ON TO IOWA

Mitt Romney has spent millions of dollars in Iowa. Hillary Clinton and her husband have been crisscrossing the state trying to sell her as a warm human being. Christopher Dodd has gone so far as to move his family temporarily to Iowa. John Edwards has been campaigning in the state since 2004. Iowa newspapers have endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain.

And what has Democrat Dr. Carl Perrin done to win votes in Iowa? Nothing. Perrin has done nothing to win votes in the Hawkeye State. And that will be to his advantage. With all their campaigning and political ads and speeches, the front-running candidates are giving the voters of Iowa too much to chose from. And all of those people carry heavy negatives. Clinton is too robotic. Obama lacks experience. Edwards is too anti-business. Giuliani favors loyalty in his supporters over competence. (We already have someone in the White House who matches that description.) Romney flip flops all over the place. McCain has the wrong position on Iraq for most voters. Huckabee doesn’t accept the scientific concept of evolution. (We already have an anti-science inhabitant in the White House.)

When Iowa voters consider the drawbacks of all these candidates, they will naturally think of Dr. Carl Perrin. But what about Perrin? Does he have any liabilities? Frankly, we can’t think of any negatives in Dr. Perrin’s impressive background. We are confident that when Iowa voters go to their caucuses on January 3, they will say, Dr. Carl Perrin loud and clear.

HILLARY TAKES A FIRM STAND

Some of Senator Clinton’s opponents have charged that she tries to come out on all sides of an issue and refuses to commit to anything that might offend a voter somewhere Now she has come out unequivocally in favor of New York governor Eliott Spitzer’s decision to withdraw his proposal to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. The governor’s goal was to make the roads safer and to bring illegal immigrants out of the shadows.

The governor’s proposal made him the target of slings and arrows from every direction. When the topic came up in the Democratic debates two weeks ago, Mrs. Clinton in effect said, “Yes, no, maybe, let me think about it.” Her opponents suggested that maybe the New York senator was waffling just a little bit:

A spokesman for Barack Obama said, "When it takes two weeks and six different positions to answer one question on immigration, it's easier to understand why the Clinton campaign would rather plant their questions than answer them." Someone from Christopher Dodd’s campaign committee said of Mrs. Clinton was, "flip-flopping cubed. She was for it before she was against it, before she was for it, before she was against it."

Now that Sptizer has stuck his neck out and got his head chopped off, Mrs. Clinton has assumed a firm position on the issue: "I support Governor Spitzer's decision today to withdraw his proposal. As president, I will not support driver's licenses for undocumented people and will press for comprehensive immigration reform that deals with all of the issues around illegal immigration including border security and fixing our broken system." How is that for telling it like it is?

You won’t find Democratic candidate Dr. Carl Perrin hemming and hawing like that. As soon as he decides which way the wind is blowing and what position will be best for his campaign, he will embrace it.