Catharsis but no solutions in Iowa
A Monmouth University poll of likely Republican Iowa caucus-goers released on Aug. 31 revealed that the three front-runners in the field of 17 candidates among them capture 56 percent of the vote.
Those candidates are perhaps as diverse as three people can be. One is a blustering billionaire, nativist WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant); one a soft-spoken African-American who climbed out of the Detroit ghetto to become a brilliant pediatric neurosurgeon; one a former secretary who broke through the glass ceiling to become the first woman CEO of a Fortune 100 company, at the time the world's largest technology enterprise.
What the leaders Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorino (at 23, 23 and 10 percent, respectively) do have in common is that none of them is a lawyer, nor has any of them ever held political office.
The odds are that none of them will win the nomination, but it's clear that each of them in his or her own way has shown how disgusted Iowa Republican voters are with their established political class.
Simply put, a large segment of that electorate seems to be following the advice of Howard Beale, the deranged broadcaster from the movie Network: "I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'"
That very well may be cathartic, but it doesn't solve anything.
Bob Foys
Inverness