Mike Mauro has been a leader as Secretary of State, helping to finally achieve same-day registration and helping Iowa continue to lead the nation in voter turnout and insuring that every vote was counted. With Mauro’s continued strong leadership, it makes tough to justify any alternative, let alone a loser like George Eichorn.

This offers opportunities for opponents of both Gibbons and Branstad as George W. Bush Republicans enthralled with big business and government spending rather than committed to limited government and moral values. Clearly if Branstad or Gibbons have to pick between Wells Fargo and constitutional amendment to define marriage, they’re picking the former.

In Branstad’s race, he’s clearly become the most moderate candidate and this offers another line of attack for his opponents, besides painting him as a retread or a hypocrite. For Gibbons, it allows Dave Funk in particular, to eat into his support and gives Brad Zaun, as the only candidate running with any political experience an added advantage.

There’s very little to add here. But it’s refreshing to know that when every scientist on Earth is wrong, there’s a retired airline pilot from Runnells to set them straight.

King claimed his opposition to the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage was because they were legislating from the bench. This is a case of legislating from the legislature. King, or Tom Latham for that matter, may not approve of the DC Council’s decision but it is their business to overrule the elected representatives of the people of Washington D.C. If King is sincere in his belief that the decision of the Iowa Supreme Court is wrong, he’ll back the DC City Council’s decision. However, if he doesn’t, all these claims about defending judicial minimalism and popular sovereignty will just seem like excuses for homophobia.

Does Steve King believe that the Spirit of Christmas is universal? If so, why does he seem so narrow-minded in believing that protection should only be afforded for “the use of these symbols and traditions by those who celebrate Christmas.” After all, the greatest Christmas song of all was written by a Jew. If there is a real War on Christmas, Steve King seems to think he can pick what fronts to fight it on, which doesn’t seem to be the way he thinks other wars should be fought. One would hope Steve King could muster the moral courage to fight until victory in this war too. Otherwise, it would almost be enough to make one believe that Steve King isn’t being sincere at all and that this is all political posturing.

So, it leads to the question, where Jim Gibbons stands on TARP and bailouts. As unpopular as TARP is among the GOP, it probably did save our economy from a total collapse. But where does businessman Jim Gibbons stand on TARP? He may need to bash TARP to win his election but he may have needed TARP to keep his job.

Part of this is because of how Culver became Governor in the first place. His campaign focused on electability in the primary (and was helped by attacking Mike Blouin for his pro-life past and Andy McGuire for her pro-Greg Ganske past). In the pro-Democratic mood of the 2006 general was able to run a campaign attacking Jim Nussle as a Washington insider. But the problem is while a majority of Iowans still have positive feelings towards Chet Culver, very few of them have strongly positive feelings.

In fact, the Iowa Poll has Culver losing handily to Bob Vander Plaats and getting wiped out by Terry Branstad. While these numbers probably represent a low tide before the campaign has gotten started, they still represent a big problem. In a year with an environment that will be nothing like 2006, Culver will need a motivated core of voters to come out for him and will not be able to count on a surge of Democratic turnout. While he will be aided by what is shaping up to be a vicious GOP primary for Governor, Culver still needs to cultivate a core constituency he can count on in November, 2010. Without some sort of energized base, Culver’s political career might end as unhappily as Death Of A Salesman.

Gibbons’s proposal doesn’t just remove the funding for “discretionary spending,” i.e. little things like our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, funding for schools, national parks, payroll for government employees and maintenance of interstate highways. It also remove the funding for mandatory spending, i.e. things like Social Security and Medicare. And, incidentally, the national debt right now happens to be in 14 figures and Social Security and Medicare are already facing long-term insolvency.

So while Gibbons’s plan sounds nice, it doesn’t seem entirely practical. If we’re going to implement the “free money for everyone plan” we need a way to pay for it. There are typically two ways that the government pays for things. The first is raising taxes, something that seems to be precluded under the Gibbons free money for everyone plan. The second is printing more money and creating inflation. This would seem be the logical way to fund the Gibbons free money for everyone plan. So if you liked the economy under Jimmy Carter, you’ll love the economic plan of Jim Gibbons, you get massive inflation and minimal effects on unemployment. But then again, you will have free money for everyone so it will even out.

This tries to turn the conventional wisdom of the race on its head. Conlin has a statewide profile as a former Democratic nominee for Governor and the first female U.S. Attorney in Iowa history. In addition, she is very wealthy and will be able to self-fund against Grassley, who is a 30-year incumbent and has never faced a competitive race for re-election. The problem for Fiegen is that this removes his strongest argument, which is that he would make a better Senator than Conlin.

At the end of the day, it is clear Conlin is the best candidate. She has the money to keep things competitive and will serve as a draw for many activists, particularly women, to volunteer in a year where the Democratic base is not terribly excited. When Chuck Grassley is starting with so many advantages, the ability to match him dollar for dollar is crucial.

Where there hasn’t been much of a debate is determining whether Conlin or Fiegen or Bob Krause will make the best Senator. They all are qualified people who have been active in public life. Fiegen and Krause don’t have the statewide profile that Conlin has but the way to go about getting it is not by complaining about strong-arming endorsements and saying Conlin has too much “baggage.” They have to go out and present a positive vision about what makes them different. With the GOP gubernatorial primary getting so much press, the primary for U.S. Senate will only draw attention from activists and counterintuitive attacks don’t work very well in wooing a dedicated activist base.

If Fiegen wants to make the primary about electability, he will lose. The only way he or Bob Krause want to gain the Democratic nomination, their best chance as underdogs is to articulate a vision about why they’d be the best Senator. It’s how Barack Obama won his Senate primary in 2004 and Jon Tester won his in 2006. Otherwise, they will lose and do what Fiegen is decrying in the first place, “take the focus off Iowa’s working families.”

Iowa has 947 towns and cities. It is an infrastructure that goes back to a horse and buggy age when the state was composed of small farmers and rural towns designed to serve those farmers. In the 21st country, many of these towns lose their purpose for existing. At a time when further west, much of the Great Plains has become totally depopulated, Iowa is still in much stronger shape. But without long term employment solutions, the stayers will develop into a rural underclass, or just as likely, leave rural Iowa like everyone else.

Both Perry and Ames are in the 4th Congressional District and it is difficult to live in either of those places if one wants to establish residency to run for Congress in Iowa’s Third District. It seems clear that despite his Facebook claim that Des Moines is his “hometown,” Gibbons has just moved to Polk County in the past few weeks to run against Leonard Boswell. He is a carpetbagger.

There’s nothing wrong with being a carpetbagger though. No one could argue that someone from Boone County would be unable to understand the problems facing Polk County or Jasper County but it does show there’s some catching up to do and there’s the potential that you are unfamiliar with key local issues. The classic example of this was the Conservative candidate in the NY-23 Special Election recently, Doug Hoffman. Hoffman came from outside the district, didn’t know anything about the district and lost as a result. However, New York has counterexamples. Hillary Clinton was clearly a “carpetbagger” but did her best to understand the issues of New York, particularly upstate New York, and her residency wasn’t an issue.

Trying to paper over this by claiming Des Moines to be your hometown just amplifies the problem. You can’t hide where you’ve lived all your life. Gibbons should just be open about the fact that he’s a carpetbagger and try to get on with his campaign. Otherwise, he’ll just end up looking like a hypocrite. Politicians can claim war leads to peace or that cutting taxes leads to more money for the government and people will accept it. But it’s a bit much to expect voters to swallow that Ames is actually in Polk County.

This vote is especially noteworthy for Boswell, who continues to shore up his left flank after Ed Fallon launched an ill-fated primary campaign against him in 2008. Boswell has now voted for both cap and trade and health care reform and seems to be gearing up to face more attacks from the far right than from the left.

However, the debate itself was more noteworthy for Braley who was heckled by House Republicans, who seemed determined to show that Joe Wilson is not the only member of the GOP caucus with bad manners. This is bound to be a windfall for Braley and can only help with fundraising while being yet another example of the GOP trying to poison American political discourse.

Finally, it’s worth noting that both Steve King and Tom Latham voted against health care coverage for all Americans.

We’ve been covering his campaign since 2006. So far back that we analyzed how much he benefit from John Kerry, of all people, not running for President in 2008. We’ve also covered about how he gained support from Congressmen and Pirates. And now, Barack Obama has been elected to serve as the 44th President of the United States.