August 12, 2011 4:00 A.M.
Paul’s Play
The Texan bets on Ames.
Robert Costa is a political reporter for National Review.
Ames, Iowa Rep. Ron Paul has crisscrossed the Hawkeye State for months, generating enthusiasm for his presidential campaign. But his efforts involve more than pressing the flesh. Paul, perhaps more than any other contender, has a plugged-in network of true believers from Federal Reserve critics to constitutional conservatives who communicate online, often sharing links and coordinating political activities outside of the official apparatus. Many within this sprawling movement began organizing for the Texas Republican three years ago, when Paul last ran for the White House. At the Iowa GOP’s straw poll on Saturday, which will be held on the campus of Iowa State University, the 75-year-old lawmaker will likely reap the benefits of their fervent exertion.
A Rasmussen poll released Monday shows Paul poised to finish near the top. He earned 16 percent support from likely caucus-goers in the survey, behind Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, but ahead of former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a potential candidate. The strength of Paul’s Iowa base was reflected in Rasmussen’s findings, which revealed that only 28 percent of probable caucus participants are “absolutely certain” of how they will vote, with many undecided Republicans planning to attend the event. Yet among those who are certain, Paul laps the field, with 27 percent of decided attendees in his camp.
In the final hours, Paul is making a hard push to get that number even higher. Along with 30 members of his extended family, who took a 17-hour bus trip from Texas to join him on the trail, he is hitting small-town street corners and the state fair in Des Moines. His son, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a tea-party favorite, has been at his side. “We are seeing big crowds everywhere,” Senator Paul told me as he jumped onto the bus with his wife, Kelley. “In the middle of the day yesterday in Mason City, we had 120 people packed in there.” The crowd at an Ames hotel that morning was another large group, with Paul supporters cheering on the congressman over coffee and crispy lemon Danishes.
“I think Ron has been underestimated by a lot of the national media, in particular,” says Rep. Steve King, an influential GOP congressman from western Iowa. “He has been working in this state for about five years,” planting the seeds for success in this campaign under the radar of the press. “If there is a low turnout on Saturday, Ron Paul is in a position to win the straw poll. His supporters are the solid libertarians who have a lot of conviction and he can motivate them to come out for him.” King thinks the most notable aspect of Paul’s 2012 campaign is that his supporters unlike those of many other prominent candidates actually are “Iowans.”
Both King and Paul’s campaign point to oft-ignored southern Iowa, the small towns on the Missouri border, as a Paul stronghold, with their rural, conservative leanings. “They’re really his people,” says Chuck Laudner, a longtime Iowa GOP operative. “The other candidates have soft support.” Speaking Thursday in a first-floor conference room, Paul predicted a strong straw-poll showing. He credited his flinty, axe-it-all platform as the reason, arguing that since his last run, his ideas have more resonance in Republican circles. “It’s catching on. They have accused me now of being mainstream,” he chuckled. “Can you imagine that? All I know is that I haven’t changed my views, so maybe the sentiment is shifting.”
Days after 30 U.S. troops were killed by Taliban militants, Paul emphasized that as president, he would quickly remove American forces from Afghanistan. His foreign-policy remarks drew nods from many around the room, who told me afterward that they are frustrated by the ongoing conflicts and their personal and fiscal costs. “Things aren’t going so well there. This week has been a bad week for us,” he said. “I get such heartache when I think of our men and women serving and dying.” He added that he would take a different position “if . . . we had a precise enemy, and we could declare war and know how victory could come about, like we did in World War II.” But as things stand, he remains committed to withdrawal.
“This is in the Republican tradition,” Paul noted. He cited the late Ohio Republican senator Bob Taft as an example of how conservatives have long been against “entangling alliances” and extensive military engagements. “Today we go into Libya and we go into Afghanistan under a NATO banner. We look for U.N. resolutions,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t even want to be in the United Nations.” He compared his view on such matters to that of H. R. Gross, a late Iowa congressman who retired from office in 1974. Many in the room seemed unaware of the reference, but Paul pressed on, praising Gross and his “Old Right” beliefs, which he thinks are bubbling up once again within the party. “It’s a winner, as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
Paul openly acknowledged that winning the straw poll is of “no legal significance,” but with better-financed candidates building national momentum, he underscored the summer convention’s importance. “It gives an individual like myself an opportunity” that he wouldn’t have in different circumstances. “What if it were national? What if it were just in California? We couldn’t do it. We have good supporters and we have raised a significant amount of money, but there would not be enough to compete with those who have 50 to 100 million dollars, which you would need to run a real campaign for a straw vote in California.” His mix of old-school stumping and savvy, web-based outreach, he said, is enough to build a winning coalition in this sparsely populated midwestern state where small events and voter intensity matter.
Paul’s confidence is backed up by results. He has ably performed in recent straw polls, winning many with the help of activists from across the country who travel and politick on his behalf. In Ames, however, only Iowa residents are allowed to participate, limiting his ability to tap his national following. Paul’s staff is doing everything it can to butter Iowans up, handing out discounted tickets to supporters, assisting with transportation from Iowa’s 99 counties and, on Saturday, slopping hearty barbeque and baked beans onto paper plates. Paul also spent over $30,000 to secure the prime tent space near the heart of the festivities, giving him ample room to host backers and woo others.
At the Ames straw poll in 2007, when his campaign was considered by most pundits to be nothing more than a fitful exercise on the political fringe, Paul came in fifth. This year, after raising coin and his name recognition, he knows that he can at the very least top that showing. “How many of you think we are going to do better than fifth place this year?” he asked the Ames crowd, to cheers. “These people in the media always pester” about predictions, he said, with a light wag of his finger, so “we better do better than the last go-round or I will be very disappointed.”
Drew Ivers, Paul’s Iowa chairman, hints that the congressman knows that if things hold steady, the campaign will likely do much better than its 2007 finish and better than many politicos have predicted. “The organization right now is much stronger than it was four years ago,” he said in Ames, as Paul greeted his family nearby. Paul’s name identification has gone “from about 1 percent to 85 percent,” Ivers observes; and the candidate’s ideas, he adds, have gained more notice as the federal deficit has deepened and the financial markets have struggled. “We have seen a correlated response,” Ivers says. “People are catching on. They’re saying: You know what? You’re right.”
Paul’s constant talk of monetary policy and Austrian economists, Ivers acknowledges, still takes getting used to for some Iowans, “but four years ago it was a very strange sound.”
Ivers points out that over the past few months, Paul’s buzz on blogs has become but one part of the campaign puzzle. Compared with last cycle, the campaign has over 120 county co-chairmen spread throughout the state, giving the Texan organizational heft that he lacked in 2008. “I noticed Tim Pawlenty was bragging about having 29 county chairs,” he said with a grin. Those hands have helped Paul translate his web presence into real dollars, most recently seen in the campaign’s “Ready, Ames, Fire” fundraising drive, which drew hundreds of new donors.
Beyond his funds and on-the-ground muscle, Paul thinks he may have a secret weapon on his side, a slice of caucus folks often ignored by the pollsters and prognosticators. While Paul has been warmly received throughout Iowa and sees his campaign gaining, it is younger voters, he told the Ames crowd, who have formed the core of his campaign, vocally championing him in venues where more traditional, older Republicans have long ruled. “I am so excited about what is going on, traveling around the country, about how positive the young people are,” he said. “They are responding very favorably,” he explained, for good reason: “They know they’re not going to get Social Security” and are leaving college with heaps of tuition debt and limited employment opportunities.
Come Saturday, there will be room for Wiffle ball, too. Senator Paul playfully told the Ames audience that he would like to see his family take on Mitt Romney’s kids on a patch of campus grass. In that contest, he joked, the Paul kin were ready for a battle. “We have a baseball bat and a plastic Wiffle ball,” he laughed. “I will warn you, we have a few high-school-baseball players and we have a few college-baseball players. And we have at least one ex-professional baseball player. So bring it on, Romney clan.” This weekend, you can bet Romney, who is not competing in the straw poll, will not be sweating the challenge. But Bachmann, Pawlenty, and other candidates will feel the heat. In straw polls like Iowa’s, Paul is a political slugger.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/274418/paul-s-play-robert-costa # --
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