Not all Iowans, but the approximately 120,000 Iowans expected to vote in the Iowa GOP caucuses. They are among the most socially conservative voters in America — roughly 60 percent are evangelical Christians. So the 14 Republican candidates still in the race are tripping over themselves to appeal to this tiny subset.
“There’s a segment there that would be sympathetic to this,” said Dennis Goldford, arofessor of Political Science at Iowa’s Drake University and author of “The Iowa Caucuses: The Making of A Media Event.” “Not all them, but a segment.”
Even Goldford, a longtime Iowa politics observer was shocked when former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, then a White House hopeful, got one of the loudest responses at a candidate forum in Iowa when he said: “If Washington refuses to enforce the border, Texas will. This problem has dragged on long enough.”
“Here we are, 1,000 miles from the U.S. border, but I was astounded by a rapturous applause that he got from these Iowans,” Goldford said.
With such rhetoric, time and place and facts don’t seem to matter. Since 2012, almost 2,000 Syrian refuges have resettled in the U.S. No terrorist activity has been linked to them.
This is why Steve King should be brought to heel. These xenophobes in Iowa are poluting the politic.
Source: sfchronicle.com
