When the votes in Iowa were tallied, 70 percent of the 63 candidates endorsed by the Freedom Fund Political Action Committee, supported by Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa, won their seats. Only four out of 10 state candidates endorsed by the Iowa Right to Life Coalition were elected.

In this election, just as in previous elections, those who sought to ban abortion used letter-writing campaigns to their advantage. The majority of letters to the editor dealing with reproductive health across the state were anti-abortion rights, for instance.

But despite the letters, voters appeared to turn away from socially divisive issues when making their decisions this year.

For example, Danny Carroll, a Republican candidate in Iowa House District 75 who lost Tuesday, actively campaigned on an anti-abortion message. His campaign sent two separate letters to voters that focused on an anti-abortion message, both from national anti-abortion groups like the National Pro-Life Alliance.

Dr. David Hartsuch, a Republican who lost his bid for U.S. House in the 1st District, used the Des Moines Register Soap Box at the Iowa State Fair to declare that “abortion is the leading controllable cause of breast cancer in America.” In addition to using the already debunked claim, Hartsuch ran on his anti-abortion record in Iowa Senate and even accused Arizona Sen. John McCain of barring him from an event because of Hartsuch’s strong social conservative stances.

If Hartsuch’s intention was to draw attention to the Republican presidential ticket’s lack of long-term support on social conservative issues, his efforts were likely thwarted by Iowa Right to Life’s leafleting of the Des Moines metro area with flyers that touted the McCain-Palin ticket.

Overall, it’s a touchy subject for Iowa Republicans, who ousted some moderates from top party offices during their summer convention in favor of others closely aligned with social conservative groups. Kim Lehman, executive director of Iowa Right to Life, and Steve Scheffler, president of the Iowa Christian Alliance, now serve as the state’s two representatives on the Republican National Committee and on the Republican State Central Committee.

“If we’ve not bottomed out, if this isn’t bottomed out, this is what it looks like,” former Polk County Republican Chairman Ted Sporer told WHO-TV.

In the same piece Stewart Iverson, current Republican Party chairman, said that he sometimes thinks Republicans have “forgotten what we stand for.”

Perhaps the most telling statements in regard to the 2008 election and hot-button socially conservative issues, however, came from a letter written by Joy Corning, a former Iowa lieutenant governor and Iowa captain of the Republican Leadership Council.

“How can any group or person assume that a political candidate is pro-abortion?” Corning asked, referring to an Iowa Right to Life Coalition newsletter article that blasted 2nd District Congressional candidate Mariannette Miller-Meeks as a “great pretender.”

“Pro-life can and does mean pro-choice to great numbers of Republicans,” Corning wrote. “It means they want government to let individual citizens decide on matters best left to each person’s dignity, freedom, ability and responsibility. … We are defined by principles that have been our foundation since the time of Lincoln — limited government, strong defense, fiscal responsibility, self-determination and opportunity. We are not defined by a National Right to Life survey.”

Iowa Democrats will continue to control the House (at least 56-44), Senate (at least 31-19), and Gov. Chet Culver is a Democrat. Only two statewide offices in Iowa are controlled by Republicans — Secretary of Agriculture and State Auditor. Neither of those offices were on the 2008 ballot.

Republicans gathering in the Xcel Energy Center for the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. Photo courtesy of the 2008 Republican National Convention and Reflections Photography.

Under the agriculture section, the platform talks about food versus fuel concerns and states that the “U.S. government should end mandates for ethanol and let the free market work.”

The move is a major change from the 2004 platform, which supported expanding the use of ethanol as a way to reduce dependence on foreign oil and increase revenue for farmers. It’s also a move away from the Bush administration’s views on ethanol towards those of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain.

Iowa’s Republican leaders disagreed with the move but shied away from being overtly critical of the platform and the party’s presidential candidate.

“I assume the platform was presented and voted up and down without discussion and ethanol was not discussed separately,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley in a conference call with reporters yesterday morning. “If we were going to have $140-a-barrel oil our whole life, we may not need mandates. But if we didn’t have mandates, we wouldn’t have the vibrant energy business we have right now.”

Iowa’s elected Republican members of Congress were not delegates to the convention, and thus did not have the opportunity to vote on the platform plank regarding ethanol. Many speculated, when it was announced that congressional Republicans would not be delegates, that it was because they disagreed with McCain on farm policy and ethanol subsidies. That rumor was quickly quelled, with Grassley specifically saying it was in order to allow more Iowans to be a part of the political process. Now, with the ethanol mandate portion of the platform in place, the speculation has begun again.

However, Republican officials would not address that rumor.

“[U.S. Rep. Tom] Latham believes that this industry is too young to embrace such a policy statement,” said James Carstensen, the Republican congressman’s chief of staff, in a statement. “He has always been a champion of ethanol, biodiesel and other biofuels as they are vital to the economic growth and security of Iowa while also helping to accomplish America’s energy independence by lessening our dependence on foreign oil.”

Other Midwestern Republicans were not so timid in their criticism of the platform plank.

“It’s proof that Republicans are not always right,” South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune told The Associated Press. “On this one, they just got it wrong.”

The renewable fuel standard was expanded in the 2007 energy bill to require a total of 36 billion gallons of biofuels to be blended into gasoline by 2022. However, the law gives the EPA the authority to waive portions of the law at its discretion.

In May, McCain joined 23 other Senate Republicans in sending a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency asking it to consider waiving ethanol mandates.

In August, U.S. regulators rejected a request from Texas Gov. Rick Perry to halve the ethanol mandate, which he blamed for driving up the price of corn and making it more expensive for farmers to feed their livestock.

“This item in the platform is not anti-ethanol, it is anti-federal mandates on the states, which is a traditional conservative viewpoint,” said Steward Iverson, chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa in a statement from the convention.

The party adopted the platform Monday, one of the few formal actions taken on a day when the convention was scaled back because of concerns over Hurricane Gustav.

Under the energy section, the platform states that America “must continue to develop alternative fuels, such as biofuels, especially cellulosic ethanol, and hasten their technological advances to next-generation production” and says that “because alternative fuels are useless if vehicles cannot use them, we must move quickly to flexible fuel vehicles.”

With Iowa expected to be a presidential battleground state this November, many wonder whether the anti-ethanol mandate plank in the national party platform will hurt McCain’s chances of winning Iowa.

Tim Hagle, associate professor of political science at the University of Iowa and faculty advisor to the school’s College Republicans, said the content of the platforms from either party haven’t been all that important for quite awhile.

“They are essentially statements of the party base of things they would like to see done or principles followed — at least for those participating in the process,” he said, adding: “More often than not such planks are used to try to create a ‘gotcha’ moment along the lines of, ‘Candidate So-and-so, your party has plank X, but you’ve said Y on the issue. How do you reconcile that difference?’ On the whole, the process of creating the party platform is a good exercise in grassroots democracy, but it’s certainly not critical to a candidate.”

Grassley said that he disagrees with that part of the platform because without the mandates he believes there wouldn’t be the investment in ethanol that there has been to date.

“We get 5 percent of fuel for our vehicles from renewables, and if we didn’t we’d be getting 5 percent more from foreign oil,” he said. “It would be sending billions of dollars more to Arabs, and I just don’t think that’s good economic security. It’s not national security, it’s not good foreign policy.”

Despite disagreeing with McCain and his party on ethanol, Grassley said McCain is still mostly right on energy policy, so he will continue to support him.

“I may have disagreements with Sen. McCain on other issues as well if you go through the platform. I might find one or two other things to disagree on,” he said. “But he supports expanded drilling, which I think is a bigger energy issue than where he stands on ethanol.”

“Only an elitist like Senator Obama thinks he knows your hopes and fears better than you do. You can’t be more out of touch than that.

“Iowa Democrats should condemn these elitist remarks immediately, or they clearly stand in agreement with him.”