In less than a year, Iowa residents will cast their votes to pick presidential candidates and so, if one considers candidacy, it is about time to score some early points with Iowans.
As an unmistakably conservative state, it is only fitting that Iowa Republican Senator Steve King kick off the election season with a Freedom Summit on Saturday in the state’s capital Des Moines.
Hundreds of politicians, activists, and journalists attend the summit expecting to hear speeches of at least seven potential Republican candidates:
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
Texas Senator Ted Cruz
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker
Texas ex-Governor Rick Perry
Arkansas ex-Governor Mike Huckabee
Pennsylvania ex-Senator Rick Santorum
Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon from Maryland
For the speakers, the summit is an opportunity to put forth their agenda and amass publicity–but not without hazards.
In Iowa, Do as Iowans Do
Iowa provides a majorly conservative crowd, tempting complaisant candidates to utter radical quotes that would haunt them for the rest of the run.
“This is the beginning of the selection process for the planks of the platform for the next president of the United States,” Senator King told MSNBC. “The speeches they give–some of that will live to and through the general election.”
King represents a catalyst for one of the most contentious topics–immigration. King sent ripples even through his own party two years ago when he said that for every valedictorian there are one hundred marijuana smugglers among young illegal immigrants.
And earlier this week, King criticized President Barack Obama for inviting a “deportable” as a guest to the State of the Union address.
#Obama perverts “prosecutorial discretion” by inviting a deportable to sit in place of honor at #SOTU w/1st Lady. I should sit with Alito.
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) January 20, 2015
If the potential candidates get provoked into a reckless statement on immigration, they may just never recover.
Mitt Romney’s past experience may speak to that. His single remark in Florida in 2011 that the solution to illegal immigration is self-deportation was a major blow to his presidential run. In the end he only got 27 percent of the increasingly important Latino votes. The soundbite is still widely quoted today.
Not that Romney had a liberal stance on immigration otherwise, but the Florida remark may have been one critical step too far.
Romney, eyeing another candidacy, is skipping the Iowa summit this year.
As is Jeb Bush, the Republican frontrunner for the presidency.
It’s obvious for Bush to skip the summit, according to Kathleen R. Arnold, DePaul University political science professor. Bush supports in-state college tuition subsidies for illegal immigrants and even wants to grant them a path to citizenship or at least to legal status. Not only would he have a hard time defending his positions in Iowa, he would even run a risk of making many voters elsewhere angry.
While Jeb Bush went to significant lengths to differentiate himself from his brother George W., Arnold notes the brothers overlap on immigration.
