So I jump into my rental Ford Fiesta at the Des Moines airport, a little party on wheels, wake up the iPhone and try popping in the address for the hotel so I can drive there without ending up in Wisconsin. The GPS doesn’t respond. I guessed that maybe I’d gone outside the realm of our satellite fleet, but no, it was just a server hiccup.
Get to the hotel, check in, walk back outside to move the car and on the way in is NBC’s David Gregory. This is definitely Des Moines, with the caucus happening tomorrow. The weather is cold but clear and expected to stay that way.
Travel days tend to be long and, if they’re good travel days, mostly uneventful. Days in airports tend to blur between cat naps, unremarkable lunch at one of the franchises that own the terminals, and jockeying for a spot around the charge center to top off the phone. I caught a passing cell phone conversation during the long layover at DFW. A lady from somewhere on her way to elsewhere was telling someone on the other end that she had just toured Cowboys Stadium. It is a good time of year to do that. It’s not like the tourists would get in the way of prepping for a playoff game or anything.
What’s happening here in Iowa tomorrow is a bit like a playoff game, but more baseball than football. In football, you lose once and you go home, while in baseball, you can lose the first game or two and still come back and win. Mitt Romney has been the pitcher facing off against candidate after candidate at the plate. Each has had their turn at bat but none so far has been able to round the bases. Lately it has been Rick Santorum’s turn, before that it was Ron Paul’s and New Gingrich’s and Rick Perry’s and Herman Cain’s and Michele Bachmann’s. Romney may get behind in the count but things keep breaking his way. A win tomorrow and he’s ahead in the series in what amounts to a road game, since he only started seriously competing for Iowa relatively late, and Michele Bachmann was born here.
Am I the only one who thinks that Iowa and New Hampshire have fallen to the level of just being another state?
I know the make believe media wants them to continue to be big frigging deals, but they aren’t all that reflective of the republican base. South Carolina is a much better match.
And with Iowa, the small number of caucus participants and the manner in which the caucuses are conducted means they CAN’T reflect the will of Republicans in Iowa, no matter the whole country. It’s just a quirky one-off state that happens to be first out of the box.
New Hampshire is a better test, but still not nearly enough to indicate the direction the party is leaning.
I’m happy about it too, provided the people in the other states come to the same conslusion I’ve come to.
I don’t know if the right analogy is baseball; seems to me it’s more like cricket, with Romney defending the wicket against all comers.
Oh, there’s something going on in Iowa? What? A bunch of repulitards are selecting a candidate for November? What?! HA HA! What a bunch of maroons! Does anyone with half a brain really think any of the contestants have a chance against the 4TH GREATEST PRESIDENT OF ALL TIME? Get yourselves all worked up…the only state you’ll take in November is Texas. I can’t wait: four more years of sustainable growth, of real fairness and equity where all Americans get a share of the HUGE pie of delicious blueberry flavored fortune! I don’t need the money (my life-partner makes a lot of money), but even I savor the deliciousness of the tangy freebies that will be tossed my way: free healthcare, free education, free relaxation, free shorter work weeks, free drugs, free cocktails….finally, real freedom! GO OBAMA ’12!!!!!!!!!!!! Gimme some!!!!!!!
my life-partner makes a lot of money
is it really fair and equitable that the guy you’re in business with makes more money than you do?
….is all that ….satire?
Never can tell when dealing with liberals. The true-believers look just like parodies of themselves.
so true
“…all satire?”
That’s the way to bet…
And your oceanfront property is safe at last.
Exactly, Lovely.
Why we bother to subsidize the LameStreamMedia with eyeballs is beyond me.
Lets just hope the GOP wont snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory once again.
I hope that Paul, Santorum, and Romney all tie. That would confound pundits trying to extract some meaning from the results and hopefully reduce the influence of Iowa. I want that and the choice to buy ethanol-free gasoline and Coca-Cola with real sugar here in North Texas.
Ethanol subsidies are already on their way out.
Sorry, but the election will come down to a supposed choice between a Communist and a left-wing Democrat. That was decided some time ago. Republicans? What a laugh. Give it up, just change ‘Democrat’ to ‘Communist’ and ‘Republican’ to ‘Democrat’ and be honest. More massive government growth, more taxes, more debt, and less freedom – It’s what’s for dinner!
Like ‘Free Press’? LOL How about ‘State Media’. Now, come along children and put your little marks on the paper and believe it actually means something. There’s a good lad. Play along nicely and Uncle Sugar will give you a nice treat. If you rock the boat, there’s always ‘indefinite detention’…er, I mean ‘timeout’.
Orion
A playoff in which all the 7-9 teams are wild cards.
And when I say that the wild cards are in these playoffs, I mean wild cards.
Iowa and New Hampshire matter only by elimination of those with no money to waste. A few of these candidates with enough money to throw away, would like to make it to the voting in the Southern states and swing states.
Ron Paul has the faux-mentum …and Romney will plod along with his 30 percent solution. Bachman can’t turn her overdrive and if she has a lick of sense should probably become Rick Perry’s best friend. She SEEMED to genuinely not like him, however…so maybe she gives Santorum the nod.
if P0erry can outlast Bachman AND Santorum, he could pull a Lazarus…and stay barely alive to get to the South. The swing states will still be a problem, since he stepped in the bucket so many times in the debates.
If “staying alive money” runs the rest of the race….Romney, Paul and Perry make it to the South.
Paul’s nutjobs, Romney’s bland band and Perry’s anti-Romney’s who aren’t complete nutjobs.
Gingrich most likely only helps Perry.
The ONLY way this goes sideways for Perry…is if Santorum picks up any steam and Perry can’t get into third place by Florida. Gingrich has no money and no ground game. If the debate-a-thon can’t carry him…he’s toast.
That leaves Perry, Romney and Paul. A guy who can’t talk, a guy who won’t talk and a guy who shouldn’t talk.
It’s a playoff atmosphere…but the entire first string…is on the bench.
That should read, Gingrich only HURTS Perry. Not helps.
He’s an anti-Romney vote that would otherwise go to Perry…insane nutjobs will stay with Paul no matter what.
Once Newt was swiftboated by Romney, it was pretty much all over. Even Fox says Santorum is 50 to 1. Swiftboating is a good name for it, because like Kerry, who served in Vietnam, Newt’s sins are of his own making.
Sure, Santorum will get a bounce from Iowa, and maybe somebody else will as well, but it won’t matter. If they rise up too far, they will be swiftboated as well. Santorum has plenty of baggage. Everybody does.
Perry can’t rise from the dead this time around. The mistakes are too fresh in people’s minds. He might be viable next time if he can correct his weaknesses (a long shot if you ask me).
Newt is still the most likely alternative, but a lot less likely than two weeks ago. He went from 50 50 to 25 to 1 after just 3 million dollars of half truth commercials. Maybe it is for the best, because if conservatives in Iowa are that easily persuaded, what would a billion dollars do to national independents who know next to nothing about the candidates. Just based on Iowa, the marxists can probably convince the country that Newt is Hitler’s grandson. Of course, they will do the same with Romney. Millions will believe he is the Mormon Anti-Christ by November. Millions of others will believe he is a joooooooo wall street predator.
The winner so far is money and television.
The tragedy so far is that Romney used nukes against his allies, and he won’t even throw spitwads at the most dangerous man in the world in the general election. But there can be far worse tragedies to come. As everybody knows, the marxists will stop at nothing. And who knows what mad Paul and his maniac followers will do?
The only hope for Republicans is for the official pretend unemployment stats to be over 10% in October. And that’a slim hope because the marxists will hire a million of their cronies to move gubamint forms from one box to another, and drive three million people who are actually capable of working out of the workforce. I expect unemployment to be around 7% in the make-believe statistic come October. Pravda will be giddy in proclaiming that El Dorado has been discovered at last. A mini-series on the Obama economic miracle could be broadcast November 2. And of course, stocks will be up 30%. It started in October of this year. Things are raging in the market today. Suddenly, mysteriously, investor are giddily optimistic. One might think that Europe being on the brink of default, real unemployment over 20% in the US, Iran a few months from a nuke, and US consumer net worths dropping 4% in Q3 alone would curb the enthusiasm. Yet the market is rocketing up. Ah, the wonders of manipulation.
The real wild card is whose supporters stay home to watch a new episode of NCIS. or the Sugar Bowl (college football, not a new drug).
I just want to watch the caucus sites where the Perry surrogates from New York and California make their 5-minute pitch to startled Iowans who thought Perry was a regional candidate, but discover almost 500 surrogates came in to Iowa from 32 other states at their own expense. Maybe Bryan should be tallying out-of-state license plates.
In fact, I now regret I did not join up as the disillusioned democrat with the Blue Dog Blues from trying to live in both New York and Massachusetts. Five minutes would not be enough to explain why Rick Perry is the most electable in 49 states.
I concede Vermont will vote for Obama in 2012.
Even Hawaii may be a swing state because it will be the US Senate contests that drive voter turnout if it is no-coattail Romney versus negative coattail Obama. Assuming the Democrats keep Obama on the ballot.