DES MOINES, IA -– Word must have gone out early, either by word of mouth, or by all those social media platforms that conservatives have discovered since 2008, or perhaps by that strange wingnut telepathy only practiced by the true initiates who know all the conjuring words. (People could make Lois Lerner jokes secure in the knowledge that every single person in Iowa who would find them funny was somewhere in the hall.) In any case, the rhetoric at the Iowa Freedom Summit, hosted by Steve King and Citizens United, was startlingly muted. Oh, they hit all the proper notes. Liberty! Constitution! American exceptionalism! And the melodies were consistent; the first few bars were gloomy as they meandered through the many failures of the current administration, many of them largely imaginary, and then the final movement was all sunshine and rainbows and Republican promises of a brighter day. Every speech was like a Requiem Mass that concluded with a rousing chorus of "Tomorrow." But what the speeches were not was wild. If there really were Democratic "trackers" in the house, they wasted a lot of power and a lot of time. Things were positively tame, dammit.

(Except, of course, for Sarah Palin, who seems to be going backwards. When I saw her at CPAC last year, she sounded like an angry middle-schooler. Now she sounds like an angry fourth-grader. She did make time to call the president "an overgrown little boy," which, of course, is not in any way About Race, because nothing ever is About Race. She also had a brilliant idea to move all the Cabinet departments out of Washington. Why not move the Department of Agriculture to Iowa, she suggested, where somebody who knows something about agriculture could run it. The Secretary of Agriculture is Tom Vilsack. Once, he was a governor. Of Iowa. Oh, dear. Maybe we should move the Department of State to an actual state! If you think she's a national leader, you're an idiot and I feel sorry for you.)

Which is not to say that we didn't see some remarkable examples of what has become something of a fundamental dynamic in American politics – namely, once you think about running for president, the country is supposed to hit itself over the head so it forgets you ever had a life and a career before the prospective campaign began. This is how Palin, who has been on the grift so long that she may not remember the last thing for which she actually paid, can run a riff about how "we" have to educate our children that "there's no free lunch, there's no free college, there's no free phone." It's how Scott Walker can say, of his time as Milwaukee County Executive, that he worked to eliminate the "culture of corruption" in that office, and not have to mention that six different people who worked for him when he was county executive went to prison, including one dude who embezzled money from a fund earmarked for taking the children of soldiers killed in action to the zoo. (I suppose Walker could argue that he eliminated the "culture of corruption" by replacing it with an even more grotesquely nickel-and-dime one.) And you could hear Chris Christie caution the audience and the nation on the dangers inherent in overreach by chief executives without ever hearing a cock crow thrice. This was some remarkable thing, it was.

The event itself was a measure of how politics in the country have changed over the past 25 years. It was organized by Congressman Steve King, defender of conventional light-bulbs, flush toilets, and the southern border, and it was run by Citizens United, the brainchild of David Bossie who, in 1991, was nothing more than a low-rent ratfker chasing Bill Clinton's penis all over Arkansas but who now is the overlord of a large and lucrative propaganda operation, an independent base of considerable power beyond the reach and influence of the Republican party, which is why Bossie could provide a platform for presidential wannabes on which they were free to rail against the "Republican establishment." Bill O'Brien, the onetime speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, sharpened the point early in the day when he asked the audience if they should choose as a nominee "someone just because they ran twice before," or "someone just because they happened to have a famous name." And, at their secret meeting elsewhere, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush shivered like crows had walked across their graves. (Rand Paul also declined to show up, and "Bobby" Jindal was otherwise occupied running a revival meeting in Louisiana.) The entire event seemed aimed at the notion of gathering the disparate elements of the right, all of those folks loosely referred to in the Emm Ess Emm as "the Tea Party," and all their disparate fears and grievances, and make sure whatever candidate the primary process produces has to cope with a unified – and determined – base.

"We are wrangling cats, but the common cause is that we all have to unite behind one candidate or we'll all be saying 'Madam President,'" said Ken Crow. In his fine Stetson and his leather vest, he'd been arguing this very point with some young suit on the steps of the old theater in which the event was being held. The suit argued, with some authority, that what Crow was trying to do was impossible. There were too many groups with too many agendas driven by too many fears and grievances for anyone to unify them all in any meaningful way. There were the anti-immigration people, the goldbugs, the pro-lifers, and the ever-expanding universe of free-range activists driven by the ever-expanding odd-lot of causes and issues.

"We have a common cause," Crow said. "None of us want Madam President. There's 50 million of us, 50 million conservatives, and when I say conservatives I mean Christian conservatives, right to life people, in addition to the Tea Party. If we activate those 50 million, we're going to get our guy nominated. We're going to contribute money. We're going to have boots on the ground and everything that he needs or she needs to get the nomination.

"It's dire. Because, if we don't do this, then Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney will be the nominee and it'll be déjà vu 2012. You'll have 20 million Tea Party people who will sit this election out in protest against the Republican Party, feeling like they had another candidate crammed down their throats."

A lot of Republican politics is going to be fought out between the people who came to Iowa and the people who didn't, but the fight also is going to be between the people who line up with Ken Crow and people who think what he's trying to do is doomed and futile. In 2012, the primary process became a circus, not simply because of the stunning array of lightweight loons who made up the field, but also because the people who opposed the very idea of Mitt Romney couldn't get their act together in time to do anything about his massive advantages in fundraising. As long as there isn't really a Republican Party but, rather, a collection of independent conservative centers of power orbiting warily around each other, and I doubt if obvious anagram Reince Priebus, the emptiest suit in American politics, can do much of anything about it, then Ken Crow's going to lose that argument. Unless they're talking about the Founding Fathers. They all love them some Founding Fathers, who speak to them in their dreams, personally.

***

I have to admit that I expected more from Mike Lee, the konztitutional skolar from the state of Utah. He's rather a dull presence, actually. But the Constitution exalts him. Oh my, yes it surely does.

"As we all know, the Boston Tea Party was a defiant road test that we all remember and we all celebrate today. It would be only a footnote in history if that same generation of Americans did not make their way to Philadelphia 14 years later to write the Constitution. To read the Constitution, that 227-year-old document, the document that needs to control more of the political discourse in Washington than it does today. You would be surprised how often that document is disregarded or left out of a discussion altogether."

I swear his feet left the stage for a second, suspended on a small golden cloud shaped like Button Gwinnett's head.

OK, I'm willing to give them their little Founding Father fetish and, if it prompts even one person to go back and actually read what the Founders were about – A lot of them were (Shhh!) professional politicians (!) – then maybe even some good will come out of it. But, Lord above, can they at least do a little research? It's not like there's a dearth of documentation as to what they said and did, right?

Nevertheless, Iowa Congressman Rod Blum concluded his speech with his favorite quote from Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson said it best, and I will paraphrase it here. He said there are two groups of people that can do harm to the great citizens of this wonderful nation of ours. The first are criminals. The second is government. Let us bind the second group with the chains of constitution so they do not become legalized members of the first group. That my friends -- that, my friends, is where we are at.

Except, of course, that Jefferson never said any such thing, at least as far as the archivists at Monticello can determine. They have decided that it might be a conflation of something Jefferson said with something Ayn Rand wrote, which figures. He did refer to the "chains of the Constitution," but it was in a passage from the Kentucky Resolutions, of which Jefferson went to great length to disguise his authorship, but that passage was referring specifically to one person, President John Adams, and the Alien and Sedition Acts. Later, Ted Cruz cited that particular reference and applied it to "the government," which certainly wasn't what Jefferson had in mind.

And speaking of John Adams, Chris Christie doesn't want to make him cry in heaven, which is nice of him.

One of the great founders of our country, when he was right near the end of his life, wrote for posterity in his diary because he was so concerned that the country he helped to found 50 years earlier was going off on the wrong track. John Adams wrote for posterity, for us. He said, you shall never know the sacrifices we endured to secure for you your liberty. I pray you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven, forever having made the sacrifice at all...I will not be willingly a part of a generation that makes John Adams repent in heaven for having made the sacrifices that he and our Founding Fathers made for the liberty we enjoy in the freedom we lived under today.

Actually, and by now this shouldn't be a surprise, Adams didn't write that in his diary, and he didn't write that near the end of his lifeHe wrote it in a letter to his wife, Abigail, in 1777. Of course, I was able to put all this together because I happened to be seated at the time in a position in which I simultaneously could hear Ben Carson giving a press conference and Donald Trump giving a speech. I don't think the Founders had that in mind, either.

***

Immigration was supposed to be the entrée du jour, what with King's history of pursuing cantaloupe-calved non-valedictorian drug mules and the like, and undocumented immigrants were a daylong trope, what with Rick Perry's bragging about calling out the National Guard ("If Washington won't protect the border, Texas will!" Yoicks. Me no Alamo.) and all. But it took Rick Santorum to dial things up to 11, and have I mentioned recently what a colossal dick Rick Santorum is.

His speech was the prototype for the entire program. There was the victimology, the passive-aggressive swipes at the president, the doomy tour of the present landscape and then, after all that, an appeal for civility and an optimistic Republican party. Most of it was nothing anybody who's watched Santorum since he got voted out of the Senate hasn't heard before, but it was when he got into immigration, that Santorum really got interesting. He made the usual mouth noises about the undocumented, but then he went off on legal immigration, a system that he insists is broken as well, and to the disadvantage of what he persisted in calling, interestingly, "American workers."

"Legal immigration is at an all time high. There have been more people legally coming into this country than any 20 year period in American history. We are approaching percentage wise the highest level of immigrants we've ever had in America. Almost 14% now. It was 14.2 at the end of The Great Wave in 1920. There are more people not born in this country than have ever been in the history of this country. And it's effecting American workers. Why? Because the vast majority of the people come in under-educated and unskilled. We all know there's not a huge growing number of jobs for unskilled laborers and as a result wages stagnate and income comes down. We need to stand for an immigration policy that puts Americans first and American workers first."

As historical precedent, Santorum cited the Emergency Quota Act of 1920 and the Immigration Act of 1924, emphasizing that both passed overwhelmingly, and in a bipartisan fashion. (I'm sure this sent whoever the Ron Fournier of the day was over the moon.) He neglected, however, to mention the involvement of the early 20th-Century eugenics movement in the latter. Apparently, he thinks the eugenicists founded Planned Parenthood and then went fishing for a couple of decades. However, Santorum continues to argue this line, he's opening up a gigantic can of worms for the Republicans.

So far, the pandering to the xenophobes – Hi, Steve King! Thanks for having us over! – has been sanctified to a certain extent because it can be swathed in rhetoric about "the rule of law," which immunizes the hardcore anti-immigrant Right by allowing it to say how much it loves legal immigrants who do things the right way. If Santorum can energize the debate by arguing that legal immigrants are taking jobs away from "American workers," then that loophole closes, and the party finds itself with an internal debate over whether it wants to limit all immigration, legal and not. And then we've got a real show on our hands, and I shall despair even more profoundly about the rebranding.

***

The five of them started chanting while Rick Perry was bloviating about something or another. They were undocumented immigrants, DREAMers in the parlance of the day, and one of them, Marco Malagon, came to Iowa from Texas, where he had been living the undocumented life in Rick Perry's business-friendly paradise. (He did not work in a fertilizer plant that exploded and took out a whole town, of course.) Malagon was the loudest, and he was the one the police descended on. He went limp, and they dragged him down the hill from the theater to a squad car. His arrest was captured by a half-dozen photographers and several videographers, professional and otherwise. Monica Reyes stood on the sidewalk, chanting along with her friends and watching the patrol car drive Marco Malagon away.

In 2003, Reyes was three-years-old and she came to the United States from Mazatlan, her mother fleeing an abusive husband and ending up in New Hampton, in Steve King's congressional district. She lived in what is now called in the immigration community a "mixed-status" family. Monica has sisters who were born here, and are therefore, at the moment anyway, as American as I am. She lived the undocumented life until the president's executive order allowed her to get a driver's license and to buy a new house in Waterloo. Quite simply, if the people in the theater up on the hill get their way, and they do what they've promised to do, Monica Reyes loses the car, the new house, and her little sisters lose their mother. Her family, values and all, cease to exist.

"You never stop looking over your shoulder," she said. " Even with what the president did, I know it can all go away fast. That's why I am here today. Do they stand with the DREAMers or do they stand with Steve King. We'll see."

The day ended. In the lobby of the theater, David Bossie and one of his security people were in search of someone they suspected of being a liberal video mole. This struck me as the last real irony of the day – the world's most successful ratfker in search of an undercover operative at his most respectable event. This also was some remarkable thing, it was.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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