Two days after the world welcomes in the New Year, Republicans in Iowa will head to caucus sites to pick a candidate to run for the U.S. presidency.
Newt Gingrich has been the recent leader in the polls, but that lead has slipped as Libertarian/Republican Ron Paul has picked up steam. Iowa’s relatively progressive capitol newspaper, The Des Moines Register, endorsed Mitt Romney. But, it will be a big surprise if Iowa’s highly determined ultra-conservative, evangelical Christian Republican base follows the paper’s lead. It appears more likely either Gingrich or Paul will come out the winner unless moneyed Texas Governor Rick Perry can pull off a comeback.
The prospect of a Gingrich or Perry presidency is, to say the least, scary for anyone who is not evangelically conservative and of the Dominionist camp.
Just this past weekend Gingrich, according to The Washington Post, said in a telephone conference with reporters that, “as president, he would abolish whole courts to be rid of judges whose decisions he feels are out of step with the country.”
Examples of a judiciary “out of step” with America, according to Gingrich, centered on rulings that maintained a separation of church and state in the public square. In that same discussion with reporters, Gingrich railed against a Texas judge who ruled that the use of an invocation or a benediction at public school functions was unconstitutional. On CBS’s Face The Nation, Gingrich said as president he would have judges arrested who made rulings with which he disagreed. It sounds as if Gingrich is running for dictator of the nation rather than the presidency.
Gingrich is prone to hyperbole and a Gingrich without power is an entertaining phenomenon. It is easy to laugh at him and say, as Ronald Reagan did when he was running against Jimmy Carter, “there you go again.” But, a Gingrich with power just might be very dangerous. Will the needs of his overly inflated ego lead him to do what he says he will do? How far would he go?
Perry isn't the intellectual equal of Gingrich, but no less radical. At a Wesleyan Church in Charles City, Iowa this past Sunday, Perry preached: “Somebody’s values are going to decide the issues of the day, whatever they may be. Somebody’s values are going to be installed, if you will. The question is going to be, whose values? Is it going to be those of us of faith, or is it going to be somebody else’s values?”
Perry, like Gingrich and so many other Christian conservatives, cannot distinguish between the values of a faith and the faith itself.
The values of a faith are, for instance, doing for others just as you’d like them to do for you. This is quite different than an invocation of Jesus at a football game or praying a Christian prayer before the start of classes in a public school. Because the values of faith and sectarian practices are indistinguishable in Perry’s mind, he, like Gingrich, is a danger to a U.S. society originally based on the motto, E pluribus Unum (from many, one), which was adopted by the Congress of the United States in 1782.
It should be noted that in the mid-1950's, during the Cold War and America’s fear of atheistic Communism, Congress officially changed the motto from E pluribus Unum to In God We Trust. It also should be noted that “God” does not necessarily imply a trust in a specific deity. It can, and should, be interpreted as a trust in a higher value than those of our own making.
Regardless of the form with which we acknowledge America’s culture of inclusiveness, it is clear that in the Republican race for the White House, the Republican Party is behaving very schizophrenically.
On the one hand you have Gingrich, as well as Perry, Bachmann and Santorum, who promote big religion as a replacement for big government. On the other hand there is Ron Paul, who is surging in the Iowa polls. He would not replace our government with an evangelical theocracy, but with virtually no government at all. The nation that he, along with most other radical Libertarians, is one that envisions a back-to-pre-industrial world of small, independent communities. A modern, post-industrial technologically sophisticated society could not function without the regulatory systems, communication, transportation and financial infrastructure only a strong, central government can provide.
Paul appeals to the romantic in all of us. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all acted responsibly, lived together like family, and that we would take care of each other without the need of large institutions? Wouldn’t it be great if we could settle all of our differences through reasoned exchanges rather than the force of law? It would be terrific if we were to become a country that does not feel the need to be a warrior nation. If Ron Paul should win the Iowa caucuses, it will likely be because Iowans are a romantic people.
In the middle between the “big” conservatism of a Gingrich and the “small/libertarian” conservatism of a Paul, stands Romney. He is, so the experts seem to think, the likely Republican nominee regardless of what happens in Iowa. He literally is the “white bread” candidate. On the plus side, no one really hates him. On the negative side, no one really likes him. He is the tasteless candidate. He is good-looking, organized and efficient. He has no passion and few have a passion for him. If he becomes the Republican candidate, it is because the other candidates with passion, and with a passionate following, have done one another in with the slings and arrows of their struggle.
At the close of this year’s holiday season, Iowa will offer the rest of the nation the gift of their "wisdom" in naming their choice for a Republican presidential candidate. The gift will either be a potentially dangerous theocrat, a romantically likable but antiquated libertarian, or a tasteless, bloodless uninspiring have-any-position and say-anything-that-will get-you-elected technocrat.
Santa, don't your have someone better than these Republican candidates for president hidden in your bag of gifts this election year?
