Endorsement of a candidate can often excite voters, especially Republicans and social conservatives as they try to find the candidate who best speaks to their values and can take over the White House next year.
When it comes to politics, there is no denying the pull of momentum. And while it is clear that for this eighth edition of our Power Rankings U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann owns it, there is also no denying that social and religious conservatives in the state still have choices to make.
GOP 2012 presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney has decided to pass on the Iowa straw poll this summer, a warm-up event for the election-year Iowa caucuses, which increasingly have become a sort of warm-up event for the real primary campaigns. Romney’s decision is making headlines as a risky move but the fact is non-incumbent winners of the GOP Iowa caucus don’t win the GOP national nomination in any kind of consistent way. And the record of caucus winners is even less a predictor for success in the general election. As Romney knows and as the New York Times suggested Saturday, Iowa is now way too Christian right and Midwest parochial to serve as a barometer for Republican America.
Mitt Romney is announcing his long-coming official 2012 presidential bid on a New Hampshire farm today. A metaphor for the Romney candidacy, the announcement will look good– all rolling hills, blue skies, tractors and hay bales, according to the New York Times– but it will be undercut by the fact that the family farm is propped up by major federal subsidies, thinning Romney’s small-government message for those in the know.
Republican Arizona Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has long opposed the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques employed by the U.S. in the War on Terror. He is now railing against apologists for those techniques, mostly on the right, who have seized on the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of Navy SEALS to assert that it was torture that delivered the intelligence that made the SEALS’ mission to hunt down bin Laden successful.
Birthers, states rights fans, people who hate Pres. Obama and mainstream Republican leaders accustomed to waffling on birther questions will now be watching the Arizona legislature, where Republican lawmakers are again taking action to address a problem they see as inadequately addressed by the federal government. State Rep. Judy Burges introduced a bill last week requiring presidential candidates to submit an “original long-form birth certificate” in order to appear on the state ballot. For 2012, the bill would perhaps rule out the current President of the United States, and it would definitely rule out Panama military-base-born 2008 GOP presidential nominee Arizona Sen. John McCain and all of the many other natural-born American citizens (like me) who don’t possess a long-form original birth certificate.
Senator Mark Udall’s proposal for members of Congress to sit side by side without regard to party during the annual State of the Union speech later this month may be gaining ground.
Openly gay Colorado Congressman Jared Polis took to the floor of the House Wednesday to commend U.S. leaders for putting an end to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Clinton-era policy banning gay members of the military from serving openly. Gay citizens will “hold their heads a little higher as Americans,” Polis said soon after President Obama signed the repeal. “We are closer to equal treatment under the law, which is all we have ever asked for. Our government will no longer be an instrument of discrimination against us.”
Muhammad Ali Hasan, a member of the wealthy and influential Colorado Republican Hasan family and a past state House and treasurer candidate, said he is switching parties. Speaking at the University of Colorado-Boulder on his experience growing up Muslim in the American West and later in conversation with the Colorado Independent, Hasan said he is ending his affiliation with the party for the bigotry he believes has shaped Republican politics over the last year. The FOX News regular and founder of Muslims for Bush said he met recently with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the controversial Democratic leader won him over.
Without any sure vote count and with waning prospects for success, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would likely call for a vote tonight on the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy barring gays from serving openly…
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