charles Grassley spoke to a gathering made up mostly of people from the business community. The next morning, Bush addressed a breakfast of social conservatives, many of them pastors at evangelical churches who had backed Pat Robertson’s presidential bid in 1988. The evangelicals were even more enthusiastic than the business people. “I believe [Bush] is the answer to our prayers,” said Rev. Francis Frangipane of Robbins. “He knows when and how to implement righteousness.” Bush has “a proven ability to blend faith and values with government,” insisted Rev. Dick Hardy of Des Moines.
Bush has two opponents in Iowa, one imaginary, one real. His aides here and in Austin insist that McCain is really running in Iowa. What’s their evidence? “We hear rumblings,” says Joe Gunderson, Bush’s Iowa chairman. One suggestive bit involves Brian Kennedy, who was Iowa GOP chairman before becoming manager of Lamar Alexander’s now-defunct presidential campaign. Kennedy now works for the McCain campaign, but he lives in Tennessee and has been back to Iowa only twice in recent months. The Bushies also point to McCain’s appearance at one televised debate in Iowa and the fact that he said he would attend another. “There’s a reason he’s coming to the debates,” says Gunderson. Yes, there is. McCain would like to get 10 percent or so of the vote without fielding an organization or campaigning in Iowa. But this may not be realistic of McCain, since organization truly matters in getting voters to the caucuses.
And organization is why Forbes is a legitimate challenger in Iowa. “We have the best ground game, the best organization in the state,” says Jim Tobin, Forbes’s political director. Practically no one disputes this. Forbes has spent nearly twice what Bush has on TV ads. And he’s signed up some of the best operatives in the state. Still, for all his effort, Forbes can’t get above the low 20s in public opinion polls. The Bauer campaign’s tracking of the numbers puts Forbes in the teens (with Bauer only a few points behind). To finish what Tobin calls a “close second” to Bush, Forbes is counting on “non-traditional” Republican voters. That means people who usually don’t attend the caucuses. In Iowa, candidates who rely on such voters are usually disappointed.
But there’s another tradition in Iowa that should benefit Forbes. For the GOP front-runner, high poll numbers often don’t stand up in the caucuses, while the candidate of the conservatives often surges. In the 1996 race, Bob Dole got 41 percent in the Des Moines Register poll two months before the caucuses but only 26 percent when Republicans actually voted. Pat Buchanan soared from 7 percent with two months to go to 23 percent in the caucuses. At the moment, though, there’s no evidence of a Forbes surge. On the contrary, he bombed in the first TV debate in Iowa.
For Bush, bliss in Iowa consists of four things: winning the caucuses, beating the 37 percent marker, whipping Forbes (or Gary Bauer, whoever is second) by a good bit more than 10 percent, and holding McCain to a low single digit. My guess is there’s a fair chance all four will happen. And if they do, the conventional wisdom about Iowa will be shattered again. McCain has already defied the rule that all candidates must play in Iowa. A big Bush win would prove he is a strong vote-getter outside of Texas. And it would also mean that not three (as in ’96) or even two (as in ’80) viable candidates would emerge from the caucuses, but only one: George W. Then, the stage truly would be set for the clash of two titans in New Hampshire.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
