What issues will ultimately decide the Republican nomination?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
What issues will decide GOP nomination? Economy, foreign policy, health care?
As the Republican candidates for president scramble to try to win their party's nomination, they're appealing to voters on a wide range of issues - everything from the economy to foreign policy.
But the candidate that Republicans wind up choosing may say a lot about what issue matters most.
Recent polls show that Americans on the whole are overwhelmingly concerned about the economy, citing issues like high unemployment and the deficit.
Other top concerns include health care, entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare and the threat from terrorism.
Further down the list are taxes, the size of government, illegal immigration, foreign policy and moral issues like abortion and gay marriage. The so-called wedge issues that always play a large role in the primaries.
If Mitt Romney turns out to be the Republican nominee - as many people expect - to some extent, his support could come from voters who see his business background as a strength in turning around the economy.
Of course all the Republicans have been vocal in slamming President Obama's economic policies.
When it comes to foreign policy, Ron Paul has strong views against the wars and a more isolationist perspective than the other candidates. Jon Huntsman also comes to the table with his experience as ambassador to China.
On health care, Romney could have a difficult time opposing President Obama's health care law due to a similar law he supported as governor of Massachusetts.
As for social issues, Rick Santorum is appealing to social conservatives in large part based on issues like gay marriage and abortion.
Here’s my question to you: What issues will ultimately decide the Republican nomination?
Tune in to the Situation Room at 5pm to see if Jack reads your answer on air.
And, we love to know where you’re writing from, so please include your city and state with your comment.
How would you reform the political debate process?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
There is a growing debate about the debates - and rightfully so.
A growing chorus of voices is suggesting that the presidential primary debate process has gotten out of hand and needs to be reined in.
I couldn't agree more. So far, there have been at least 15 debates between the Republican presidential wannabes - including two over a 12-hour period this weekend. And there are more to come.
Republican strategist Mark McKinnon writes in The Daily Beast that the primary debate process has "gone rogue." He suggests the media took complete control from the parties and the candidates and that the focus of these debates is now "entertainment and eyeballs."
McKinnon says as there are more and more debates, there is less and less time for the candidates to talk directly to voters on the campaign trail.
He also criticizes the format where the moderators are the story, questions are meant to spark conflict, some of the questions are downright silly, and serious questions are limited to 60-second solutions and 30-second rebuttals.
Plus, since media outlets can decide which candidates can participate, they effectively handicap the candidacy of those not allowed in.
McKinnon suggests that the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee should agree before 2016 to guidelines for their primary debates.
Several top Republicans agree that the party needs to take more control over the process.
But not everyone is on-board. Lower-tier candidates stand to benefit from more debates because it's free air time. Candidates like Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain jumped in the polls after their debate performances.
And news organizations have been getting big ratings from the many debates suggesting there is an appetite for them.
Here’s my question to you: How would you reform the political debate process?
Tune in to the Situation Room at 4pm to see if Jack reads your answer on air.
And, we love to know where you’re writing from, so please include your city and state with your comment.
Was it wrong for the U.S. to just walk away from Iraq?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
Just as many predicted would happen, a civil war is threatening to consume Iraq.
On Monday, car bomb attacks in Baghdad killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 50 others.
The bombs targeted a Shiite mosque and market.
A roadside bomb earlier Monday also killed at least one Shiite pilgrim and wounded 10 others.
Hundreds of thousands of Shiites are making their way to Karbala for a pilgrimage and they've been the target of nearly daily attacks.
This spike in violence comes during one of Iraq's worst political crises since the U.S. invasion.
With U.S. military forces gone, the Iraqi government is tied up in a political gridlock along sectarian lines. Many are worried a civil war is around the corner.
Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, says Iraq is in the process of "unraveling" and could split into three states: Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish.
McCain blames the Obama administration for failing to secure a long-term troop agreement with the Iraqi government.
Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry says he supports deploying U.S. troops back to Iraq. Perry says the United States can't afford to allow Iran to come back into Iraq and take over.
To put it bluntly: Iraq's problems are too numerous to count.
There's the Shiite-Sunni warring politicians, the almost daily bombings, the power vacuum left when American troops withdrew that's now being filled by everyone from al Qaeda in Iraq to Sunni militants to Shiite militias, often backed by Iran.
And there's the turmoil in neighboring Syria. If the Al-Assad regime falls, it could send thousands of Sunni refugees, who fled to Syria after the fall of Saddam Hussein, back to Iraq. Not pretty.
Here’s my question to you: Was it wrong for the U.S. to just walk away from Iraq?
Tune in to the Situation Room at 5pm to see if Jack reads your answer on air.
And, we love to know where you’re writing from, so please include your city and state with your comment.
What does it mean when Americans make up half of the world's richest 1%?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
When I read these numbers I was stunned. I had no idea that Americans make up fully one half of the world's richest 1%.
When you look at the world's population as a whole, it only takes $34,000 a year per person - after taxes - to be part of the world's richest one percent. A family of four with after tax income of $136,000 would be among the world's richest.
60 million people make up the world's richest one percent. And, according to world bank economist Branko Milanovic, half of them - or 29 million people - lived in the United States as of 2005.
Another 4 million live in Germany. And the rest are scattered throughout Europe, Latin America and parts of Asia.
None of the world's richest 1% live in Africa, China or India - statistically speaking.
Although places like China and India are seeing economic growth, and people there are getting richer, they're starting from a very low base. This also means the emerging middle class in these countries isn't the same as the middle class in developed nations. No cars. No retirement plans. They don't own their own homes.
Milanovic says people in the world's true middle live on around $1,200 a year.
Which means even the poorest 5% of Americans are richer than two-thirds of the entire world. Something to think about.
While the Occupy Wall Street movement targets the so-called 1% with protests in New York, Los Angeles, Denver and Washington.
These numbers give one percent a whole new meaning.
Here’s my question to you: What does it mean when Americans make up half of the world's richest 1%?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Why do people give money to candidates who have no chance of winning?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
If you go to the race track, do you bet your money on a three-legged horse? No – you bet your money on a four-legged horse that has a chance of winning the race.
So why is it when it comes to politics some people insist on betting on horses that have no chance of winning?
Several of the Republican presidential wannabes are raking in loads of campaign cash despite the fact that they have virtually no chance of being the nominee.
Rick Santorum, who came close to defeating Mitt Romney in Iowa, has raised more than $1 million since the caucuses Tuesday.
Yes, Santorum placed a very close second in Iowa, but that was largely due to his appeal among social conservatives and evangelicals. And that's not something that will translate in many of the upcoming races. He stands to lose badly in New Hampshire.
Meanwhile, Ron Paul raised an impressive $13 million in the last three months. That tops the $8 million he raised in the previous quarter. Paul has a passionate group of supporters. He, too, ran well in Iowa, but again, chances are he won't be the Republican nominee.
Newt Gingrich also raised $10 million in the last quarter, but some of that came when he was spiking in the polls. And that is now history.
Of course, none of these compare to Romney's expected haul of $20 million in the last three months.
But that's the thing, you can understand why people might plunk their money down on Romney to win.
Romney is looking more and more like the party's nominee every day. He is expected to win by a landslide in New Hampshire, and it seems unlikely at this point that there is anyone – or anything – that can stop him.
Here’s my question to you: Why do people give money to candidates who have no chance of winning?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
How much faith do you have in an online betting site to pick the winner in the Republican primary?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
While some of us obsess over the polls, maybe there's a better way:
In Ireland there is an online betting parlor which boasts stunning accuracy in predicting the outcome of elections.
Intrade is a website which lets users swap contracts on events and its users are amazingly good at getting election results right.
In the 2004 presidential election Intrade bettors correctly picked the winner of every single state. In 2008 - they missed only two.
And, not to discourage the gaggle of GOP wannabees this year, but according to Intrade they have no shot. None.
Intrade pegs Romney at an 80% chance of winning the nomination. The next closest candidate is Newt Gingrich at 5%.
Which means the crop of Republican hopefuls can probably go home now and dream of what might have been.
Granted some of them will now that Iowa is over - see Michele Bachmann - and especially after New Hampshire is over, where Romney is expected to win by a landslide.
But there will likely be a few who refuse to recognize reality and instead stumble forward into South Carolina and beyond, spending other people's money, banging their jaws together in a never-ending quest to avoid what in their heart of hearts they know is going to happen anyway: They're going to lose.
And according to Intrade, if their name isn't Romney, they've already lost.
So wouldn't it be better if they just went away? Yes, it would. For all of us.
We're one week into the election year and I'm already tired of it.
I remember the national root canal that was Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton... as the two of them lurched from one primary to the next in a vicious knife fight for delegates that I thought would never end.
In the end, the country has a clear case of political fatigue.
If you believe Intrade, we can avoid all that.
Here’s my question to you: How much faith do you have in an online betting site to pick the winner in the Republican primary?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
What will it take for this country to elect a woman president?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
Michele Bachmann's dreams of being president are history. And so too is the possibility of the U.S. electing its first woman president - at least for another four years.
This was the second election in a row where a woman tried and failed to become president.
Hillary Clinton made a great run at it in 2008, but in the end lost the Democratic Party's nomination to Barack Obama.
When Clinton bowed out, she acknowledged she wasn't able to "shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling" but noted that her supporters put about 18 million cracks in it. At the time, polls suggested Americans were more ready for a black president than a woman president.
Fast forward four years, and there were high expectations for Bachmann, at least in her birth state of Iowa.
Bachmann entered the race as a tea party favorite and became the first woman to win the Ames Straw Poll in August. Unfortunately for Bachmann, that was the high point of her campaign.
Here’s my question to you: What will it take for this country to elect a woman president?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Will Rick Santorum's vow to bomb Iran help or hurt him in Iowa?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
Rick Santorum - the latest Republican candidate to see a surge in Iowa - says he would bomb Iran if it doesn't scrap its nuclear program.
Santorum says as president he would insist Iran open its nuclear facilities to inspectors and dismantle them. Otherwise, he promises to quote "degrade those facilities through air strikes." Translation: Bomb them.
santorum vows that Iran will not get a nuclear weapon on his watch.
Apparently a little sabre rattling couldn't hurt. with all eyes on Iowa today - Santorum has jumped in the polls there. The latest poll shows him in third place, behind Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.
Santorum says Iowa is "moving" his way, and that he's very confident he will "finish well." The former Pennsylvania Senator says he has enthusiasm and momentum, both vital to the caucus process.
But how much might Santorum's tough talk against Iran have to do with his Iowa surge?
Iran has been making a lot of noise lately... as it finishes up 10 days of test firing missiles during Naval exercises in the Strait of Hormuz.
Last week Iran threatened to close down the Strait, a strategic shipping channel through which one-sixth of the world's oil passes.
Iran's threat comes on the heels of planned sanctions by the west targeting its oil industry. The sanctions are meant to force Iran to cut back its nuclear program.
But Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, and refuses to halt its production of enriched uranium.
Here’s my question to you: Will Rick Santorum's vow to bomb Iran help or hurt him in Iowa?
Tune in to the Situation Room at 4pm to see if Jack reads your answer on air.
And, we love to know where you’re writing from, so please include your city and state with your comment.
What do the Iowa caucuses really mean?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
At eight o'clock tonight, the process of electing our next president will be officially under way in Iowa.
This year it's the Republicans who have staged a political demolition derby across the sparsely populated state in the heart of the Corn Belt.
And, every four years a lot of people wonder, why Iowa? How much does it even matter what happens in Iowa? In 2008, Mike Huckabee won in Iowa while John McCain, the eventual nominee, placed fourth. The same thing could happen this year.
Even if Ron Paul, for example, were to win in Iowa, there is almost no chance he will be the Republican nominee.
Howard Kurtz writes in The Daily Beast that "Iowa is in some ways a funhouse mirror, distorting the process as everyone else suspends disbelief and plays along."
Iowa officials insist their state deserves its first-in-the nation billing because its citizens are well-informed and throw tough questions at the candidates. But Iowa is much whiter and more rural than the other 49 states and in almost no way resembles the rest of the country, except maybe North Dakota, or South Dakota. You get the point.
As for today, it's yet to be seen how much Iowa will matter, if at all. If Mitt Romney wins there - and then goes on to win in a landslide in New Hampshire - he could seal the deal pretty quickly.
Nevertheless, it does give an early indication of who has a good organization, who can raise money and who can get an audience to listen to what they have to say. Plus it gives the news media something to do until the New Hampshire primary.
Whatever the outcome of the caucuses, it's probably safe to say Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry might soon want to think about calling it quits.
It's not a question of if those folks drop out, but when.
In the end, Iowa can serve to narrow the field and tell the rest of the country what a relatively few people in the Heartland don't want.
Here’s my question to you: What do the Iowa caucuses really mean?
Tune in to the Situation Room at 5pm to see if Jack reads your answer on air.
And, we love to know where you’re writing from, so please include your city and state with your comment.
@jackcafferty on Twitter
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