Tag Archives: iowa

Obama’s America

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

This is the first of an occasional series of what I am calling “Obama’s America.”

While the political elite are focused on the Republican primary fight, the rest of America is focused on looking for (or keeping) a job; hoping the kids are actually learning something at school; despairing over, while staring at, their evaporating retirement accounts; and wondering, while they watch geniuses like me verbally spar with other geniuses on cable talk shows who, if anyone is actually watching the store.

I started thinking about this while contemplating the Was-Bain-Capital-The-Bane-Of-The-American-Economy action in South Carolina. Mitt Romney is a big boy and has a good campaign. They opened the door to the attacks by Newt Gingrich by attacking Gingrich in Iowa. Continue reading →

Presidential Candidates: Off and Running

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

From Des Moines, Iowa

At long last, real voters cast real votes on behalf of real candidates. One down, 49 to go and that doesn’t include American Somoa, Guam, the District of Columbia and other U.S. holdings.

You already know what happened last night: Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. Rick Santorum essentially tied for first with 25 percent apiece. Rep. Ron Paul faded to third with about 2 percent. Speaker Newt Gingrich preserved a semblance of a win by beating out Gov. Rick Perry about 13 percent to 10 percent with Rep. Michele Bachmann coming in sixth with about five percent of the votes.

The Santorum story here – and it’s a good story – is, months and months of hard work and long road trips finally paid off. After Conservatives in Iowa kicked the tires of the four other candidates: Bachmann, Perry, Cain and Gingrich; they decided to take a look at Santorum and decided he was as good as they were likely to get and they made their choice pretty clear. Continue reading →

Why Iowa?

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

We are now inside of a week until the waiting-with-baited-breath Iowa Caucuses.

Every four years everyone looks at who has won in Iowa and who ended up as the nominee and makes the very persuasive case that the Caucuses are not predictive of the ultimate primary process outcome. I said on Anderson Cooper last night that Iowa caucus voters don’t pick winners, but they do a great job of identifying losers.

The reasons are: There are 49 more primaries and caucuses to go after Iowa – more if you include delegates from Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the District of Columbia. So, a victory in Iowa punches a candidate’s ticket at least through South Carolina, but there are no guarantees after that.

Second, this only happens once every four years and there is almost always an incumbent running in one of the party caucuses so they don’t count. Continue reading →

Des Moines Des Bate

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The thing about telling you that I watched the GOP debate that took place in Des Moines, Iowa Saturday night is I have to admit I had nothing else to do Saturday night.

— Attend Joint Chiefs of Staff Christmas Party – Pentagon

— Fly to New York to see “Spiderman” – Broadway

— Weekend cruise to friend’s private island – Caribbean

— Feed the cat

— Make a meat loaf

— Watch GOP debate

Here’s the shorthand version of what I think happened.

Newt Gingrich won. No surprise. Gingrich is leading the pack because there have been 217 debates and he’s been great in all of them. Anyone who thought he was going to suddenly collapse under the weight of being the frontrunner simply doesn’t understand the Tao of Newt.

The Twitter-verse exploded when Mitt Romney offered to bet Rick Perry $10,000 on who was right about what was in Romney’s book regarding a national individual mandate for health care. Continue reading →

Perry, Paul, & Romney

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com & Townhall.com

I was in Las Vegas Friday night as the guest of the conservative Citizen Outreach organization. We got to talking about the importance which may be visited upon the Nevada caucuses this year which, on the GOP side of the ledger has never been that big a deal.

A couple of weeks ago Florida decided to move its GOP primary up by about a month to January 31. That set all the other early states into a frenzy trying to figure out when they should hold their caucuses (Iowa and Nevada) or primaries (New Hampshire and South Carolina).

As of this writing the guessing is, Iowa will move its caucuses up to January 3; New Hampshire to January 7; Nevada to the 14th; and, South Carolina to January 21.

That means, the week between Christmas and New Year will be spent in places like Red Oak and Clear Lake, Iowa; and Claremont and Gottstown, New Hampshire.

As Mullfave Ed Rollins pointed out last week, “you can’t live off the land in Florida like you can in the other early states.”

Nevada’s population is centered around Clark County (Las Vegas and its environs) and Washoe County (Reno) so you can organize there pretty easily. South Carolina’s population is more than four million and spread out throughout the state, but SC is geographically the 10th smallest state so driving from point A to point M (or wherever) is not much of a challenge.

Florida is a different kettle of alligators. Continue reading →