Salon.com > Iowa caucuses

Iowa’s GOP governor: Let’s get rid of the straw poll

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 13:43:00 +0000

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, said that his state should get rid of the Ames straw poll, which in 2011 showed Michele Bachmann as the favorite primary candidate - just before her campaign imploded.

“I think the straw poll has outlived its usefulness,” Branstad said of poll, which is 33 years-old and has traditionally been used as a dress rehearsal for the Iowa caucuses. “It has been a great fundraiser for the party but I think its days are over.”

The Wall Street Journal points out that even Bachmann aside, the poll has only correctly predicted the winner of the caucuses twice: Bob Dole in 1995 and George W. Bush in 1999, though only Bush went on to win the election.

“You saw what happened the last time,” Branstad said. “I don’t think candidates will spend the time or money to participate in a straw poll if they don’t see any real benefit coming out of it.”

What’s next for Michele Bachmann?

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:30:00 +0000

Michele Bachmann, a deeply deluded and irresponsible religious fanatic who until this week was apparently seriously running for president of the United States, has slunk back home to her oddly shaped Minnesota congressional district to brood on her future.

Politico declares her a "lock" for reelection, but that depends on whether or not she runs. She effectively promised not to, but that promise may have been predicated on her remaining a legitimate presidential candidate. (Minnesota law prohibits running for two federal offices at once.)

Bachmann is not a lock because she's particularly beloved in her district -- as longtime Bachmann critics have been at pains to point out to the national media, she never wins Stillwater, ~~her district's largest city~~, [CORRECTION: St Cloud is her district's largest city. Stillwater is where Bachmann's home is. Dumb mistake on my part, apologies.] and she has tended to win tight races with help from third-party spoilers -- but because she is hugely popular outside her district, with a nearly endless supply of Christian right cash.

The right spins the Santorum surge

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:56:00 +0000

Rick Santorum's not-quite-victory in Iowa last night was unlikely but also sort of inevitable -- he was "next in line," and Ron Paul was doomed by the portions of his platform that aren't horrible -- and now we get to watch the anti-Romney conservatives pretend they've always liked ol' Rick, the True Conservative, the only credible standard-bearer, an electable, decent man who isn't a Washington insider.

(If Glenn Beck, for example, could trust "the reins of power" in any current GOP candidate, it would apparently be Rick Santorum.)

Some are wise enough to bemoan the entire remaining slate, though they of course blame outsiders, and not the actual rank-and-file of their own movement. Jim Geraghty hates Iowa, and says the kooky results (Ron Paul!!!) can be blamed on the lack of a Democratic primary sending unreliable "independents" -- presumably baked out of their minds -- to GOP caucuses to spoil the entire campaign.

Rick Santorum is coming for your birth control

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:30:00 +0000

Here is an actual Rick Santorum quote: “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country." And also, "Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that's okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

These comments were not dug up from some bygone moment of ideological purity, before dreams of a presidential campaign. He said them in October, to a blogger at CaffeinatedThoughts.com (they met at Des Moines' Baby Boomers Cafe).

It's pretty basic: Rick Santorum is coming for your contraception. Any and all of it. And while he may not be alone in his opposition to non-procreative sex, he is certainly the most honest about it -- as he himself acknowledged in the interview.

LIVEBLOG: Iowa divided

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:30:00 +0000

Why the Iowa circus matters

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

It’s easy to downplay the significance of the Iowa Republican caucuses because of their tiny voting universe (in which evangelical Christians and ideological activists are disproportionately represented), the small number of delegates at stake and the event’s poor track record at picking the GOP’s ultimate presidential nominee. But all of that misses the point: As the lead-off contest, Iowa plays a pivotal role in narrowing and clarifying the presidential field.

The last campaign provided a textbook example of how this works, when Mitt Romney – who targeted the state aggressively and led in polling for much of 2007 – lost by 9 points to Mike Huckabee. The setback sapped Romney’s momentum and helped John McCain (who received favorable post-Iowa press coverage after faring better than expected there) eke out a 5-point win in New Hampshire the next week. Iowa may not have vaulted Huckabee to the nomination, but it ended up being a major reason why Romney didn’t get it either.

So even though only about 125,000 Republicans are expected to participate in Tuesday night’s caucuses, the results figure to reinforce or reverse perceptions of each candidate’s viability, with serious implications in subsequent primary contests. Here, then, is a look at the best- and worst-case Iowa scenario for each contender:

Occupy’s Iowa options: Ron Paul or Uncommitted

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Long before people started talking about Occupy the Caucus, Jeff Cox, an Iowa City resident, professor of history at the University of Iowa and former Democratic Party county chairman, was planning to do just that.

“Since last January we’ve been working on an Iowa Healthcare Not Welfare Caucus Campaign,” Cox said in an interview. “Our goal has been to sign people up to go to the Democratic caucuses as uncommitted delegates that are pushing to get our troops out of Afghanistan within 12 months of Obama’s reelection and for Medicare for all during his second term.”

Cox’s organization, which is an all-volunteer effort that took its name from a similar but non-affiliated Progressive Democrats of America initiative, has operated primarily within the confines of Johnson County – one of the most liberal pockets of the Hawkeye State.

Iowa evangelicals still can’t find a good non-Romney candidate

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:05:00 +0000

Pity the poor Iowa evangelicals, who have no one to vote for in the upcoming caucuses. I mean, they have far-right Catholic Rick Santorum and genuine millennialist evangelical believer Michele Bachmann, but Bachmann is crazy and Santorum is creepy, so what they're actually looking for is someone electable who isn't also a Mormon.

Jason Horowitz has the story, for the Washington Post, and I bet he was thrilled to get this bit of color into the paper:

In 2008, evangelical support washed over former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee, but this year [Iowa Right to Life executive director Jenifer] Bowen expressed bewilderment at the theological and electoral calculations that were leading conservative-values voters to bestow their blessing on one candidate after another.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Bowen said, as she set down a basket filled with fetus dolls.

Newt’s supposed path to nomination still sketchy

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:23:00 +0000

I have noticed that most "How Gingrich could win" columns fail to explain how Newt Gingrich could ... actually win. Take, for example, this Charles Hurt column in the Washington Times. After the usual boilerplate about how, well, the Republicans don't like Mitt Romney much, but everyone running against him has been revealed as a clown, Hurt writes: "As strange as it all may be, here is why the former speaker really could win." I'm all ears! And here's the "why," in three points:

"First, Mr. Gingrich is truly Clintonian in all his faults."
"Second, before Mr. Gingrich was the ultimate insider, he was the ultimate outsider."
"Finally, then as now, he is a man of ideas."

Huh. I hope the Washington Times didn't pay a lot for this analysis, because it fails to actually explain why Mr. Gingrich could win the Republican nomination for president.

We have a flood of these "Gingrich could win!!" stories now, because, following the self-immolation of Rick Perry and Herman Cain (and, so long ago it feels like, Michele Bachmann), Gingrich now holds sudden and commanding leads in Florida and South Carolina. He's leading in Iowa. He's even gaining in New Hampshire.

Will 2012 be a replay of 1968?

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:33:00 +0000

Conventional wisdom guru John Heileman suggested yesterday in New York magazine that the next phase of the Occupy Wall Street movement might be “about, in effect, transforming 2012 into 1968 redux.” Although Heileman found, depressingly, that many of the young activists were “surprised” when he pointed out that “the demonstrations in Chicago in 1968 occurred at the Democratic, not Republican, convention, and helped to shatter [Democratic presidential candidate Hubert] Humphrey’s base,” their ignorance of the possible consequences of their course does not lessen the seriousness of the threat they pose. If 2012 is another 1968, President Obama is in trouble.

Heileman’s piece chillingly highlights the Obama campaign’s cavalier attitude toward the young activists.

David Plouffe, his campaign manager in 2008 and now a senior adviser in the White House, had told the Washington Post that the Obamans intended to make the public ire at Wall Street crystallized by OWS ‘one of the central elements of the campaign next year.'

Iowa’s threat to King Obama

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Barack Obama is not entirely at fault for underestimating the threat from Occupy Wall Street. The leaderless drummers in New York did not immediately seem poised to change the political landscape. They were mad at Wall Street. Bankers just kept going to work. Should they turn to their elected governors, who represent the only social force that could alter the class dynamic they decry, where would they find them? The Tea Party movement had the good fortune to arise just before the Democratic Congress went home to hold town hall meetings in the summer of 2009. All the OWS protesters had to look forward to was the coming of winter.

But every four years in Iowa, winter has a different meaning. It’s the season of the presidential caucuses, the first round of the quadrennial election. And Monday some hoary experienced activists in the Iowa Occupy movement saw their opportunity. At the suggestion of former Iowa state representative and radio talk show host Ed Fallon and veteran Catholic peace activist Frank Cordaro, Occupy Des Moines voted to target the presidential candidates’ campaign offices in Iowa, including the headquarters of President Barack Obama. Then they sent an invitation out to Occupy movements around the country to come and join the demonstrations.