GOP race just getting revved up

WASHINGTON -- The Republican game of musical chairs in the 2012 Republican presidential cycle saw its first major casualty in last weekend's Iowa straw poll circus, with former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty driven out of the center ring.

His departure was inevitable, considering his failure to distinguish himself in any substantial way from the pack.

An ambitious attempt to organize for the straw poll got nowhere in the face of the late entry of fellow Minnesotan Michele Bachmann, who outdid Pawlenty in personal pizzazz and aggressive rhetoric pleasing to the ears of Iowans of the mad-as-hell cadre of politics.

It isn't often that an ambitious politician who has had considerable success at the state level folds so early. But the high cost these days of remaining in contention obliges serious candidates who fail to achieve traction to look to the exit door. Iowa is accurately said to begin the winnowing process that will continue now through the early 2012 state delegate-selection caucuses and primaries.

The winnowing process in fact preceded the this season's Iowa poll, a cash cow for the Iowa Republican Party in which the candidates' campaigns bought thousands of tickets at $30 a pop and handed them out to citizens on the assumption, not always valid, that they would vote for their benefactors. Other would-be candidates, including Mike Huckabee, winner of the 2008 Republican precinct caucuses, withdrew from consideration well before the event, although Huckabee showed up to strum his guitar as an entertainer in one of the candidate tents. Two declared contestants, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a loser in that previous exercise, and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, just entering the race, wisely skipped the straw vote, knowing their already well-heeled campaigns had nothing to gain in it.

Some long-shot entrants in the Iowa exercise are pressing on, either out of self-delusion or out of a calculated recognition that the candidate debates, caucuses and primaries to come will give them more spotlighted forums in which to air their views. They believe, or profess to believe, that finishing third or fourth or fifth in the straw poll constitutes progress.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the perennial libertarian candidate with his narrow but faithful constituency, ran a close second to Bachmann in the Iowa test and also presses on, figuring the megaphone afforded him by staying in the race is worth persevering. For some he provides comic relief, for others extreme views that make the other candidates seem somehow more reasonable.

In two earlier presidential races, Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio shared the same role with Paul as the pointed critic of American engagement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, triggering a worthwhile debate that is sorely lacking so far this year in the campaign, as is Kucinich himself.

Back in 1976, longshot Democratic wishful-thinker Sen. Fred Harris of Oklahoma, after coming in fourth in the Iowa test, declared that he had been "winnowed in" on the strength of that showing, only to fall by the wayside later. Last weekend, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, landslide loser of his Senate seat in 2006 but perhaps the purest conservative true believer in the race, reveled in having exceeded low expectations with 10 percent of the vote. He still has trouble standing out because most of the other Republican contenders deliver the same message, if not with the same caustic self-assurance he serves up.

The large field in Iowa's summertime political entertainment is akin to a warm-up act at a rock concert, with the winnowing process eventually giving way to the featured performers taking the stage. It's clear already that they will include Romney, Perry and Bachmann, plus any others, like Paul and perhaps Newt Gingrich, who revel in hearing the sound of their own voices.

Together, they are not likely to create panic in the Obama campaign, which faces a greater threat from the stalled economic recovery and joblessness than from any one or group of Republican challengers, all of whom hope to ride this threat to the White House in 2013.

Columnist Jules Witcover's email address is juleswitcover@comcast.net.