Caucus season provides memorable moments

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By Dan Gearino | Wednesday, January 02, 2008 |

DES MOINES — Hillary Clinton isn’t much of a singer.

Almost a year ago, on her first swing through Iowa as a presidential candidate, she put her hand on her heart and sang the national anthem with hundreds of voters. A nearby microphone picked up every off-key note, and the video began circulating almost immediately.

If you’re looking for an unofficial beginning of the caucus campaign, that might have been it. It showed how relatively new communications tools — in this case, Web video — are changing the way campaigns are waged. And it showed how the memorable moments are sometimes ones campaigns want to forget.

With that in mind, the Quad-City Times Des Moines Bureau looks back at key moments leading up to Thursday’s caucuses, a scrapbook that includes big speeches, catch phrases and cameos from Oprah Winfrey and Chuck Norris.

‘Rudy McRomney’

Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore waged a short and unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination. But before he dropped out, he gave Iowans the gift of the catch phrase that may sum up the Republican caucus race.

Speaking at the Lincoln Day dinner in April, Gilmore warned that the party should reject candidates who fail the conservative litmus test on issues like abortion and immigration. He was referring to the top three candidates at the time — former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and U.S. Sen. John McCain — a group he dubbed “Rudy McRomney.”

Since then, Republican voters have struggled to determine if any of those three candidates are conservative enough. At the same time, several lesser-known candidates have auditioned for the role of the conservative standard-bearer.

Sometime in early November, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee appeared to have won the audition. He rocketed up the polls, marking the beginning of a two-man race with Romney.

Huckabee’s make-or-break moment was a few months earlier at the Ames straw poll. On a hot August day, everyone knew Romney would win, but the question was who would come in second. Two of the big players — Giuliani and McCain — weren’t participating, so the bottom-tier candidates saw this as an opportunity.

Huckabee narrowly edged out U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas for second place, even though Brownback had spent much more money to prepare for the day. Both men had campaigned hard for support from evangelical Christians, and Huckabee looked like he might be ready to rise to the top tier.

Conservative voters got another option in September when former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee entered the race. But Thompson’s campaign got off to a slow start and never seemed to hit its stride.

Naïve and irresponsible

While Republicans fought an ideological battle, Democrats tried to decide between old and new — or between experience and new ideas.

The basics of the dynamic were in place a year ago, when two high-profile candidates entered the race: Clinton and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. Commentators said the two candidates were “rock stars” because of the big crowds they drew and the excitement surrounding their candidacies.

A third candidate, former U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, wasn’t quite a rock star, but he was the only one of the three who had experience running an Iowa caucus campaign, and he had high name recognition from his unsuccessful bid as John Kerry’s running mate in 2004.

Other candidates fought for recognition among the three big names. One of them, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, dropped out in January and soon endorsed Clinton.

The big three played nice for the first few months, until Clinton unleashed the two words that would underscore her case against Obama: “naïve” and “irresponsible.”

Clinton used those words in an interview with the Quad-City Times, her way of saying Obama didn’t have the heft to be president.

From then on, Clinton and Obama went at each other, with Obama arguing that Clinton is part of a Washington culture that has created so many of the country’s problems, and Clinton arguing Obama isn’t ready to lead.

Edwards got much less attention than Clinton and Obama, but he continued to hover near the top of Iowa polls. His performance was steady despite a series of personal and political setbacks, including the news that his wife’s cancer had returned.

Edwards’ hair became a campaign issue, following the disclosure that he spent $400 on a haircut. His critics said the expensive haircut showed that he was a phony when he tries to relate to everyday Iowans.

“It doesn’t change who I am, what I believe in,” Edwards told reporters in April, in response to a question about the haircut. “My whole life has been spent standing up for people who have no voice, and I’ll do that as long as I’m alive.”

Jesus and the death penalty

Heading into the final months of the Iowa campaign, Romney had the most money and the largest campaign staff, but he didn’t adapt well to the quirks of the new media environment. And, to Romney’s dismay, Huckabee turned out to be a master of this new kind of campaign.

At a Nov. 28 debate, the candidates gathered for two hours, but two clips got played over and over again afterwards. First, there was the nasty exchange between Romney and Giuliani over immigration, where they traded accusations and tried to talk over each other. Second, there was Huckabee answering the question of whether Jesus would support the death penalty.

“Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office,” he said.

Huckabee’s first television ad featured an endorsement from actor Chuck Norris. The tongue-in-cheek spot was a sensation — featuring the tag line, “Chuck Norris Approved” — played over and over again on Web sites and news programs.

Iowa, meet Oprah

Heading into the fall, Clinton appeared to benefit from her attacks on Obama. She rose in the polls and seemed to be building an insurmountable lead in key states such as New Hampshire.

But Obama was preparing to make a splash. His campaign showed its rhetorical and organizational muscle at the Nov. 10 Jefferson Jackson Dinner in Des Moines, the largest gathering of party activists before the caucuses.

Obama’s supporters filled nearly half the seats at Veterans Memorial Auditorium and launched into deafening call-and-response cheers for their candidate: “Fired up” and, “Ready to go.”

Obama delivered the speech he would repeat throughout the closing months of the campaign, a message about the need to dispense with the confrontational politics that had led to gridlock in Washington.

A month later, Obama would make a splash again when he brought Oprah Winfrey. The Obama campaign said the rally with Winfrey in Des Moines, with an estimated 18,500 in attendance, was the largest event for any single candidate this caucus cycle.

Clinton’s waltz to a caucus victory was in doubt. Obama even had the lead in some polls in early-to-mid December.

But his burst of momentum wasn’t quite enough. By Christmas, he was once again in a close three-way race with Clinton and Edwards.

On the Republican side, Huckabee watched his lead shrink as well. Weeks of attack ads — most of them from Romney — had taken a toll. Polls in the final weeks showed up to a third of GOP voters were likely to change their minds before caucus night.

And that brings us to today. Close races in both parties mean voters will go the caucuses with no clear front-runner. The winner may be someone who is Chuck Norris-approved, or a bad singer, or at least one-third of Rudy McRomney, or someone else altogether.

Dan Gearino can be reached at (515) 243-0138 and dan.gearino@lee.net. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.