Three days before Iowans can cast votes in person or via mail for president, former Republican presidential candidate and Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum went to Iowa on Monday to join the “No Wiggins” bus tour that is seeking to rally support to remove David Wiggins, one of the seven Iowa Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage in Iowa in 2009, from the bench.
On Wednesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will join the bus tour, which is being sponsored by the influential Iowa social conservative group, The Family Leader. Other organizations like CatholicVote.org and the National Organization for Marriage are co-sponsors of the tour.
In 2009, in Varnum v. Brien, seven Iowa Supreme Court justices ruled in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage in the state. In 2010, Iowa voters ousted three of those seven judges. Among the four justices still on the state Supreme Court that voted to legalize same-sex marriage, Wiggins is the only one on the ballot in 2012 for retention.
These events can energize conservatives even as the mainstream media, with skewed polls, tries to build the narrative that Obama is pulling away in the state.
Last week, after the Wall Street Journal reported Democrats had requested nearly six times as many absentee ballots as Republicans had in Iowa, mainstream outlets played this up as sign of doom for Republicans.
However, these outlets ignored that Republicans have nearly a 20,000 voter registration advantage over Democrats in Iowa, even though there were 100,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans in the state after the 2008 election.
Enthusiasm among Democrats is not as great as it was in 2008, and with the election tied between Romney and Obama in Iowa, events like the “No Wiggins” bus tour can help energize the conservative base to go to the polls in Iowa to vote for Romney, much like conservative voters went to the polls in Ohio in 2004 to vote against same-sex marriage, which helped George W. Bush eke out a victory in Ohio over John Kerry.
On Sunday, Romney also tried to energize Iowa Republicans and keep them engaged in the campaign by participating in a tele-town hall.
Romney fielded questions from callers throughout Iowa, and Romney criticized Obama for trying to demagogue Medicare, even though Obama slashed $700 billion from the program, according to The Des Moines Register.
Romney said he would not “cut whatsoever in funding or changes in programs for either Social Security or Medicare.”
“In fact, the only person who is cutting Medicare is President Obama,” Romney said during the tele-town hall. “He’s cutting it by $716 billion. And this is something that I would change, that I would restore the funding to Medicare.”
Iowans can cast votes in-person or by mail beginning this Thursday, September 27.
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