Quotes of the Day
Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson has never been one to linger too long shaking hands. He is a deliberative man, who campaigns in short bursts, and enjoys his private time as much as anyone. So when he finished speaking here Wednesday night, in the cramped back room of a restaurant, he never stopped working his way to the exit door. A few minutes and a couple of posed photographs later, he was back on the bus for another long drive through another Iowa snowstorm.
Nearly a dozen of his potential supporters remained, however. They circled around Thompson's state chairman, Rep. Steve King, the man who just might lift the struggling campaign to a halfway decent finish in the nation's first caucus state. A popular state conservative, King was holding court, as he often does, on the issue of illegal immigration, which he speaks of as a crisis on par with the war in Iraq.
"The casualties in America are greater on average by far than they are in Iraq," he announced, citing dubious back-of-the-envelope estimates about the number of American homicides committed by people without citizenship. About an hour earlier, King had told the audience that Thompson was the only candidate who knew how to deal with those who had crossed the border illegally. "Fred Thompson says, 'You've got to send them back,'" King told the crowd of about 60, earning a hearty round of applause.
The Thompson campaign is hoping that this hawkish immigration message will help earn its candidate a bronze medal on caucus night, January 3. With the two Republican front-runners, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, both polling over 25%, a respectable third-place finish is the most that Thompson can hope for. But even that won't be easy, since three Republican candidates are vying for the third spot in Iowa — Arizona Sen. John McCain, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Thompson, each with poll numbers that hover around 10%. Though fourth or fifth place is not necessarily a death knell for any of them, they could all certainly use the bump. As Huckabee likes to say on the trail, "There are three tickets out of Iowa — first class, business class, and coach."
Safety First
As it happens, all three of Iowa's second-tier Republicans are running on a similar message, each claiming to be the best candidate to keep America safe in the tumultuous years ahead. But they differ on emphasis. McCain hopes to focus Iowa's attention on his long involvement in war policy, both as a critic and supporter of the current military strategy in Iraq, which has shown recent gains. Giuliani hopes to shift the focus back to September 11, 2001, when he led New York City out of the smoky ruins of the World Trade Center. Thompson has pinned his campaign to his own charismatic tough-guy appeal, as the man ready to face both foreign enemies and domestic threats like immigration. "I would ask that you consider this, when our worst enemy is sitting down at the negotiating table," Thompson asked the crowd here, "who do we want sitting on the other side?"
A day later and 80 frozen miles away, McCain showed up in a Des Moines suburb, one stop on his three-day private plane hopscotch across the state. "I'm asking for your vote because I believe that the transcendent challenge of the 21st Century is radical Islamic extremism," McCain told a crowd of more than 200 in the suburb of Windsor Heights. "I wouldn't be seeking this office if it were not for that challenge."
McCain has been riding a wave of newspaper endorsements, including a nod from the local Des Moines Register, as well as rising polls in New Hampshire, where he has vowed to win the primary on January 8. But in Iowa, McCain cannot make it through a town hall without delicately addressing immigration, the topic that cost him his front-runner status last summer, when he prominently supported a bill that would give illegal immigrants a path to legal citizenship. "My friends, I learned a lesson," McCain told the crowd. "I got the message." Though he continues to support a path to citizenship, he now says that he would not enact any such plan until the borders are secure. "There will be times when you strongly disagree with me," he said at the end of his talk. "But it won't be because I have taken any political position. It is because I have done what I think is the right thing."
Giuliani's Iowa campaign, meanwhile, remains the most ponderous. For months, Giuliani has played hot and cold with the state, spending money on the ground but stopping short of making a full commitment, as his poll numbers have steadily declined. He has a paid staff of 12, on par with Huckabee's 14-person operation, and significant direct mail presence, but he has not backed up the campaign with any local television advertisements, and only occasional visits, including a two-day swing that will begin Friday. The campaign continues to try to lower expectations. "We feel very good about our position considering the amount of time and resources, including millions of dollars, that some other campaigns have outspent us in the state," says Giuliani's state spokesman Jarrod Agen.
No Amnesty Allowed
This is all good news for the Thompson campaign, which may find itself placing third because it upsets the party's base the least. While McCain spoke Thursday morning, Thompson did interviews with talk radio hosts who had gathered in Des Moines at the behest of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that supports a crackdown on illegal immigration. His new position on the issue is a substantial shift from last year, when Thompson said in a Fox News interview that it was not realistic to expel the roughly 12 million illegal immigrants who are here. "You're going to have to, in some way, work out a deal where they can have some aspirations of citizenship," he told Hannity and Colmes in April of 2006.
But his new position — no "amnesty," crack down on employers who break the law — has had little trouble earning credibility among the state's more hard-line immigration activists. Last week, the anti-immigration movement's standard-bearer, Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, dropped out of the race and threw his support to Romney. But on the ground in Iowa, most of Tancredo's support appears to have shifted to Thompson, including former U.S. Senate candidate Bill Salier, who was Tancredo's state campaign director, and Angie Weaver Anderson, who ran the western end of the state for Tancredo. "I don't know anybody who was with Tancredo who went with Romney," said King, after the last of the crowd had begun to filter out into the snow. "I have yet to find the first person."
All that said, there are no sure bets when it comes to handicapping the Iowa caucus. The polls continue to fluctuate, and it is still possible that either Huckabee or Romney could stumble their way out of the top tier. A poll released Friday by the Associated Press estimated that 40% of Republican primary voters had changed candidate allegiances since November. And that poll was taken before the Christmas holiday, when millions of Americans had a chance to talk politics with family around the dinner table. "If anybody tells you that they know how to do this caucus in 2007 and 2008, they are crazy," said Bob Haus, a veteran Republican consultant who is running Thompson's Iowa operation. "This is a paradigm in which none of us have ever operated before."
- Michael Scherer/Creston
- While Huckabee and Romney work to win the caucus, McCain, Thompson and Giuliani hope their tough talk on war and immigration can ensure a respectable third-place finish