Interesting article by Mike Glover of the Associated Press. He’s tracking the Republicans already laying tracks in the Hawkeye State. Mike Huckabee is there on his book tour, obviously laying on extra appearances in a state that is vitally important to the Presidential nomination in 2012. Bobby Jindal is evidently showing up in Iowa as well. Heck, Bobby has a long way to go to get his name out there and get Republicans used to his skin. (I still think Jindall, married to a white woman, will have a hard time wooing the Republican base.)

The jist of Glover’s article is beneath the surface, at least a little bit. He acknowledges that on the Republican side the Iowa electorate is far right even of the Republican Party as a whole. If the Republican Party wants to remake itself, moving away from the issues of the radical right wing religious conservatives (I have advised they do so), then Iowa’s prominent placement in the runup to the 2012 nomination is a bit of a stumbling block, because the Republican voters there lean radical right wing and religious. Huckabee won big there this year, and the fiscal candidate, Mitt Romney, and the military candidate, John McCain, ended up way, way, way behind.

OK, it needs to be noted that Iowa’s impact wasn’t all that important in the long run. I suppose Huckabee was seen by the rest of the nation as too right wing on the wedge issues like abortion and gays, and too soft on safety net issues. He was likely seen by Republicans across the nation as too much like a Democrat on fiscal safety net issues. Huckabee is too much of a Rick Warren evangelical for the Republican Party. Romeny didn’t play well in Iowa partly because of his flip flopping on the social wedge issues the radical right wing Christian conservatives hold dear, though he’s mighty fine as a fiscal conservative. Of course, John McCain didn’t fare well in Iowa because of his playing footsie across the aisle.

There’s the rub. In Iowa one can’t flip flop on the issues dear to the radical right wing social conservatives, and one can’t be seen to deal with the Democrats at all. Neither of those factors make Iowa a good litmus test to the remaking of the Republican Party, unless, of course, the Republican Party is to be remade into a social conservative movement that embraces the likes of Sarah Palin. As Glover notes, Palin was very popular in Iowa in her campaigning this fall.

What does this say? Let’s take a look at a passage from Mike Glover’s AP article:

Weeks after voters elected Barack Obama president and increased Democratic majorities in Congress, social conservatives in Iowa who have a huge influence in state politics have indicated they won’t back down. That has some Iowa Republicans worried the party is adopting too narrow a focus.

“We’ve gone so far to the social right, particularly in caucus attendees, that unless you meet certain litmus tests you have a very difficult time competing in Iowa,” said Doug Gross, the party’s 2002 gubernatorial nominee. “I think you’ll have some candidates who won’t compete here unless they perceive that’s somehow changed.”

David Roederer, who headed John McCain’s Iowa campaign, agreed.

“I would not encourage a moderate to come right now and participate in the caucuses,” Roederer said. “It is a danger for the party, and it is a danger for the future of the caucuses.”

So what does Iowa become? Does it become a place where radical right wing christian conservatives show their mettle? Does it then give one of them so much momentum that it derails any remaking of the Republican Party in an image of telerance and a “big tent?” Maybe. What it might do instead is make itself irrelevant. It may be that many Republicans who embrace the notion that as a national party Republicans need to be welcoming on the social front will avoid the rigid right wing that Iowa is made of.

This will be the interesting factor in 2012, and the early young guns of the Republican Party are going to test those waters. My guess is that they will almost all of them pander to the hate-based social conservative wing, hate-based concerning gays and abortion and immigration and zxenophopia, etc. I’m thinking we could have a rupture in the Republican Party that is irreperable come four years from now.

That does not make me cry one bit. Hey, and if the Republicans break in two as a result, who gets to keep the sullied Republican brand? Will they fight over who has to take it?