Republicans facing first poll in disarray (guardian.co.uk)

[Leo 9]

Republicans facing first poll in disarray


The ranks of the Grand Old Party of Abe Lincoln are divided as it goes into the Iowa caucus battle on Tuesday, with no agreement on what it stands for and no obvious contender to take on Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama

David Smith in New York
Sunday December 30, 2007
The Observer



Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney at a town hall meeting in Londonderry, New Hampshire. Photograph: Adam Hunger/Reuters


Clad in an orange and grey hunting jacket and an orange cap, Mike Huckabee raised his 12-gauge shotgun, took aim and fired, bagging a pheasant for the benefit of watching reporters. As another shot flew over their heads, it became too much for one journalist who cried: 'Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Don't shoot. This is traumatising.' Huckabee the hunter had demonstrated himself a 'regular guy', hoping to consolidate his lead in the Republican polls before Thursday's Iowa caucus, the first step to gaining the party's nomination for President.

His nearest rival, Mitt Romney, had shot himself in the foot by claiming to be an avid hunter, only to then confess he targeted mostly 'small varmints'. No such question marks over Huckabee, who said he not only hunted ducks, deer and antelopes but could eat varmint too. 'I figured out you could put grease in a popcorn popper and heat that thing up and you could cook anything,' he said of his student days. 'So we fried squirrel.'

There is growing unease among Republican organisers that the Grand Old Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan could meet the same fate as Huckabee's squirrel. The presidential campaign has failed to produce a champion to take on Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or whoever wins the Democratic nomination. Instead the struggle for the party's soul has exposed fissures in policy, disarray over what it now stands for and distractions both banal and bizarre, 'redneck stew' included.

Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister who does 'not necessarily buy into traditional Darwinian theory', and is celebrated for losing more than 100lb in weight, appeals to Christian evangelicals but not fiscal conservatives. Romney, a Mormon forced to backtrack over a claim that he saw his father march with Martin Luther King, appeals to social, economic and foreign policy conservatives, but not those who regard his religion as a cult.

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