Monday, August 15, 2011

The 2011 Ames Straw Poll Photo Tour, Vol. 5

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4

Ames 2011 70 FairTax Motorcycle

My favorite thing at the FairTax tent was the custom painted motorcycle.

Ames 2011 71 Media Downtime

As the afternoon progressed, a lot of us at the Straw Poll were getting tired. While I’d paced myself because of my bad health, others were finally wilting. Even members of the news media took their chance at some downtime in the shade.

Ames 2011 72 Chalk Message on Steps

Voices of Conservative Women cleverly chalked amusing messages on the steps of the Hilton Coliseum. What a great way of advertising their tent.

Ames 2011 73 Pawlenty on TV

While passing through AARP’s tent on different occasions, I caught parts of Bachmann’s and Pawlenty’s speeches. Tim’s was dull and Michelle’s was irritatingly obsessed with identifying herself as a native Iowan. Neither impressed.

Ames 2011 74 Abe Lincoln Watches

Abe Lincoln was in the audience and probably thinking he could teach those whipper snappers something about making speeches. For some reason I wasn’t surprised finding somebody born in 1909 in the AARP tent.

Ames 2011 75 One

One.org had a tent in the midst of the Paul tents. They are a charity mainly focused on food and medical aid to Africa. Bono of the band U2 is one of the cofounders and from his lobbying knows that conservatives give a lot to charity, so that explains their presence. They got a lot of traffic from what I witnessed.

Ames 2011 76 Sliding Dollar

This gave me a laugh. Pointed satire at its best.

Ames 2011 77 Paul Band

My father thinks this was the best band out of all that played at the Straw Poll. They were pretty good.

Ames 2011 78 Paul Encampment

Most of the tents in this picture are part of the Paul campaign. I met a young Mexican national who was a volunteer which surprised me. Before I could ask him about it, I was queried by another young man looking for the FairTax tent and had to direct him. Never did find out the story behind his involvement.

Ames 2011 79 Strong America Now

Strong America Now is a political group devoted to opposing increased taxes and also advocates a program to reduce wasteful spending. Their tent was very large and I didn’t explore it as much as I should have.

Ames 2011 80 Gadsden Flag

The first and only Gadsden flag I saw outside of a vendor. Normally something you saw at Tea Party rallies the past two years, this turned out to be an unusual sight at Ames.

Ames 2011 81 Accordion Player

A random accordion player appeared. Like the girl in the yellow shirt, I found the accordion fascinating when I was little.

Ames 2011 82 Santorum Lines Winding Down

As the day grew long, the lines at Santorum’s tents began to shrink and I finally could see their signup table. I was surprised at the size of his effort.

Ames 2011 83 Bachmann Strength Test

To complete the state fair atmosphere, the Bachmann camp had people swinging away trying to ring the bell.

Ames 2011 84 Cain Train

Herman Cain’s supporters march to the coliseum for his speech.  Surprise! There’s my dad with the FairTax sign after having been drafted into the group. Turns out he got to be right in front of the podium for Cain’s excellent speech.

Ames 2011 85 Bachmann Votes

The last photo I took before I was too tired to continue only tells part of a story. Bachmann made a big show of going in to vote and the media swarmed to record it. Then the boos began and the Ron Paul supporters got ugly like they always do. They tried to shout her down and basically blew the good will they’d scored with me through the day. It was a classless act by them.

So ended my photo tour of the Straw Poll on a sour note. That wasn’t my intent, but that’s how things go. I’ll collate my thoughts and analysis in another post.

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