ADEL, IOWA—Caucus chair Jon McAvoy faced an awkward situation right before his townsfolk were set to vote. Surrogates for each candidate—save still-on-the-ballot Herman Cain and Iowa absentee Jon Huntsman—had stepped up to the microphone for one final pitch. Michele Bachmann’s campaign had sent some star power in the form of her 21-year-old daughter Elisa; though her mom faded fast and left the race the following day, the younger Bachmann won praise for her eloquence from the caucus voters. She was the closet thing to a celebrity at this site 23 miles west from the heart of downtown Des Moines, with locals stumping for the other candidates. McAvoy introduced each of the speakers, an easy task when it came time for Perry: McAvoy was that designated supporter.
DES MOINES, IOWA—The event was already running behind schedule when Chuck Laudner made his way to the front corner of the Pizza Ranch restaurant in Boone, Iowa. He struggled to kill time as Rick Santorum struggled to reach the podium. Over the past weeks, Laudner, a former executive director of the Iowa Republican Party, had been introducing the onetime Pennsylvania senator across the state. At first it was at small gatherings little noticed by the media. But that transformed overnight. On Monday, a crowd filled every inch of floor space, forcing Santorum to slowly trudge to the front, handshake by handshake.
I am here in Iowa with Lynn Vavreck. I’ll have more to report on our minor adventures later. But before the caucus takes place, it’s important to address a perennial concern: the unrepresentativeness of people who attend the caucus. This is a familiar refrain that typically involves claims about the high costs the caucus imposes on voters, the resulting low turnout, the domination by activists, etc.
OSKALOOSA, IOWA—Seemingly out of nowhere, Rick Santorum became the trendy pick to win the Iowa caucuses over the weekend. A CNN poll put Santorum slowly rising to third last Wednesday, but that was already old news when the Des Moines Register released its much-vaunted Iowa Poll on Saturday night.
If you want to challenge your pedagogical skills, try explaining the Iowa caucuses to a child. "You see, Billy, in America, we get to choose our presidents, and every citizen gets to participate. So to start the process off, everyone who wants to be president spends months in the state of Iowa, personally meeting as many Iowans as they can. And then one Tuesday in January, those Iowans go to their local schools and community centers, hang around for an hour listening to boring speeches, then cast their votes. Then the media tell us that the candidates who didn't come in first or second are unworthy of any more attention from people in the other 49 states, so those candidates drop out of the race.
PELLA, IOWA—I closed out 2011 Saturday with a bit of good luck after stumbling upon a mythical creature: a undecided Republican caucus voter who had yet to be interviewed by one of the major news outlets. With 1,500 national and international reporters in the heartland for the Iowa caucuses, it's a coveted, rare find. In Marshalltown the previous night, I watched as The Washington Post's Jason Horowitz rushed to intercept The Atlantic's Molly Ball as she turned her tape recorder on a voter he had already selected for a profile. After a Mitt Romney event Thursday in Mason City, a reporter friend and I noted that we had both previously interviewed Beth, a high-school teacher from Clear Lake.
At this point in the game, with less than week before the caucuses, you can safely turn to polls of Iowa Republicans for an accurate gauge of where each candidate stands. According to the latest survey from the American Research Group, Mitt Romney has jumped to the front of the pack with 22 percent support, as Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich fall to 16 percent and 17 percent, respectively. When placed in context with other polls from other firms, Romney is clearly on the upswing. Here’s Talking Points Memo with its average. The black line is Romney:
GRINNELL, IOWA—It looks as though we can safely dismiss a Santorum surge or a Perry reboot. For Romney, the polls hang steady just under a week before the Iowa caucuses, according to Public Policy Polling. Ron Paul maintains his lead over Mitt Romney by a 24-20 margin, statistically unchanged from the 23-20 percent gap last week. But Newt Gingrich's support has disappeared. The former House Speaker held a lead in the Midwestern state two weeks ago, but has now dropped down to third place at 13 percent, only slightly above Michele Bachmann at 11 percent and the two Ricks at 10 percent.
Since the November 15 eviction from Zuccotti Park, occupiers have been eyeing Duarte Park, an unused lot owned by Trinity Church in Manhattan's financial district. The wealthy and progressive church has been providing Occupy with indoor meeting space, but repeatedly rebuffed appeals to allow a Duarte occupation, even after those appeals escalated to a hunger strike. After unsuccessful attempts by clergy to mediate the dispute, some occupiers climbed the fence surrounding Duarte Park earlier this month. Police arrested about fifty of them.
BETTENDORF, IOWA—After spending the past week and a half hopping from one Iowa town to the next, I've found few GOP voters willing to express wholehearted support for any candidate.
Take Debbie and Phil Rogers, a married couple from Cedar Rapids that I met before a Newt Gingrich event on Monday. He's a pastor for the United Methodist Church, and she works for Level 10 Apparel, the company that was hosting the event. Both supported Huckabee in 2008—"He's absolutely my guy. Loves Jesus, loves duck hunting, that makes him my kind of people," Phil said—but neither has yet to pin their hopes on any single candidate this time around. Debbie had liked Herman Cain earlier in the cycle, but is now left drifting between Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum.
When Newt Gingrich began his presidential run, he said that he was such a transformative and revolutionary figure that a regular kind of campaign just wasn't capable of containing and advancing his unique brand of awesomeness. He proved this by going away on a two-week cruise to Greece, whereupon most of his staff quit in frustration. But just a few weeks ago, it began to look like Newt may have been right, and that his unusual way of running for president -- starting with being a uniquely unpopular figure, then eschewing the normal things candidates do, like raising money and organizing supporters -- might not stop him from becoming the Republican nominee.
As per my earlier post on Newt Gingrich’s collapse in Iowa, here is how Intrade rates the current odds for victory in the Iowa caucuses:
In essence, conventional wisdom has moved away from the view that Gingrich will emerge from Iowa as the winner, and toward the (more accurate) view that the race is a toss-up between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. With his ground game and appeals to evangelical voters—he’s moved to 10 percent support in the latest Public Policy Polling survey—Rick Perry still has a shot at a strong finish in Iowa, but that isn’t reflected in the Intrade numbers; so far, he’s valued at about 9-to–1 odds.
A little bit of sanity has returned to the GOP presidential field, with the latest polls from Iowa indicating that quasi-frontrunner Newt Gingrich has fallen back. Yet, Gingrich has been replaced by yet another shock frontrunner: Ron Paul is now on track to win the Iowa caucuses.
After a dozen different bouts in venues across the country, the Republican presidential debates have become a little like NASCAR; part of the thrill of watching is that you might see someone go up in flames.
