Iowa Governor Terry Branstad was born on November 17th, 1946, so he would be just shy of 70 years old on election day in 2016. That’s pretty aged for a presidential candidate, but he’s only a year older than Hillary Clinton and he’s actually four years younger than Joe Biden.
Branstad served as governor of Iowa from January 14, 1983 to January 15, 1999, and was elected again in 2010. His polling numbers in his home state are solid. I have to assume that he’d be able to win the Iowa caucuses if he chose to run for president.
The last time someone from Iowa ran for president was 1992, and here were the results of the Iowa caucuses: Tom Harkin (76%), “Uncommitted” (12%), Paul Tsongas (4%), Bill Clinton (3%), Bob Kerrey (2%), and Jerry Brown (2%).
Of course, most people don’t even remember that Tom Harkin ran for president that year. He got 10% of the vote in the New Hampshire primary and was the first candidate to drop out and endorse Bill Clinton. Yet, his mere presence on the ballot prevented the other candidates from seriously contesting Iowa.
Thinking about it, it would be a crushing disappointment to the Iowa economy if Gov. Terry Branstad made the caucuses irrelevant. Under normal circumstances, eight or nine candidates would descend on the state, some with the intent to visit all 99 counties, bringing reporters and political operatives in tow, all of whom would consume food and drink and need lodging. The local television stations would be flooded with money for political advertising, and the local papers would have tons of compelling stories to tell. Most of that would go away if the Republican nomination were not seriously contested.
Yet, this might be the best way for Branstad to help Chris Christie. It’s very unlikely that Chris Christie could do well in Iowa because the state’s Republicans are usually attracted to evangelical candidates or, at least, candidates who wear their religion on their sleeve. But Christie would be the heavy favorite in New Hampshire.
One way that establishment Republicans can prevent a recurrence of 2008, where they had to endure Mike Huckabee as a serious competitor, or 2012, where Rick Santorum gave Romney fits, is to prevent a religious nut-job from getting a head start in the first contest. And that’s probably not possible unless Branstad runs.
If I were a (non-crazy) bigwig GOP honcho, I’d be setting up a Branstad for President SuperPAC as we speak. My real aim would be to get Christie the nomination. And, if Christie somehow pulled it off, a new Quinnipiac poll shows that he might be able to beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa.
I would agree, but let’s see how Christie weathers the “put thousands of people in danger and interrupted interstate commerce for a political vendetta” scandal.
If it traces back to him he could be looking at prison.
It does trace back to him. The problem is the TradMed won’t cover the scandal since it disrupts their Chris Christie man-crush.
Agreed and agreed. The NY Times and Star Ledger are hitting it though. The Inquirer (co-owned by Christie partner-in-crime George Norcross) is predictably silent.
I loved the weekly Norcross Inquirer “Christie Chronicles”. the y wrote a slobbering love letter to him once a week.
Star Ledge and Times on it is good
Last night, MSNBC spent about 20 minutes per hour on the story. I’d say that the TradMed is covering it.
Meanwhile, your average New Jersey voter is like, “Call me when he had someone whacked.”
I’m all for tarnishing Christie’s luster, but it’s hard to communicate how small ball this kind of scandal is in the Garden State.
This is a state where a Democratic governor put his gay lover in charge of homeland security even though he had no relevant experience and couldn’t get security clearance because he was an Israeli. It’s a state where another ex-Democratic governor lost billions of investors money when he improperly diverted it. Two words: Bob Torricelli. One word: ABSCAM.
New Jersey is the most corrupt place in the country and it is mainly run by Democrats.
Remember, too, that this story is about Christie being pissed that a Democratic mayor didn’t endorse him. He actually expected that to happen. And it did happen in many other cities. That’s because the state is all about payola and kickbacks and raw intimidation and payback. That’s how it works there, so people who are looking at the lane-closures of the George Washington Bridge as some kind of insane vindictiveness and recklessness are really just saying that about the political culture in Jersey in general.
The rarest thing in the world is a New Jersey politician who has integrity, which is why I loved Bill Bradley so much and why I actually like Cory Booker. I don’t see him so much as a corporate Democrat as one who is not a product of the rotten system in NJ. He’s not perfect, but he’s a lot better than what I am used to.
I’ve lived in the Garden State for the last 11 years and I agree about corruption, but there is the whole thing about endangering people (emergency vehicles, etc).
The wild card is that the Port Authority doesn’t answer to Christie. He appoints some members, yes, but he doesn’t control all of them. And from what we can read between the lines when he begged Andrew Cuomo to pressure the NY appointees, Cuomo through him an anvil with a “sorry, can’t help ya there.”.
Democrats backed Christie for one of two reasons– either he provided them with largesse or they were afraid of him. If he isn’t useful any more, I can see some shivs coming out.
I think it’s important to remember that just because most of the NJ Dems are corrupt, it doesn’t mean that Christie isn’t even more corrupt.
It’s a rare instance where the country might be more outraged than the people in the state where it occurred. I mean, no one sees it as a positive, but part of Christie’s appeal is that he can rough up the Dems and make them work with him. This doesn’t surprise many Jerseyians.
MSNBC? That’s just the DFH channel!! I mean the David Gregory’s, Brian Williams’ and Andrea Mitchell’s.
Morning Joe was blatantly downplaying the scandal today. Had on Politico’s Jim Van deHei who painted it as a partisan Democratic effort to find something to use against Christie, but so far only “circumstantial evidence” has been uncovered. Nothing found directly links the resignation of two Christie admin appointees to wrongdoing. It’s barely making news in NJ, according to him, and is unlikely to get traction elsewhere in the future.
They devoted all of about 90 seconds to the story, on that 3-hour waste of cable bandwidth show. I would imagine Chuck Todd, Mitchell, Gregory and the rest have all either not mentioned it or downplayed it similarly. Just the opposite stance of the aft/eve liberal Msnbc hosts.
I also found it amusing that the passionately anti-conspiracy Rachel Maddow said she sat on the story for days before deciding it was worthy enough to report. She just couldn’t bring herself to believe for the longest time, apparently, that actual conspiracies do happen in this country, including clumsy stupid ones like this.
She’s not from Jersey. If she was, she would have known what happened immediately.
I’m from Minnesota and I believed it instantly. It’s just the kind of thing someone from Jersey would do.
That’s my whole point. Even MSNBC doesn’t want to hit it too hard. Also, Drudgico trying to downplay it? Cue Captain Renault!!
disagree, and agree with Rooktoven. Yes, plenty of corruption and bribery but the lane closures is something else completely. Also, no one except those who benefit are ok with the corruption. And the comparison with McGreevey is unwarranted because no one knew about McGreevey – when citizens in general found out he resigned right away. Everyone knows there is more about Christie that will come out during the campaign, but the lane closures is a different order of magnitude. [besides, he already shut down the tunnel project that would alleviate some congestion]. As a comparison, imagine, for example, if Bloomberg got in a huff and closed down a couple runways at JFK. It’s completely inappropriate and not the same category of outrageous behavior as, say, some graft or bribery.
There is so many major policy issues up in the air right now that predicting anything about 2016 is foolish. But it seems that the DC bunch want to distract from the hot issues of the present. Will the US Senate “embrace the suck” and cause military retirees to hate the House members who voted for the Murray-Ryan budget (the way it has been publicized) and all of the US Senate Democratic caucus? Will Judge Leon’s ruling be upheld and finally begin the examination of the NSA abuses? Will the public ever see the Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture or will John Brennan walk away scot-free? Will people love Obamacare next August? Can the Republican coups in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida be reversed? Will President John McCain allow a deal with Iran?
If President Obama indeed does play the long game, we are nowhere near to the end of rope-a-dope. Maybe Septermber 2015.
By 67-33 they embraced it. Or rather, House Dems embracd it, the senators are too rich to realize that it sucks.
Those 12 GOP Yeas helped Democrats politically. So it looks like a Democratic united front on embracing the suck.
Insightful! A Brandstad run could help deny oxygen to unelectable candidates with or without Christie in the mix. But South Carolina still gets a chance to complicate the narrative of the winner in New Hampshire, no?
In 2012, of the cast of crazies, South Carolina went for Newt Gingrich.
Also, the GOP is putting the nomination on a short string in 2016 with a June convention. That means that they expect to spend two additional months hammering Democrats.
Doesn’t that June convention mean they go into general election mode at that point? Can the GOP candidate raise close to twice what Romney raised for the general election? That’s a tall order.
If the Dems decide to go with Hillary, the GOP should run Jeb Bush. He’s more attractive than Christie, the Conservatives truly believe he is the smarter brother, and the Establishment would get someone they can trust. The only benefit that Christie has over Bush is that he’s not part of a family dynasty, but if we choose to run Hillary, we won’t be able to make much of an argument against that. God knows this country seems to love revisiting old fights. With this match up, the Boomers would be energized, the X-ers would be grim, and the youth would turn away in frustration. Sounds like a great deal for the GOP.
I think you underestimate Hillary’s appeal to the young. Many young voters do not remember the Clinton administration or even Hillary’s time in the Senate. It seems to me that the grousing of older progressives (such as myself, alas) about the DLC or the AUMF is unlikely to move those too young to remember such things, especially young women inspired by the prospect of electing the first female president.
I suppose they could do that, but suppose they don’t.
Christie goes into IA, gets beaten handily by the Wingnut Darling Du Jour, and then goes on to clean up in NH and evntually wins the nomination–which is exactly what happened in 2008 and 2012. Sure, the WDDJ will be a pain in his ass for a few months, but at the end of the day he’ll be the nominee and the Republican Party faithful will walk barefoot through an inch deep carpet of fire ants to vote for him. This is not a problem.
It might be a problem if the WDDJ actually wins the damn thing, but if Christie is actually a viable nominee, he’ll have the establishment support and money to claw his way to victory the way Romney did.
Not everybody has forgotten that Tom Harkin ran for POTUS in 1992. With a more informed electorate, Clinton wouldn’t have had a chance against Harkin. And the 1990s would have been more about income inequality than the Clenis. Or GHWB would have won a second term and the DEM congress would have continued to balk at NAFTA, a capital gains tax reduction and the flag burning amendment.