Bob Vander Plaats succeeded in removing the state's three supreme court justices after they supported marriage equality. One of them was Michael Streit:
"If we had done what we should have done, that is, form committees, raise money, and just run some commercials," Streit says, "this court system would have been changed drastically. Our biggest stock-in-trade for the court system is our credibility, our integrity, and our ability to be fair and impartial to all people. That is slowly but surely being whittled away by us being dragged into partisan elections and/or elections where money is involved."
… The retention campaign has turned into a rallying cry for the Republican presidential candidates in 2011. "I love the backbone of Iowans who stand for marriage as one man and one woman," Michele Bachmann said in Ames just before she won the Iowa Straw Poll in early August. “Believe me, you set every judge in this country quaking when you did not retain those three judges."
The reporter, Patrick Caldwell, offers an update on further GOP support for the retention campaign. Alex Altman interviewed Vander Plaats this week. Money quote:
The field is so different in ’12 than ’08. In ’08 you had McCain, you had Romney, Giuiliani, Fred Thompson. Huckabee was kind of the outlier, so it was easier for our base to coalesce around Huckabee. In ’12 you have Bachmann, Santorum, Cain, Perry, Gingrich, Paul–all pretty much going after the same base. Our base.
The Dish 