The Bigger Picture

The Republican primary is over. We had several contested races and the more establishment/moderate/ candidate lost every one. More specifically, the small government/free market/lower tax Bulldog, Iowans for Tax Relief expanded its metaphoric species and became the clearest 600 pound Gorilla in Iowa GOP politics. ITR chose to compete in seven Republican primaries-and won convincingly in all seven.

As a brief but necessary aside, we want to define what we mean by leadership in the discussion below. Leadership has three components. The first, know what you believe. Real leadership, as distinguished from temporary entertainment, requires the putative leader to know the direction in which they want to be followed.

Second, know why you believe it. If the putative leader doesn’t know why their road is the right choice then others will never come to understand it either. Most politicians possess 1 & 2 in spades but the third component is found only in a breed as rare as Vindicator himself.

The third, elusive, component of leadership is the ability to persuade others to agree with the putative leaders proposed direction. Somewhere in the last ten years much of our leadership, both here and nationally, simply stopped trying to persuade the voters to agree with Republican principles. We knew that most liberal ideas are inferior to conservative ideas and apparently assumed that the voting public agreed with us. This has been our undoing. Such is the absence of leadership in politics.



ITR competed in seven primaries. Some, like Helland/Lorenzen in HD 69 or Schultz/Friedrichson HD 55 were hotly contested along ideological lines. The ITR candidates, Erik Helland (73%) and Jason Schultz (59%) won impressive landslide victories over more moderate candidates recruited and supported by the sitting moderate Republican incumbents.

Chris Hagenow in HD 59 defeated a well funded challenger who had previously held office within the District and had a far higher level of name ID than did Chris and who had been recruited and encouraged specifically to provide a moderate alternative to Chris, by a similar 16 point margin 58-42. A moderate challenge was raised to our good friend Jim Van Engelenhoven down in HD 71 and Jim won 72-28, although as an incumbent Jim did start that game with a runner on second.

In SD 48 another conservative Kim Reynolds competed with a more moderate candidate and won by 24 (62-38). If Kim wins the general, as she probably should given the district and her very, very considerable political skills (we here at TRS would not be surprised if we someday call her Congresswoman Reynolds), our smallish Senate Caucus will become more conservative. Again, like Erik, Jason and Chris, Kim will lead our party in a more conservative direction.

ITR won two other primaries (HD 19 Carlin Hageman 78% & SD 42 Shawn Hamerlinck 87%) in which it got involved. The success rate, 7 for 7 and that simply put, does, in fact, kick ass.

Unlike ITR’s many, or, at least prolific, critics on the blogs claims, there is nothing ideologically narrow, much less nefarious in ITR’s success. Rather the point that should be taken is the thirst for a return of small government, pro-family, pro-small business traditional conservatism by the Republican voting base. Two other local races illustrate. Chris Sanger (HD 62 DM Southside) and Adam Vandall (HD 41 Newton) also ran on almost exactly the same ideological platform as did the ITR candidates, and both also won impressive victories. Chris and Adam are also articulate traditional conservatives who are leading the local electorate in a more conservative direction.

Nor does the conservative primary sweep reflect any exclusion of others from participation in the GOP. Almost all of the defeated primary candidates are great people. Someone like Al Lorenzen has a bright future in GOP politics if he chooses to stay engaged. But political parties are built around ideas and our party is built around conservative ideas. As we first said two years ago at the 3rd District Convention, we are the conservative alternative to Democrat unionism, socialism and secularism.

Simply put, Republicans want our candidates, and when victorious our office holders, to stand for Republican principles and the basic social and economic premises from which they arise. Our failure came when we stopped advocating and implementing those principles and attempted to expand the base by deviating from our principles to attract voters, rather than the more difficult but more rewarding and permanent approach of persuading others to agree with us. This does not require unanimity of thought, nor does it even imply that nontraditional Republicans need to be driven from the party. But the voting trends clearly expose the need for the general view of the Party to return to the roots of our greatest successes in the last 100 years and apply those principles to achieving solutions to 21st Century problems.

People want leadership. ITR and the other conservative organizations like IRLC, CWA, IFPC and all of the other often maligned conservative alphabet organizations provide that very leadership by telling the voters what they believe and why the voters should agree with them. The Republican and conservative brands have been devalued but we won’t regain value by moving to the middle but by persuading the middle to move right. Yesterday’s successful candidates show a clear direction and our objective is to now prove that it’s not just window dressing.

………… and that is truly the big picture.