Iowa Votes (Guest Voice)
Iowa Votes
by Michael Reagan
Iowa caucus results show it’s still early in the game and nothing’s certain.
So what happened on the way to the Republican presidential nomination?
Well, even with a slim official win, Mitt Romney did no better in practical terms this year than he did four years ago in 2008 because of the level of competition. This proves that the road to the 2012 nomination will be anything but smooth, and that he has a tough road ahead if he is to win the Republican presidential nomination.
Mitt has a big problem in his seeming inability to relate to the average working man or woman. He’s a bit too self-assured. As for Rick Santorum, he threw a monkey wrench into Ron Paul’s meteoric rise by almost winning, and proved that Romney is not as unbeatable as his worshippers in the media would like us to believe.
Rick gave an off-the-cuff, Reaganesque speech that marked him as a staunch conservative in the style of my late Dad, Ronald Reagan. He leaves no doubt that his love for America is genuine and deep-rooted.
Ron Paul proved that his supporters are in there for the long haul. Moreover he proved that the GOP needs to pay attention to his message of fiscal sanity and restraint in federal spending or the average Republican, fed up with the witless squandering of our tax dollars, might bolt in November.
Newt Gingrich managed to live to see another day, and he’ll do battle in both New Hampshire and South Carolina — not with Romney, who he’s out to destroy, but with Rick Santorum. Newt needs to be more passionate and less professorial and, for heaven’s sake, Newt, put on a damned tie.
Perry needs to retool his message and overcome the gaffes for which he has become so infamous. He says he’s going home to reconsider his candidacy, but if he stays in the race he will meet Santorum and Gingrich in South Carolina and that will be the end for him. The conservative winner there will then go on, and the others will need to go home.
As for Michele Bachmann, she made the right decision to go back to Minnesota and run for re-election and not be like California’s Bob Dornan, who stayed too long in running for president and as a result lost his House seat to Loretta Sanchez.
The Iowa caucuses are over but the fun has just begun. Fasten your seatbelts, America, the ride ahead may get bumpy. There might now be room for another candidate to emerge and sweep the field.
Stay tuned.
Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s Press, 2011). He is the founder and chairman of The Reagan Group and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his website at www.reagan.com, or e-mail comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com. ©2012 Mike Reagan. His column is licensed to run on TMV in full.
The copyrighted cartoon by Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle, is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
5 Responses to “Iowa Votes (Guest Voice)”
For the sake of accuracy, Michael Reagan was adopted. He is not blood relation to either Ronald Reagan or Jane Wyman. Why this man is allowed to upstage Ronald Prescott Reagan I simply do not understand.
Posting Michael Reagan “opinions” on TMV is, imo, a public service.
If Mikey’s rants were only available on wacko wing-nut websites most moderates (and other thinking people) would not know what an amazingly moronic person Michael Reagan is.
And, taking it one step further, it presents the fact that there are so many on the “right” in America that support and agree with his positions and points of view.
An example right here is the absence of comment to ANY Michael Reagan thread from the ‘conservatives’ that post at TMV.
@SteveK
I would not refer to Daryl Cagle’s website http://www.cagle.com/ wacko wind-nut. He is a cartoonist for MSNBC and collects cartoons from around the world. He also has various people who write articles. Joe Gandelman happens to be one of them.
I am not arguing your point about Mike’s points of view. I am only pointing out that his articles are garnered from a fairly moderate (extreme liberal in the eyes of many modern conservatives) website.
@SteveK – I routinely ignore all Reagan threads because he’s so bad, don’t necessarily take silence as agreement. I just clicked on this one to see the cartoon.
I neither said or implied The Cagle Post was “wacko wing-nut”, what I said was “If Mikey’s rants were only available on wacko wing-nut websites most moderates (and other thinking people) would not know what an amazingly moronic person Michael Reagan is.”
I’m glad he’s on The Cagle Post… But if you Google: “Michael Reagan” Past 30 Days you get ‘Townhall’ ‘NewsMax’ etc. before you get Cagle because those sites are the ones that get the most hits for Mikey. ‘The Cagle Post’ doesn’t even show up on Google until half way down the second page and that is the point I was trying to make.
More moderate sites should run Michael Reagan’s column because, imo, his own words will take him down in print just like his mouth took him off radio.