Category: Iowa

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Iowa Iowa caucuses Mitt Romney Politics Republican Rick Santorum

Did Mitt Romney Get 20 Extra Iowa Votes He Didn’t Earn?

One of the actual vote counters in Iowa’s Republican primary election last Tuesday has come forward, arguing that Mitt Romney got an extra 20 votes he wasn’t supposed to get.

Edward True, 28, of Moulton, said he helped count the votes and jotted the results down on a piece of paper to post to his Facebook page. He said when he checked to make sure the Republican Party of Iowa got the count right, he said he was shocked to find they hadn’t.

“When Mitt Romney won Iowa by eight votes and I’ve got a 20-vote discrepancy here, that right there says Rick Santorum won Iowa,” True said. “Not Mitt Romney.”

True said at his 53-person caucus at the Garrett Memorial Library, Romney received two votes. According to the Iowa Republican Party’s website, True’s precinct cast 22 votes for Romney.

“This is huge,” True said. “It essentially changes who won.”

Romney was called the winner of the Iowa primary by 8 votes. If Mr. True is correct, it means that Rick Santorum won by 12 votes.

And the circus continues!

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Iowa Politics presidential Republican White House

The Crazy Bachmann Antics Are Now Suspended… Until Further Notice

If last night was any indication, we already knew Michele Bachmann was gonna quit. In her concession speech – after pulling in only 5% of the primary votes in Iowa – Bachmann, the senator from Minnesota who was actively pursuing the presidency, told her handful of supporters that she “was not a politician.”

“I am a very real person,” Bachmann said, “I am not a politician, nor do I ever hoped or aspire to be a politician.”

Okaaaaaaay.

Bachmann then went on to tell her audience that her campaign will continue, and that her hopes were to win the New Hampshire primaries next Tuesday.

But something happened after the microphones were turned off; after the camera crew packed up and left, wondering how they got stuck with the assignment of covering a loosing politician; after her supporters went home disappointed at squandering their precious votes. That ‘something’ was that  Bachmann checked her campaign purse and realized that all her campaign donations were spent. And the reality of the situation was a hard smack  to the face.

So, the camera crews gathered one last time, the microphone turned back on and today, sometime after 11am, Michele Bachmann stepped up to the podium;

“Last night the people of Iowa spoke with a very clear voice and so I have decided to stand aside…I will continue fighting to defeat the president’s agenda of socialism.”

We are saddened by Michele Bachmann’s departure from the Republican presidential race. She was crazy and her antics will be sorely missed.

For instance, like the time she reported that the swine flu epidemic in the 1970’s was caused by a Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, being in the White House, when in fact, a Republican named Gerald Ford was President.

And although there are still plenty of loonies running for the Republican nomination, Bachmann was truly one of the best.

Bye-bye Michele!

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Election results Iowa Mitt Romney Politics Republican

Post-Caucus Cigarette: What The Results in Iowa Mean

Was Iowa good for you? All that talk about three-way ties must have made conservatives across the political spectrum very uncomfortable. So let’s tidy up a bit.

Here’s what I thought would happen, and what actually happened:

Romney     26%          24.6%

Santorum  24%         24.5%

Paul            21%          21.4%

Gingrich    15%        13.3%

Perry          8%        10.3%

Bachmann   5%         5.0%

Not bad, I think.

Obviously, it was a terrible night for Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann who now have to be considered the first casualties of the race. Perry has the money to carry on and could find some sympathy in South Carolina and Florida, but he’ll struggle to get any positive press out of Iowa. Better he should keep his money and spend it on a Senate race. Newt also underperformed and needs a great showing in the next three states to remain viable. Ron Paul did about as well as can be expected, but he’s just not going to be the nominee. Did he gain influence in the party? Yes. Let’s see what that actually gets him.

Rick Santorum is the big winner here and with debates this weekend he has the chance to capitalize on the momentum. He’d better make sure that he’s prepared to defend himself because Mitt, Newt and Ron Paul are going to throw everything at him. If he does well he could place, after Mitt, in New Hampshire and set himself up for a better showing in the southern states. If he falters under the pressure, he’s probably toast. Right now I would say that he’s the best hope for the Tea Party and religious conservatives. And sweater vest manufacturers (who I hope are in the USA).

And Mitt? If he had kept his mouth shut on Monday and Tuesday about his chances of winning, he could have feigned surprise at his good showing. Since he set expectations higher, though, his performance has to be seen as underwhelming. He’ll win New Hampshire next week, but now it has to be more than a solid win. Anything under 40% is a Pyrrhic victory. He also has to keep his composure during the debates and not come off as screechy or too aggressive. That would be seen as desperate.

So now it’s on to the Granite State where global warming is killing the skiing industry. Move along citizens; nothing to see here.

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Iowa Politics Republican Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin Advice To Michele Bachmann And Jon Huntsman – Quit

The quitter from Alaska has some strong advice for Michele Bachmann and Jon Huntsman – quit!

Speaking to Fox News yesterday, Mrs Palin said about Bachmann: “She has a lot to offer, also, but I don’t think it is her time this go-around.”

After those words of wisdom, Sarah Palin also had  this to say;

And I believe that unless she, too, wants to spend her own money or borrowing money and perhaps go into debt, which – heaven forbid – you do that to your family?’

When you’ve figured that one out, please explain it to me.

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Iowa Mitt Romney Newt Gingrich Politics Rick Santorum

Presidential Polling Report: Special Iowa Edition

And you thought the holidays were over. Having the Iowa caucuses so soon after the new year is a great gift for political junkies and opens what should be an expensive, long, important and uniquely-American national election season. That Iowa and New Hampshire take all of the attention so early is an unfortunate quirk of the system and will provide us with untimely candidate exits and lots of wasted money.

If you’re new to the process, or just can’t believe this is how we elect our president, here’s how the Iowa caucuses work.

And now onto the analysis and predictions.

The poll that everyone is talking about was released on Saturday: The Des Moines Register’s poll of likely caucus attendees.

The poll, conducted Tuesday through Friday, shows support at 24 percent for Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts; 22 percent for Paul, a Texas congressman; and 15 percent for the surging Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.

But the four-day results don’t reflect just how quickly momentum is shifting in a race that has remained highly fluid for months. If the final two days of polling are considered separately, Santorum rises to second place, with 21 percent, pushing Paul to third, at 18 percent. Romney remains the same, at 24 percent.

“Momentum’s name is Rick Santorum,” said the Register’s pollster, J. Ann Selzer.
Another sign of the race’s volatility: 41 percent of likely caucusgoers say they could still be persuaded to change their minds.

Rounding out the field, in results from the full, four-day poll: former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 12 percent, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, 11 percent, and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, 7 percent.  

Based on the results of this poll, one scenario stands out to me. If Romney wins, it gives him great momentum heading into New Hampshire one week from today. Assuming he wins that, we could see full carnage among the challengers. Bachmann will either drop out of the race or her supporters will go to another conservative candidate, probably Santorum if he comes in second in Iowa. A fifth place finish for Perry would also lead many of his supporters to Santorum. Jon Huntsman will also leave after losing in New Hampshire, with his supporters moving to Romney and perhaps Gingrich. In any event, a conservative will emerge as the main challenger to Romney. That will become the main story through South Carolina and Florida later in January. If it’s Santorum, it will represent one of the great come-from-behinds in a long while.

It’s hard to say that a Santorum win immediately sets him up as Romney’s most viable main challenger. He’ll need to quickly establish a presence in South Carolina and Florida, which takes money and ground game, and he doesn’t seem to have much of either. He can, as can Gingrich or Paul if they place highly in Iowa, bypass New Hampshire or at least pass it off as Romney’s backyard and focus on the states where there are more social conservatives. Gingrich could spend more time in New Hampshire and claim a moral victory. I’m not putting much faith in a Paul victory after Iowa.

The 41% of Iowans who could change their mind are the wild cards in this race. If they decide that Romney is most electable, he’ll win a resounding victory and the race will be all but over. If they stay with one or two of the conservatives, then the race gets more interesting and probably lasts a bit longer. A stronger Gingrich showing than fourth makes him the main competition, but I don’t see it. Mainly because the thought frightens me a bit. Nothing scientific about that.

A PPP poll released on Monday shows

Ron Paul at 20 percent, Mitt Romney at 19 percent and Rick Santorum at 18 percent on a survey for which PPP reports a margin of error for each candidate of +/- 2.7 percent. Running farther back are Newt Gingrich at 14 percent, Rick Perry at 10 percent, Michele Bachmann at 8 percent, Jon Huntsman at 4 percent and Buddy Roemer at 2 percent. PPP interviewed 1,340 likely Republican caucus goers on December 31 and January 1.

Santorum again seems to be the recipient of a late surge and is the second choice of 14% of respondents, the highest of any of the candidates. His personal approval rating of 60% is twice his disapproval rating. heady stuff for someone who lost their last election.

The rest of the polling can be seen at RealClearPolitics.com

Both NBC and the Rasmussen poll have Romney, Paul and Santorum in that order, which supports the Register poll from the weekend.

And here’s a nice chart from Polls and Votes

My pick for the results are as follows:

Romney 26%

Santorum 24%

Paul 21%

Gingrich 15%

Perry 8%

Bachmann 5%

It’s always more fun when you stick your neck out (like Louis XVI and his lovely wife Marie), so make your prediction in the comments section. Remember that in order to complain about the process, you have to commit to it.

As always, you can follow the action here and at www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives

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Iowa Iowa caucuses Mitt Romney Newt Gingrich Politics Republican

Newt Gingrich Now Thinks He Can Win Iowa

Just yesterday, Newt Gingrich concluded that he may not win in Iowa. Today, same Gingrich, different conclusion.

“I’m here to tell you when you have 41 percent undecided in The Des Moines Register poll, if each of you in the next 24 will talk to everyone of your friends and if each of you will go to the caucus and will make the best possible argument for nominating an experienced conservative with a national record of achieving things, we may pull off one of the great upsets of the history of the Iowa caucuses.”

Tonight we’ll know the truth as Iowans head to the polls today. Results are expected sometime after 8pm.

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Iowa Iowa caucuses Mitt Romney Newt Gingrich Politics Rick Santorum

Newt Gingrich – “I Don’t Think I’m Going To Win.”

Gingrich is slowly coming to his senses. He is finally admitting that he has absolutely zero chance of winning tomorrow in Iowa.

INDEPENDENCE, Iowa — Newt Gingrich said Monday that he doesn’t expect to win tomorrow’s Iowa caucuses in a bow to his sinking poll numbers in the state.

The former House Speaker, who led in polls of likely Iowa caucus-goers as recently as early December, sought to lower expectations for his showing tomorrow night.

“I don’t think I’m going to win,” Gingrich told reporters during a press availability. “If you look at the numbers, that volume of negativity has done enough damage. But on the other hand, if the Des Moines Register was right and 41 percent [are] potentially undecided, who knows what’s going to happen.”

“Whatever I do tomorrow night will be a victory because I’m still standing.”

Sure!

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Barack Obama Iowa Mitt Romney Newt Gingrich Politics

Crocodile To Newt Gingrich: I Want My Tears Back Please

Remember the Democratic primaries in 2008 when Hillary Clinton choked up and almost came to tears? Conservative pundits practically crucified her,  accusing her of trying to pull a political sympathy stunt to win the New Hampshire elections and possibly the White House.

Mrs. Clinton went on to win in New Hampshire a few days later, but the White House eventually went to Barack Obama.

So what, I wondered,  will the Conservative talking-heads say now that Newt Gingrich – a one time leader of the Republican presidential field, who now trails Mitt Romney and Ron Paul – has opened up the water works?

Speaking at an event in Iowa, Gingrich was asked a question about his deceased mother from Frank Luntz, a pollster and close friend of Gingrich. As if on cue, Gingrich faced reddened as he mentioned that talking about his mother made him  “teary-eyed.”   He blubbered on a bit more and then came the water works as he exclaimed how she loved to sing in the choir and embarrassingly admitted that she made him sing in the choir also. How cherubic he must have been in those days.

We all know that talking about one’s beloved deceased mother can stir up a lot of emotion, but coming from Newt Gingrich – a man known for trying anything and everything possible to win a political race, a man who’s demonstrated time and time again that honesty is not his forte… one can’t help but wonder how many practice sessions were needed to make this moment just right for television.

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Abortion Iowa Mike Huckabee Politics Rape

Attention Attention: Rick Perry Is Now Against All Abortions

Rick Perry, one of the Republicans trying to win his party’s nomination to run against president Obama in November 2012 has had a change if heart. He once believed that abortions should be allowed in the case of rape and incest, but not anymore.

What caused Perry to change? We’ve come up with two reasons

  1. Voting in the Republican primary starts in a few days, and Perry’s new anti-abortion stance will go a long way in getting a few more Christian conservative gets.
  2. A television show changed his mind.

Tuesday, at the last leg of a four-stop bus trip across southwestern Iowa, Perry was asked a question by a local pastor about his abortion views, noting that the candidate had recently signed a pledge to oppose abortion in every situation and asking whether Perry had changed his mind.

Perry replied that he had. “You’re seeing a transformation,” he said. Recently watching an anti-abortion film had persuaded him to alter his view, he said.

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Iowa Newt Gingrich Politics presidential Republican

We Hardly Knewt Ye!

That was close.

And scary.

The idea that Newt Gingrich might actually win the GOP presidential nomination sent shivers down the spines of enough Republicans that they actually came to their senses this week and  began to support Ron Paul in the Iowa caucus polls. As for the national trends, it looks like Mitt Romney is the betting favorite on Internet sites.

The Gingrich flirtation lasted only as long as voters knew little about what he might do in office. His tirades against the federal judiciary might play well with the ultra-conservatives, but they seem to be non-starters among the more moderate voters who will come out in later primary states. Also, his lack of organization is showing, but that shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Gingrich never seemed to be in the race for anything other than to get his ideas in the marketplace. He succeeded. Now there’s a 50% off sticker on them and they’re not long for the discontinued bin.

Republican voters have sampled all of the candidates over the course of the last few months and they seem to be coalescing around Romney, despite conservative suspicion that he’s not fully committed to their causes. There’s a good reason for this; he’s not, but he’s the only electable candidate in the field. So that leaves us with a volatile race in Iowa with Romney, Paul (my favorite to pull out a win), Bachmann and Perry able to cobble together enough caucus voters to move on to the next set of states. Rick Santorum is getting a little love this week from evangelicals, but that will all come to naught after Iowa.

Then the serious race will begin in earnest. Depending upon what happens in the next few days, Romney will have to defend Republican obstruction that led to the end of the payroll tax cut, or he’ll have to run against it as flawed policy, despite the cut being popular among voters and economists. He’ll also have to harness the Tea Party faction that doesn’t want to compromise on anything, and is losing support, even with Republicans. Add on the fact that President Obama’s poll numbers are improving, and Mitt suddenly has a more daunting task ahead of him than he did in October (did he just announce his first major policy decision?).

But that’s all in the future. Right now, we should be thanking Newt Gingrich for a spirited campaign that ultimately showed his best days to be behind him. His rise and fall was swifter than Herman Cain’s and the reality of a Gingrich presidency was always going to present problems in a world that’s moved beyond the 1990s. Perhaps Romney can find room for Newt in his administration as, say, ambassador to Libya?

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Iowa Mitt Romney Politics

Rick Perry Calls Mitt Romney’s $10,000.00 Bet “Pocket Change”

Tasting blood in the water, Rick Perry went in for what he hopes is the kill. On Sunday, Perry went into attack mode, suggesting that Rick Perry’s $10,000.00 bet is “pocket change” for Romney, and suggests that Romney is out of touch with middle class Americans.

The morning after Mitt Romney challenged Rick Perry to a $10,000 bet, the Texas governor slammed Romney’s casual but pricey wager and suggested the sum is merely “pocket change” for his wealthy rival.

“Having an extra ten thousand that you would throw down on a bet just seems very out of the ordinary,” Perry told a New York Times reporter after a crowded event in an Ames diner.

“I would suggest to you that ten thousand dollars is pocket change for Mitt,” he added

The “pocket change” remark offered a sharp new nettle on Perry’s earlier criticism of Romney in an interview with Fox News Sunday, in which he dubbed the former Massachusetts governor “a little out of touch with the normal Iowa citizen.”

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Iowa Mitt Romney Newt Gingrich Politics presidential

My Kingdom For $10,000: Mitt Goes Gilded Age

So, how much damage did Mitt Romney do to his presidential campaign after offering Rick Perry a $10,000 wager on his health care position?  We’ll find out in the next few days after the pollsters have had a chance to wade through their data, but my sense is that it will do damage to what’s left of Romney’s standing as a regular guy who happens to be rich.

The damage control has already begun.

Political campaigns have turned on worse gaffes, as Perry, Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain can tell you, but this one will stand out as Romney’s low point. It also comes at a bad time, with voting set to begin in Iowa a day after you’ve returned that last questionable holiday gift.

Of course, Newt Gingrich has harvested the most media attention over the past few weeks, and this trend continued last night. This AP article described Newt as having a “steely calm” and as:

defending his most controversial stands without appearing to be the thin-skinned hothead his critics often describe.

The former House speaker seemed to accomplish that goal in Saturday’s debate in Iowa. His challenge will be to sustain the strategy while rivals attack him on the airwaves and the ground, and to convince conservative voters that he’s their champion despite his occasional departures from orthodoxy.

But Newt’s already had to backtrack on his comment describing the Palestinians as an invented people, which will do nothing to help his foreign policy credentials. And he did a bit of constitutional reinvention when discussing his views of the mandate that would require everyone to buy health insurance. It seems that he supported it in 1993 when he was fighting Bill and Hillary’s program, but explained it this way on Saturday:

“I frankly was floundering, trying to find a way to make sure that people who could afford it were paying their hospital bills, while still leaving an out so libertarians could not buy insurance,” Gingrich said. “It’s now clear that the mandate, I think, is clearly unconstitutional. “

So I guess the Gingrich constitutional test has an 18 year time limit. He’ll need to work on that one.

Overall, Mitt did not do poorly aside from the bet, Bachmann’s reference to Newt Romney was amusing, and Ron Paul’s message continues to be the most consistent of all the candidates. It won’t get him the nomination, but you can’t accuse him of flip-flopping. He’s my pick for second place in Iowa.

What now then? Thankfully, Donald Trump’s mega-disaster debate has been exposed for what it truly is: an opportunity for him to be the star in a political game that only he can win. The GOP field will continue to try and get their messages out while the rest of America goes shopping, and President Obama will try to paint each and every one of them as against the middle class. The latest polls show Obama ahead both nationally and ahead of Gingrich specifically in the key swing states of Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

Six months ago, it would have been madness to predict the Republican state of affairs as it exists today. Six months from now, I think that Mitt Romney will stand as the eventual nominee. I don’t have $10,000 to back it up, though.

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