James R. Carroll

Louisville

WASHINGTON - Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was in Iowa over the weekend to address the state's Republican Party convention, but it is no longer a party controlled by Paul supporters.

The GOP apparatus in the first-in-the-nation presidential caucus state is now in the hands of Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who has replaced the party's board of directors with people loyal to him.

The Iowa Republican Party previously had been laden with supporters of Paul and his father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, under a political umbrella adherents called the "liberty movement."

The upshot of the battle for party control, which was spread out from January through April and finalized at the convention in Des Moines, means that Paul forces were ousted, taking away a potential advantage for the Kentuckian should he decide to seek the presidency.

"Unlike the last convention, it wasn't a liberty movement crowd – resurgent establishment Republicans and evangelical Christian conservatives iced out Iowa's diehard Ron Paul backers from the majority of delegate slots," reported Jennifer Jacobs of The Des Moines Register, a sister paper of The Courier-Journal.

"But Paul's son, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, was well received," she wrote. "He argued that the GOP can win the next presidential election if they call for unabashedly lowering taxes and warding against government intrusion into voters' private lives."

Paul also cautioned the Republicans against becoming more moderate.

The thinking among Iowa political observers was that, with a state Republican Party under the management of (Ron and Rand) Paul forces, the Kentuckian could have had a leg up on helping to formulate rules for the coming 2016 presidential season.

But Branstad partisans had argued that the presidential caucuses were in danger of becoming irrelevant because, based on recent history, the contest favored more conservative candidates who were unable to win the GOP nomination or the election.

Instead, securing a more moderate party organization was "a development victors said would help save the states's...presidential caucus from being marginalized," reported Politico's James Hohmann.

It also may doom the Ames Straw Poll, a media-infused survey of Republican sentiment in the Hawkeye State - staged the summer before the caucuses - that signifies very little (in 2011, Rep. Michele Backmann was the victor; she placed 6th in the actual caucuses).

Branstad has said he wants to jettison the Ames poll, but others in the state GOP want to keep it, if for no other reason than it raises a lot of money for the party.