This weekend, no fewer than eight potential Republican presidential candidates, along with some party media stars like Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Donald Trump, will head to Des Moines for the Iowa Freedom Summit, an event organized by anti-immigrant nincompoop and member of the U.S. House of Representatives Steve King. In my Plum Line Post today, I wondered what might happen if one of those candidates decided to do something unexpected:
What if one of those eight candidates got up at this event and said, "Representative King, I appreciate you inviting me here, but I'm going to have to be honest and tell you that you and people who think like you do are killing this party that we all love. There are some things we can agree on, like the need for a more secure border. But every time we rain contempt down on immigrants, we push away millions of voters that we ought to be reaching out to instead. If we're ever going to win back the White House, that has to change."
Would that lose the candidate some votes? You bet. But it would also be an earthquake. The media (who will be at the Freedom Summit in force) would go crazy-there's nothing they love more than a "maverick" who's willing to start fights within his or her party. The candidate who said it would lead the news and be on the front page of a hundred newspapers the next day. It would be worth tens of millions of dollars in publicity.
Of course it won't happen. But it would be something if it did.
