A nearly-empty Illinois prison near the Mississippi River on the border with Braley’s Iowa district is among U.S. locations being considered to hold 100 detainees from Guantanamo Bay.

President Barack Obama has said he wants to close the Guantanamo Bay facility in January, and if that happens a U.S. facility must be found.

Strawn said Iowans should be worried about the possibility of the detainees being held so close to the Hawkeye State. The House voted to last month against bringing the detainees to the U.S., with Braley voting to support the move.

“These terrorists pose a clear threat to the national security of our nation,” Strawn said. “It is time for Congressman Braley to stand up for his constituents, admit he was wrong, and tell President Obama that these prisoners are not welcome in the Heartland.”

Supporters of closing Guantanamo Bay say the facility and the fact that many of the detainees have been held indefinitely without trial hurts the reputation of the United States. They also contend fears of bringing the detainees to the U.S. are exaggerated.

In a joint statement, David Keene, founder of American Conservative Union, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, and former representative and presidential candidate Bob Barr called on Republicans to support the move.

“… The federal prison system has proven itself fully capable of safely holding literally hundreds of convicted terrorists with no threat or danger to the surrounding community,” the statement said. “The scaremongering about these issues should stop.”

A spokesman for Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, told The Quad-City Times that there are already 350 inmates in U.S. prisons convicted of international or domestic terrorism, including 35 in Illinois.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn said the prison, which has sat virtually empty since its construction in 2001, could bring more than 3,000 jobs to the region.

Pataki was the keynote speaker at the Scott County Republican Party’s Ronald Reagan Dinner Tuesday night, where he attacked Democratic positions on foreign policy, health care reform and the economic stimulus plan.

But in an interview shortly before his address his focus was on fiscal matters and keeping a party struggling with its identity together.

Pataki said too much attention was being given to a congressional race in northern New York, where a Democrat won a seat this month held by Republicans for decades. The Democrat beat a Conservative Party candidate endorsed by high-profile Republicans, including Pataki, who said the GOP candidate was too liberal. She quit the race before Election Day.

That kind of rancor can be avoided, Pataki said, by keeping the focus on pocketbook issues.

“Those are issues that are at the forefront of people’s minds and on which Republicans are united,” he said.

Pataki’s message is similar to that of Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who told a GOP fundraiser Saturday that internal debate is healthy but ultimately Republicans must support Republicans in order to regain political majorities. Pawlenty also endorsed the Conservative Party candidate in the New York House race.

Pataki also made it clear to the AP that it is too early to tell if he will run for president in 2012, a rumor that picked up steam when he announced he would be speaking in Iowa.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (File photo via Minnesota Governor's Office)

Before his trip to Iowa, Pawlenty had taken heat for endorsing the Conservative Party candidate over the Republican in Tuesday’s U.S. House district in New York. He then called moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine “more liberal than most Republicans would like.”

Pawlenty seemed to be addressing that controversy, saying debate over things like the party platform are good, but once that’s complete Republicans must unite to “start the American comeback.”

Pawlenty then struck a chord for party unity, saying that there should be vigorous primary campaigns, but then everyone should get back on the same team in order to elect Republicans.

“We’re going to have our debates about what the platform will look like,” he said. “We’re going to have our primaries and caucuses. We’re going to go through that process, and it should be hard fought. But when those decisions are made, as a team we have to come around and support each other.”

This marks the second major Republican Party of Iowa fundraiser where a potential 2012 presidential candidate has made it a point to discuss creating an inclusive party. In June, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told a crowd of GOP activists and elected officials that the only way back into the majority was to resist demands for ideological purity.

For most of his speech, Pawlenty struck a populist tone attacking federal bailouts for Wall Street companies and Detroit automakers. And on the night that U.S. House lawmakers approved health care reform legislation, Pawlenty repeatedly hit the Democratic reform efforts, saying they are proof that Democrats no longer care about working families.

“They have a party now, our competitors, that have embraced big government, big unions and big bailouts,” he said. “And they want to have the people believe that they work for the common person. The working person.”

During his successful presidential campaign, Barack Obama regularly asked if the crowd was “fired up and ready to go,” Pawlenty said

“Are you fired up and ready to fight back?” Pawlenty said. “Are you willing to be involved?”

He said Obama broke his campaign promise to seek bipartisan health care reform, instead deciding to push for a liberal bill, ignore Republican voices and continue the “dangerous leftward tilt” the president has pursued for the country.

“In his victory speech in Iowa after the caucuses, President Obama promised — he used the word promise — he was going to bring Republicans and Democrats together to pass needed health care reform,” Pawlenty said. “Now I ask you, are you sick and tired of Democrats trying to ram down this liberal monstrosity down our throat which is their health care reform plan?”

But the Republican Party can’t simply be critics, Pawlenty said. Republicans must also offer solutions, and he pointed to his record as governor of Minnesota as proof that GOP ideas work. Minnesota is a very liberal state, Pawlenty said, and he was still able to cut spending and taxes.

“If we can do it there, we can do it anywhere,” he said.

The federal government could learn from his experience in Minnesota. Instead of allowing the national deficit to continue to grow, government should begin to live within its means, Pawlenty said.

“The only thing growing faster than the national debt is [MSNBC host] Chris Matthews’ man-crush on Barack Obama,” he said.

This marks Pawlenty’s first trip to Iowa since he campaigned for Arizona Sen. John McCain last year, and many are speculating that the trip is another indication of his interest in seeking the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. He has already said he will not seek a third term as governor and last month he formed a political action committee called Freedom First, a typical first move for presidential aspirants.

The debate is nothing new. Longtime Republicans strategists like Doug Gross and Rick Schwarm have been warning their party for years that the rising dominance of social conservatives in Iowa could result in presidential candidates abandoning the state for fear that they have no chance.

The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder rekindled the discussion in a recent column, concluding “unless you’re beloved by conservative Christians, don’t bother campaigning in Iowa.” The logic goes that because the caucus system is dominated by each party’s base, social conservatives voting on primarily social issues are going to rule the day, and candidates who don’t fit that profile would be wise to avoid Iowa altogether.

This drew the ire of conservative blogger and former Republican Party of Iowa Political Director Craig Robinson, who said looking at previous caucuses shows the argument that  “social conservatives dominate Iowa” just doesn’t carry water.

After reading countless articles on the Iowa caucuses, you might think that the past winners were Pat Robertson who finished 2nd, 12 points back in 1988, Pat Buchanan who finished 2nd, 3 points back in 1996, or Alan Keyes who finished 3rd, 27 points back in 2000. It’s a disservice that the traditional media continues to paint the caucuses as some sort of Christian revival contest. Christian conservative candidates have done well in the caucuses, but many times their voting-block has been split between multiple candidates, which has prevented them from winning.

Robinson goes on to say that it is insulting to think that Iowans “blindly vote for candidates based on social issues,” as they take their role in presidential politics seriously.

Controversial Christian radio host Steve Deace said the debate sets the table for the media and Democrats to dismiss a social conservative who wins the caucuses as simply “those crazy Christians closing ranks.”

On the other hand, I’m not sure why I should be offended as a Christian that I’m being criticized for actually being consistent between my voting patterns and my principles?  Why do I care if the media doesn’t like the fact we vote our conscience?  Why do I care if the [Republican In Name Only] elites don’t like that?  I’m not accountable to either one ultimately for my vote, but to God.  Should I vote for candidates in opposition to my moral conscience just so I can be considered “enlightened” by the very same people that hate me no matter what anyway?

It isn’t “insulting” to say Christians vote primarily on social issues as Robinson contends, Deace said, adding: “Is there a better basis from which to choose a candidate to support?”

We are the customer here, not the Republican Party.  Therefore, the onus is on them to provide we the customer what we want.  Instead of having debates about why the customer won’t buy a product he doesn’t want, why not have a debate about why the business fails to provide the product the customer wants?  Republicans are starting to sound an awful lot like Democrats — whining and moaning when they don’t get the outcome they want and demanding the rules be changed so they can get what they want.

“This is the next natural step in our exploratory process as we move from a volunteer effort to the acquisition of professional staff and financial resources to take Terry Branstad 2010 to the next level of effectiveness,” said Rick Schwarm, Branstad’s longtime friend who is leading the former governor’s exploratory committee. “This appointment does not signal any change in Terry Branstad’s status as a potential gubernatorial candidate. He continues in his role at Des Moines University and will make his plans known at a future date.”

Prior to joining RPI, Boeyink served as president of Iowans for Tax Relief where he worked for more than two decades.

Branstad filed paperwork to form an exploratory committee for a potential 2010 run for governor last week. He has long said he will announce his intentions by mid-October.

Briefly, here are the high points: They would create some sort of online hub of information for consumers to find information about insurance plans, they would prevent insurance companies from dropping coverage due to preexisting conditions if a customer switches plans within the same insurance company (but, notably, not if a customer switches to a different company), and they would require insurance companies to give customers incentives for quitting smoking and making other healthy decisions.

The only problem? All of these ideas require maintaining the state-based regulatory system that the national GOP is aggressively trying to eliminate.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) proposed allowing consumers to buy insurance plans across state lines. Since then, GOP leaders in congress have latched on to the idea and continue to promote it as the best way to keep costs down, and Iowa’s own Republican members of congress have expressed support for it.

Conveniently, this idea gives Republicans an ideologically-consistent, free-market-based solution to the problems of health care. They can continue to argue that the market needs less regulation, not more, and they can deflect criticism that they don’t have health care policy ideas of their own.

Less convenient for local Republicans is the fact that such a proposal would probably prevent states from regulating health insurance at all. If insurance plans could be purchased across state lines, every insurance company would move to the state with the fewest regulations, where no other states’ laws could touch them. It would spark what policy wonks call a “race to the bottom.”

Essentially, it would create a South Dakota of health insurance, just like what exists now for credit card companies, and any efforts to regulate insurance at the state level would be all but impossible.

I admit I was not at the Iowa GOP’s press conference  today, so I do not know for sure whether this question was asked. Based on media reports that I have read, I don’t think it was, and that’s too bad. It’s a glaring inconsistency between national and local Republicans that should probably be addressed.

Bob Vander Plaats, right, and Chris Rants

Last week, Rants attacked Vander Plaats’ time as leader of the Sioux City non-profit Opportunities Unlimited. Rants said revenue plummeted and debt increased under Vander Plaats, concluding that the organization “tanked financially during his tenure as CEO and chairman.”

Vander Plaats condemned the attack as false since it includes his tenure as chairman of the board, a time when he was not in charge of the organization’s budget.

In an interview with Deace, Vander Plaats called Rants a liar.

“To take pot shots when you’re trying to build yourself up, to be quite honest with you, is very disappointing,” he said.

Vander Plaats campaign chair and former state auditor Richard Johnson also questioned Rants’ conclusions, saying the veteran legislator doesn’t understand how nonprofits operate financially. He called the statements by Rants “unacceptable” and said he couldn’t work for a campaign that was “willing to put false information out.”

Rants told Deace that Johnson is only looking at Vander Plaats’ years as CEO. Because he was receiving a healthy salary as chairman of the board, Vander Plaats must be held accountable for those years as well.

“I don’t think you would say to me, ‘Chris, I’m only going to critique your record from 1996 to 2000,’” he said. “You’ve got to look at Bob’s record from 2001, 2002 and 2003 when he was chairman of the board.”

While he doesn’t question the work that Opportunities Unlimited has done, the numbers show that under Vander Plaats’ leadership the group saw their revenue go down and their deficits increase.

“Bottom line is, Bob Vander Plaats is taking a page out of Chet Culver’s playbook,” Rants said. “Culver says don’t worry about the deficit, we have a AAA bond rating. Bob likes to talk about the fact that they started this program or had fewer deficiencies, so don’t pay attention to the deficit. But the fact is if you look at the audit… it shows they were running operational deficits.”

If deficits aren’t a big deal, then “you shouldn’t be upset with the [Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium] board or the Enron scandal. If Microsoft goes under, don’t blame Bill Gates, because he’s only chairman of the board.”

This is the third public spat between fellow Sioux City Republicans Rants and Vander Plaats. Vander Plaats attacked Rants’ position on same-sex marriage in June, and last month Rants attacked Vander Plaats’ stance on health care reform.

In addition to Rants and Vander Plaats, four other men are seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination: Paul McKinley, Christian Fong, Rod Roberts and Jerry Behn.

After losing seats in the state House and Senate for four elections in a row and giving Democrats control of both legislative chambers and Terrace Hill for the first time in decades, Republicans hoped a victory in this rural southeastern Iowa district would be just what the doctor ordered to show they’ve finally turned things around.

Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matt Strawn told The Des Moines Register the campaign was “a pivotal election and could set the stage for even more victories in 2010,” and in an e-mail to supporters July 29 he called the race “our spring board to a new Republican majority in 2010.”

As is often the case in politics, though, things don’t always go according to plan.

Now that the votes have been counted and the Democrats have managed to narrowly hang on to the seat, Republicans say they always viewed the election as a long shot, and that coming close provides a moral victory the party needed.

But some quietly question the strategy employed by Republican leadership of building up expectations for the race. Others are being more public, asking whether the loss will have more impact than it deserves because of the party’s tactics.

Jeff Patch, a former press secretary for Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Latham, said on paper the district was going to be a hard pickup for Republicans. But party officials made it a point to paint a picture that the race represented a bellwether of the party’s resurgence, creating an illusion that Burgmeier was the favorite to win.

“If the Republican Party started out saying the things they are saying now that the election is over, stressing that it is a district that was in Democratic hands for more than a decade, stressing that there is a Democratic registration advantage, I think they’d be in a better position now,” he said. “The story line now is that Republicans didn’t measure up to what their expectations were. That was an unfortunate tactical mistake that they made.”

Staking the party’s momentum to this race was not wise, Patch said, since Burgmeier was an underdog from the start.

“I think the popular sentiment going in was that this was the Republicans’ race to lose, and part of that is because the party built that storyline,” he said. “But if you look at the data of the district, it is completely the opposite.”

Democrats have held House District 90 for more than a decade and have an advantage in voter registration numbers of 7,211 to 6,427, according to figures from the Iowa Secretary of State. (Voters with no party affiliation outnumber both parties.)

Democratic Gov. Chet Culver won the district in 2006, and Barack Obama carried the district in last year’s presidential election.

Democrat Curt Hanson, right, defeated Republican Stephen Burgmeier in the special election Tuesday to represent District 90 in the Iowa House.

“This was a pretty big swing and a miss for the Republican Party of Iowa,” said Jeff Link, a veteran Democratic operative and founder of the consulting firm Link Strategies. “They should have worked quietly and made a big deal out of a surprise victory rather than raise the stakes and bring all this attention to the race and then come up short.”

Tim Albrecht, a Republican strategist and publisher of the conservative news aggregator TheBeanWalker.com, said the fact that the GOP were able to compete in a district where Republicans didn’t even field a candidate in 2008 is a step in the right direction.

“Republicans essentially turned a lock for Democrats into a competitive race,” he said. “They almost pulled off a long shot upset. It’s a sign that shows growing momentum for the GOP as they head into next year’s elections.”

Get out the vote

When looking for the foundation for the Democrats’ victory, many are pointing to early voting. The Iowa Secretary of State’s office received 1,731 absentee ballots from Democrats and only 747 from Republicans.

Giving Democrats a 1,000-vote head start on Election Day is not a good strategy for success, Patch said.

“I don’t think Republicans can win in 2010 unless they craft a strategy to overcome that problem,” he said, adding: “There is some disagreement within the party over just how important the early-voting program is. I think it is clear that it is a deficiency that Republicans need to overcome.”

The Iowa Democratic Party has heavily targeted absentee ballots in recent elections, racking up huge margins long before polls open on Election Day. By contrast, Republicans have focused on a so-called “72-hour strategy,” hoping to turn out the party faithful during the final days of an election.

In April, RPI Chair Strawn emphasized the need for his party to improve its early voting efforts, saying a focus on Election Day was no longer good enough.

Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matt Strawn

“We just need to make sure that Election Day isn’t just Election Day anymore,” he told a panel of journalists on IPTV’s “Iowa Press.” “It’s election 45 days, election months. We need to start our campaigns earlier.”

Almost immediately after Burgmeier was chosen to run for the seat in July, GOP operatives and interest groups like Iowans for Tax Relief and the Iowa Family Policy Center were on the ground in the district.

And yet Democrats still vastly outperformed Republicans in early voting.

Albrecht said while the disparity in absentee voting is a major concern, he is confident the party has learned its lesson and will build an effective infrastructure going forward.

“I think the Republican Party of Iowa has good, steady, savvy leadership in place,” he said. “They are going to learn from this election and going forward build a strong campaign for 2010.”

Growing the party

Another concern the party must address is expanding their voter base as a whole, Patch said. Democrats currently have a statewide voter registration lead of more than 100,000. The upcoming GOP gubernatorial primary could go a long way towards narrowing the voter registration gap, but ultimately the party must broaden their appeal to independent voters and conservative Democrats.

“The bottom line is that if they can’t win in Democratic districts that are marginally competitive, like HD90, there is no way that they can retake the majority in the legislature or retake the governorship,” he said.

And unfortunately for Republicans, the political environment in House District 90 is “actually a little bit more favorable for Republicans than the statewide environment,” Patch said. While a Democrat has held the district for 13 years, the last time the seat was open in 2002 the race was decided by only 55 votes.

Despite the loss, Patch believes the party understands its problems and will correct them before voters go to the polls in the fall of 2010.

“I don’t think anyone in the Republican Party is excited about [Tuesday’s] result,” he said. “But I think they can see the light at the end of the tunnel after huge losses in 2006 and 2008 if they can make the necessary changes.”

Albrecht said he looks at the numbers from Tuesday’s election and sees hope that the Republican Party of Iowa can compete anywhere in the state.

“Democrats should be sweating that this election was so close,” he said. “I think the party showed it will invest in its candidates, and that will help candidate recruitment and fundraising.”

At the end of the day, Link said part of the GOP’s strategic error might be that the party’s leadership began to believe their own hype.

“Maybe they started to believe their own press a little bit,” he said. “They’ve gotten a lot of attention for changing things up and being more aggressive and trying to be better as a party. Maybe they just started to buy into that too much.”

Ultimately, though, HD90 is one of 100 House districts, and even if the GOP had won it would have had little overall impact, Link said.

“I think the Republicans looked at this and wanted to make a statement,” he said. “It backfired.”

Jeff Patch, communications director for the Center for Competitive Politics in Virginia and a former press secretary for Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Latham of Ames, said the home to the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses should be a “model marketplace for free political expression.”

“Leaders in Iowa’s Republican and Democratic parties should step back and let that process unfold instead of seeking to censor Iowans exercising their First Amendment rights,” he said.

The first instance of “censorship” Patch condemned was an announcement by Republican Party of Iowa Executive Director Jeff Boeyink that the party would ask the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board to investigate the party behind a flyer critical of former Republican Gov. Terry Branstad, a rumored potential candidate for governor in 2010.

A group called Iowans for Truth and Honest Government takes credit for the piece. But because Branstad is not yet a candidate, and the flyer doesn’t “expressly advocate” for or against him, there is no need to threaten a state investigation, Patch said.

“Perhaps the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board would have investigated the authors of the Federalist Papers if it had existed during America’s nascent years,” he said. “The authors wrote under the pen name ‘Publius.’ Since then, anonymous speech has been upheld by the Supreme Court as a legitimate contribution to political expression.”

Patch also criticized Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan, who said Monday that Republican gubernatorial candidate Christian Fong could legal action if he doesn’t remove a radio advertisement he deemed “false and misleading.”

“Ultimately, the dispute is a matter of opinion, and candidates are free to boil down complicated issues in 30 and 60 second radio and TV ads,” he said. “Voters and the media should be the arbiters of campaign ads — not political lawyers or government bodies.”

GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats, left, and IDP chair Michael Kiernan.

While criticizing national Democrats’ plans for health care reform at a dinner hosted by Black Hawk County Republicans on Sunday night, Vander Plaats said “That’s why (President) Barack Obama has been really, really good for two industries — guns and ammunition.”

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Michael Kiernan called the comment “outrageous, irresponsible and very dangerous.” He also demanded Vander Plaats retract the statement and disavow such “inflammatory speech” in the future.

“The rhetoric of armed extremists has no place in the race for Governor and is outside the bounds of what’s acceptable to Iowans,” Kiernan said. “It’s reckless and very dangerous to incite the misguided few who take such statements seriously.”

Kiernan called on other Republican candidates to condemn Vander Plaats’ statement.

“I would think the other candidates would agree this kind of talk has absolutely no place in Iowa,” he said. “It’s odd that not one of them has stepped forward to condemn it.”

Vander Plaats spokesman Eric Woolson said Kiernan knows the only way Democrats are going to get Gov. Chet Culver re-elected is by distracting Iowans from the issues of the day.

“The Democrats’ strategy is going to be to talk about anything other than the $900-million budget shortfall state government faces because of Chet Culver’s voracious appetite for more spending,” he said. “They are going to avoid talking about the state’s highest unemployment rate in more than two decades and they’re going to try to divert Iowans away from Chet Culver’s flip flops on issues like defending the separation of powers and allowing Iowans to vote on the issue of same-sex marriages.”

Kiernan’s statement will likely be the first of many distractions Iowans can expect to be thrown out by Iowa Democrats leading up to the 2010 election, Woolsen said.

The exchange comes a day after U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley faced similar criticism for not publicly denouncing what many considered a threat of violence issued by a constituent at a town hall forum in Pocahontas.Reports of protesters attending presidential events in recent weeks carrying firearms, and an increase in violent rhetoric at Congressional town halls, has concerned many who fear that a violent undercurrent is taking shape around the county.

The back and forth over Vander Plaats’ comment also comes two days after Kiernan issued a threat of legal action if another GOP gubernatorial candidate, Christian Fong, did not take a radio ad off the air that the Des Moines Democrat felt was misleading and materially false.