The Problem with Newt

Articles: The Myth of 'Newt The Great Debater'

John Ziegler lays it out like it is and I imagine he will take a lot of flack for it. One of the many problems with the extended primary debate season is that it has fooled conservatives and libertarians into thinking they are the only audience. The last I checked, 40% of the country consider themselves "independents" and they will decide who gets the Oval Office after 2012. People need to remember how easy it was for people to hate Gingrich the last time he was in the national spotlight. Toxic does not even begin to describe how bad it will get if he gets the nomination. While I have problems with Santorum and Romney, I would take either of them in a heartbeat over the walking and talking train wreck called Newt.

Odds and Ends 11-28-2011

It is sale time across the USA and things are wrapping up with today being Cyber Monday. Sadly the one deal I was most looking forward to today was not as good as expected, so now joy for me. Especially since the back up deal I was eyeballing sold out by today. Instead I got a set of Ginsu knives at Newegg.

Wish I had the money to pony up for this refurbished Samsung 27” monitor. It is the single best deal I have found on Cyber Monday. Maybe somebody else will see it here and get themselves a nice deal.

I did score several Blu-ray deals from Amazon before Black Friday officially began, so I am not empty handed. 2001, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the 1990’s Gammera trilogy will be making their way here. It should be fun installing the Blu-ray drive when it arrives. While my monitor is only 1680 x 1050, it can handle the HDCP copy protection protocols and does better than 720p.

A friend of mine also gave me Fallout: New Vegas as a gift from a Steam sale, so that has been fun. Mad Max meets 50’s radioactive monster movies is how I would describe it. Taking out giant mutant ants is like being dropped into the movie Them, an old favorite of mine. You can even set them on fire like in the movie.

Watching the presidential primary for the GOP has been painful. Cain’s implosion isn’t as much from the false accusations but from the disastrous handling of nearly everything by his staff. He is badly damaged by this and it shows they are not remotely ready for taking on the well oiled Obama machine.

Meanwhile, delusional conservatives have convinced themselves that Newt Gingrich is a true conservative and electable. Both are false propositions and they need to deal with reality. I say that as a very conservative man. How they can rally around someone with the immense personal and political baggage that Newt has is beyond me.

“Anybody but Romney” is not sufficient to explain this madness. With Mitt you may not know what you are getting as far as worrying he’ll betray conservatives, but with Newt you are guaranteed that he will stab you in the back, front, sides, and then bite you on the ankles. Just because someone is good in debates does not mean you ignore his track record. We already have a raging narcissist in the White House and replacing him with another is not going to go well.

Yesterday was a lost day again. Being very ill I ended up sleeping through most of it. Having watched a bad movie for Turkey Day, I decided to start rewatching Stargate: Atlantis over from the beginning. Oddly enough it evoked a feeling of better times and that is somewhat discomfiting.

UPDATE on Herman Cain:

Put a fork in him, he is completely done. At this point it doesn’t matter whether or not he is guilty, there is only so much damage that can be taken. It is also a cautionary tale in regards to Gingrich. Once the media takes him seriously his multiple infidelities will get a lot of attention.

The Effectiveness of Circular Firing Squads

One amazing thing to me is how the Republican Party manages to destroy itself via internal warfare on a nearly constant basis in recent years. The current race to be the presidential nominee is a textbook example of this foolishness. Campaigns cannot wait to tear each other down and provide ammo to the opposition in 2012 with the conservative side of the party being the worst offenders.

Furthermore, we have candidates who are even more adept at shooting themselves in the foot than their opponents. One thing for sure is that none of them can shoot straight and stay on target. So the end result will be having a moderate to liberal candidate again, just like in 2008. In this case it will be Mitt Romney, who by a small degree was just to the right of McCain.

I have not enjoyed watching conservative candidate after candidate implode. Yes, the media is working against them, but far too many “own goals” have been kicked into the nets.

The latest is Herman Cain and his sexual harassment scandal just got a lot worse. If he is innocent, his campaign has handled this the worst possible way. If you are Machiavellian about it and he is guilty, they still have handled it the worst possible way. This goes well beyond inexperience and most likely is the beginning of the end for him.

Perry is going nowhere due to his abysmal debate performances and the fact he is not that conservative in the first place. But it is the debate performances that have killed him. Supporters claim that debates do not matter, but that is where the voters usually make up their minds. Most people do not follow things until the last minute and only pay attention to the flashiest of events.

Bachman is done. Her lack of wit and inability to go past talking points sank her like a rock. Big fish in a small pond syndrome is what happened here and she has yet to realize it. She better before it damages her back at home in Minnesota.

Santorum simply does not have the personality needed to make it on the national stage.  In the days before television, he would have done much better. But appearances and performances are everything today.

Newt is unelectable. He is the prototype for what was done to Palin and is still toxic all these years later, despite having some good ideas and excellent debates. But he is not that conservative and some of us have long memories. He is good VP material at best.

Ron Paul is unelectable in every possible way. There is no way the country will hand over the keys to the crazy uncle who has been drinking too much from the conspiracy punch bowl.

Huntsman would make a good challenger to Obama – in the Democratic Party primaries. ‘Nuff said.

Which leaves us with the establishment’s choice, Romney. He carries a lot of political and social baggage. Just a few months ago, I talked to activists that sat out the last election due to McCain being too liberal and they said they would vote for anyone, even Romney, over Obama. I do not know what changed, but the atmosphere is slowly becoming one of sitting out again.

That does not necessarily mean Romney will lose. I also have talked to Democrats who would cross over to vote for him and he will get most of the crucial independents. It will be an ugly race though, with many evangelical Christians opposing him due to his being a Latter-day Saint. Having to deal with that prejudice on a regular basis myself, I can say it will be a factor.

Meanwhile, supporters of various candidates are busy vilifying other candidates in blind hero worship. This voluntary fanaticism is just as dangerous as any demagoguery can be from a politician. The passions being shown are more akin to what we used to see in party versus party elections.

It is that kind of internal strife and failure to unite against a common foe that has damaged the GOP greatly in recent times. You would think with things as bad as they are that the factions would come together. But I am not seeing it and in fact it is getting more fractious with the consequence of reasonable activists becoming burning out due to it.

Why all this division?

Perhaps that desire to deny how bad things really are getting is clouding minds. We are about to enter a time of widespread economic and social chaos around the globe. There will be wars of all kinds breaking out in the next decade.  Those of us who can see it are alarmed, but unable to affect events. The inertia of the masses is too great, the power of denial too strong, and the maintainers of the status quo too entrenched.

It is said there is a flee or fight reaction when confronted with a physical threat. What goes unmentioned is the third reaction which is paralysis. Perhaps that is the biggest problem of them all – that there are too many people who act like deer in the headlights of an oncoming semi.

Whatever the cause may be for all the internecine warfare on the political right it does not matter. I am sick of it and the unwillingness of people to deal with what is happening. I am also sick of watching the entire system self destruct.

Boy am I glad I live in the countryside watching the way the world is going.

Waiting for Guffman 2012, GOP Version

I have often called campaign time the “silly season” when talking to friends and acquaintances.  There is good reason for this as passions are inflamed and the strangest things not only can happen, but will happen. But mostly I call it that because of how people behave.

To the average voter, the November election campaign is all they are aware of and it seems filled with acrimony. They should pay attention to endorsement races and primaries if they want to see the good stuff. There is nothing quite like infighting between people who agree on most things.

Usually it is based on actual positions and has legitimate reasoning  behind it. But often it can be purely emotion based, simply motivated by liking a candidate. “Wooing voters” is a phrase that has much truth in it, for the most ardent supporters act like those in the first blushes of love.

Presidential races bring that out the most for some reason. My suspicion is that there is so much belief in the power of the presidency that it becomes idolization of someone being more than human – or at least very special, if not exceptional. Consequently, demagogues have a better than usual chance to get in than other offices.

This year, there have been some very intense crushes on potential candidates, with their devoted fans eagerly praising and pushing them on message boards, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. Perhaps it is dissatisfaction with the established field or just a reaction to the disastrous Obama presidency that had many people waiting for their personal Guffman to show up.

Daniels, Ryan, Jindal, and Rubio were the lesser names that came up, but there have been big names waiting in the wings since the beginning. One of them who was supposed to be the savior of the field was Rick Perry from Texas. His meteoric rise and equally drastic crash illustrates the perils of listening to such hype. That goes for candidates and activists both.

Christ Christie is someone people have repeatedly asked me about and I did not think he would run until recently. But that turned out to be false information based on wishful thinking by those who wanted him in.  In the end, he chose not to run this week which made me very happy. Only by New Jersey standards is he conservative.

Today the other shoe dropped when Sarah Palin announced she wasn’t running. That was a relief to me, for I saw nothing good coming of that and she is far more effective doing what she has been doing. The president is not the ruler of the land, despite what Jim Lehrer may think. While powerful, the Oval Office has far less power than most think – thankfully.

Congress is more important, but harder to get the average voter to care about. I suppose it is the human tendency to desire a king that makes the executive branch more glamorous. A lack of understanding by most of the populace on how governance in the United States works is another factor.

So this is it, there really is nobody else to get into the race now. Just like in the movie, Guffman is a no show. Now the debates are going to matter even more, despite being dog and pony shows run by the media.

But the thing that must happen, no matter what the outcome, is rallying around the candidate running against Obama in 2012. Putting aside internal GOP differences has been very difficult the last several election cycles and has caused problems in turnout. This time I believe it will be different. Almost all the people I have talked to finally understand what is at stake.

Given how ugly things have been already, expect a very nasty election. If people think things are polarized now, they have not seen anything yet.

Odds and Ends

It is Thursday and I am behind on just about everything I wanted to do this week. Going to the Renaissance Festival in Shakopee last Saturday went well but eventually I had to pay the piper. But I’ll take having it spread mildly out over several days rather than being out of commission for a couple any time.

British newspapers are superior to our dying ones in the States for many reasons. The main one is that they actually do real reporting yet. But I have to say I am envious of Daily Telegraph subscribers right now. They get bonus premiums included with the papers on occasion and this coming weekend’s are doozies. Free Rat Pack CD’s featuring Sinatra, Dino, and Sammy are making me wish I lived over there despite the riots.

The Republican Presidential debate last night was entertaining from an old political hand point of view. Extremely hostile moderators trying to start wars between the candidates made things interesting from the beginning and gave Newt Gingrich an opportunity to shine. From a technical stance, he won the debate but didn’t win the debate. These aren’t real debates, these are forums so command of facts and figures doesn’t matter a whole lot.

Instead I would say Mitt Romney came out with the win due to Rick Perry stumbling badly late during the “lightning round” part of the forum. But many will say he won and I attribute that to Brian Williams screwing up by serving up a batting practice ball of a question on the executions carried out in Texas. Watching him be stunned by the audience’s loud approval of capital punishment was priceless and gave Perry a rare chance to look presidential.

Back to Romney. He had some minor flubs but kept turning the debate back to focusing on Obama. Right there he showed leadership and people will pick up on that unconsciously. The too cautious Romney of 2008 was not to be seen and I was impressed by his poise.

Michelle Bachmann is on her way out despite a carefully restrained performance. But she has shown that women are now accepted as serious candidates, something made possible by Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin the last cycle. Constantly citing the amount of children and foster children she raised got her tweaked last night and deservedly so.

Rick Santorum was there and that is about it. Which is too bad, since I like his stances on most things. In this group he doesn’t have the presence to make it, but he would be someone to consider for VP if Romney doesn’t get the nomination. East coast cred would be of help to a Southern candidate.

Ron Paul was Ron Paul and walked into every trap set by the moderators. That lack of self control always gets him in trouble.

My candidate, Herman Cain, did absolutely great with quite a bit of applause from the audience. It is a pity he isn’t gaining any traction, but the establishment doesn’t want a political outsider. With the mood of “anybody but Obama” on the Right and growing in the center, it looks like a Perry or Romney nomination is coming. Cain had solid answers and plans to deal with the problems we are facing economically and they resonated during the debate. I wish more people would take a good long look at him.

Biggest loser of the debate had to be the moderators. They were vibratingly partisan with irritation and hostility showing in their voices. Audience reactions clearly bothered them as well. Nobody should think MSNBC and Politico are neutral after that.

Now to get to work on a special post for the weekend’s grim tenth anniversary.

An Interesting Start to a Day

Despite a bad night with intermittent sleep, I had to get up early to get out the door in a somewhat awake condition. Why?  My state senator, Jeremy Miller, was having a coffee and conversation meeting in Caledonia at 7:30 AM. Forget campaign rallies and debates, these kinds of interactions with the public are the best to attend.

It was a low turnout compared to last year, but that was a campaign year and Jeremy wasn’t in office yet. As Sen. Miller quipped, it is probably a good sign. When people are mad at you, they show up in numbers. Fortunately for those of us in Senate District 31, he’s been doing a great job in office.

One of the local township officers was there and so the conversation was dominated by tax and aid issues. These are more complex than most people realize and affect us a great deal in the area. The delicate balance of state, county, township, and municipal budgets is always a thorny issue with things being made more difficult by the ongoing financial problems of the time.

While it might be boring to some, I enjoy having a glimpse of the nuts and bolts of how government funding and expenditures work. Every time I hear Kermit talk about the local infrastructure funding issues, I learn something new and he gave Jeremy plenty to think about too.

Our rookie senator continues to impress me with his command of the facts and willingness to truly listen. All politicians learn to at least pretend to listen, but Miller really does listen. How do I know that? Because I’ve heard issues raised at meetings like this and then heard well thought out positions on them later on from him – and now legislative action as well. Gotta love that.

There was a reporter from WXOW Channel 19 there and I hope I remember to check the news tonight to see if the story airs.

Observations about the 2011 Ames Straw Poll

Once again, the Ames Straw Poll reminded me of a state fair. The atmosphere and layout contributed greatly to this, but the crowds even more so. It is the cheapest state fair you’ll ever go to because all the food is free and so are the goodies.

My father and I took a roundabout way of getting to Ames. We headed up to the Twin Cities and stayed overnight at a friend’s house to catch a bus in the early hours. To our surprise, our host had purchased a ride too and some of his local friends were coming as well.

The bus load was made up of various groups who pooled their resource to rent the coach. Voices of Conservative Women, FairTax supporters (that’s us), and a bunch of Tea Party members filled the bus. Or as we described ourselves, “terrorists and hobbits.”

While I though I’d catch some Z’s on the way down, it didn’t work out that way. We were all having too much fun meeting each other and discussing politics, economics, and current events. Debates over candidates and issues were the norm with everybody in a good mood despite the dire situation our country is in.

Once we got to Ames, I switched into two modes: photographer and analyzing the ground game of the campaigns. The latter isn’t something I can stop myself from doing, so political doings are different for me than most political activists. The first thing rapidly got me separated from everyone I came with so I was on my own.

On the way in the Ron Paul and Rick Santorum signs alternated along the road. Signs don’t mean as much as people think in attracting votes, but they do show who is organized and aggressive. As I wandered the campus, it became relatively easy to identify which campaigns were the best organized. I rated them in this order:

1. Michelle Bachmann

2. Ron Paul

3. Tim Pawlenty

4. Rick Santorum

5. Herman Cain

6. Thaddeus McCotter

Which were the only serious presences with a few hopeless candidates running out of delusions of grandeur.

You may notice something familiar about that top five. Yep, that’s the poll results. So I wasn’t surprised when I heard the results, though I’d wished for better for Cain. Rick Perry came in sixth on write-in votes and McCotter was dead last in tenth. At least he had good ice cream.

The Ames Straw Poll is won by the candidate who busses in the most votes. Seriously, that is the truth of the matter. There are local voters who do come in, but it always boils down to organization.

So does the Ames Straw Poll really matter?

That’s the big question right now. Mitt Romney is the front runner and he didn’t bother to show up. Rick Perry entered the race and immediately went to number two without being there. So what point is there to having the Ames Straw Poll?

To me, it has less to do with selecting a candidate and more with getting the public exposed to the candidates. Sadly, it takes a spectacle to get the attention of the masses, therefore a media circus is needed. Yes, needed. So I’ll ding points off of Romney and Perry for skipping the event.

The media circus part of the whole thing is entertaining to watch in operation. The last thing I expected was being interviewed on camera twice. A pretty young woman came up to me while I was sitting and resting in the shade at Cain’s tent. She took me by surprise and it was only afterward that I realized I’d misheard her question. So I feel bad that she thought I had voted in the Straw Poll.

But I stand by what I said about Herman Cain. We need somebody with business experience right now, somebody who has turned a big organization around. Cain did that with Godfathers Pizza in a highly competitive and saturated market. His degrees and experience also impress me greatly. His biggest asset is he connects well with every day people and isn’t playing the elitist game. Well, that and not being a career politician. He’s authentic which isn’t something I can say about the top candidates.

The second interview was fare more interesting since it had push polling style questions based around Bilderberg conspiracy points. The fact that they were couched as questions about Rick Perry’s entering the race was fascinating. Meeting with Bilderberg types to raise money was one of the questions and the other was about the Logan Act, which I wasn’t familiar with.

Having since researched that law, I do find it a pity it isn’t enforced. But treason hasn’t been either and it is a kissing cousin to that. Basically, citizens who aren’t authorized agents of the federal government shouldn’t be meeting with foreign officials and trying to do deals. Jimmy Carter messed with Clinton that way and Jesse Jackson with Reagan. It is clearly wrong.

Even so, I don’t see any one world order conspiracy going on. It is just another candidate looking for money and trying to burnish nonexistent foreign policy credentials.

Perry being pro-amnesty and a former state campaign head for Al Gore in 1988 are tip of the iceberg problems for me. If the Republican rank and file forgive him for his various liberal positions, he is going to give Romney quite a run for the money. That’s basically what I told the two young men and I’m curious if that video will every show up anywhere.

So what do I think of Bachmann’s win?  Not much, actually. She’s already showing signs of poor decision making and not having much depth. Her vanity will probably be her undoing and Sunday’s events in Iowa showed Perry stealing support from her. He’s much slicker and more personable, while she acts like a Hollywood star. Not a good thing this election cycle.

Ron Paul won’t got anywhere, of course. His supporters will try to pack the caucuses here in Minnesota and other states, so there will be grief to be had yet.

I don’t feel sad for Tim Pawlenty, who dropped out on Sunday. Too much of his vision for the future was focused on running for President when he simply didn’t have what it takes to appeal to voters outside of Minnesota. He really should be running in the Senate race against Klochubar and I hope he does.

On a more personal note, I survived Saturday better than expected. That is despite a bad sunburn. If only I had gone to the green energy lobby’s tent first and found the free sunscreen…

The bus ride home was slightly quieter as some of us tried to rest here and there. Still, the company was fun and conversations kept going. I met some good people and am glad I went.

I hope to do it again in eight years.

Photos can be found in my other posts on Ames:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The 2011 Ames Straw Poll Photo Tour, Vol. 5

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The 2011 Ames Straw Poll Photo Tour, Vol. 4

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Also on the bus down to Ames were women from Voices of Conservative Women. Their tent was across the sidewalk from the FairTax tent and they were fundraising by selling kernels of corn that you could dump into a jar labeled with your favorite candidate.

Also in the tent were some other conservative women’s groups and they had very heavy traffic. This is something I would call “the Sarah Palin” effect as I’ve noticed just how many women have become involved in tea parties and politics since 2008.

Behind the Tea Party stage, the Georgians for FairTax had a small tent. It wasn’t a good location and was also hurt by the poor attendance at the Tea Party stage.

Save Our American Republic suffered the same fate. They are a 9-12 Project associated group in Iowa.

AARP had a big tent full of chairs, tables, wicker couches, and television screens of C-SPAN covering the speeches. They also had a somewhat scary inflatable Uncle Sam out front. To the ire of of one of my bus mates, the pro-Obamacare organization had a cardboard cutout of Ronald Reagan you could have your picture taken with.

You couldn’t escape the energy lobby anywhere you went. These signs were all over the walkways.

The bus the energy lobby had was next to the misting fans so popular with children. People who signed up to ride this bus in were given a tote bag of freebies including a digital camera. All they had to to do was watch a half hour presentation in return. Amazing how much money was put into this lobbying effort.

The Ron Paul tents covered a considerable area and his red shirts could be seen everywhere. They really thought they could win the poll and catapult him into the lead. Compared to four years ago, the Paulians were much better behaved.

This massive outdoor screen was erected by the energy lobby. Their efforts were on a par with any of the presidential campaigns present.

This spectacle caught the corner of my eye. While I saw more than a few Rick Perry stickers on people, the draft Sarah Palin lobby were few and far between.

Another micro-candidate I’d never heard of and I can’t remember how his name ends. The wind was a constant foe for taking pictures of banners, but a welcome friend cooling us off. It doesn’t really matter, he’s not going to be the nominee.

Here is one line for free food extending for a long distance. You can glimpse another parallel line on the right going to a different food tent. Half an hour or more was the typical wait.

Obamacare borders on being a four letter word these days. Though the recent 11th Circuit court ruling makes it more likely it will be overturned, people aren’t resting.

Anti-war and anti-taxes is what the Paul supporters are all about. And by no taxes, I mean NO taxation at all. They are much closer to being anarchists than libertarians in what they say, but the behavior is more disturbing. Glassy eyed fanatics worshiping Doctor Ron is how I’ve heard them described and I have to agree. A friend of mine remarked on how they reminded him of brown shirts in 1930’s Germany. Another four years ago made a similar comparison.

Inside the green energy lobby’s air conditioned tent there was free kettle popcorn to be had. While I di partake of that, the solar powered race car was far more interesting. Built for $150,000 it hit top speeds of over 70 mph with the potential to hit higher. It is retired and being replaced by a new smaller one to meet new government regulations.

A marching band was present in the afternoon and I have no idea who they were affiliated with. It used to be you always had marching bands at political rallies, but that is a thing of yesteryear. It was nice to see and hear them.

A small band of devoted Sarah Palin fans getting organized. They fanned out to circulate in the crowds shortly after this was taken.

Michelle Bachmann heading to the coliseum to give her candidate speech. I nearly got run over while taking this picture. Not by golf carts with security, but by photographers and video camera people from the media. I had no idea they could run so fast with heavy equipment like that outside of a war zone.

To be continued…

The 2011 Ames Straw Poll Photo Tour, Vol. 3

Volume 1

Volume 2

On the bus there was talk of Pawlenty being given a terrible location near the entrance. The moment the Famous Dave’s BBQ signs were visible any disadvantage was gone. It was a brilliant move to have them cater and it made the tents a big draw.

The lines to get in were lengthy and from what I could see were as heavily trafficked as any candidate’s tents.

Most of the candidates had big stages for bands to play music. This was a change from last time when only Romney and Huckabee did.

What, Dairy Queen too? That’s a killer one two punch of free food. Sadly for Pawlenty free food did not buy votes.

I really liked the design for the FairTax signs. They stood out amongst all the others.

It seems like quite a few organizations were giving away iPad 2’s. While I don’t know how many entered the drawing, the FairTax petition got 3000 signatures on Saturday. That was a huge success for us.

There were a lot of people at the Straw Poll and that added to the state fair feel of the occasion.

Finally found my father and his friend Ed coming out of the Cain area. I wouldn’t see them again for hours.

The Iowa Republican Soapbox was an interesting collaboration with Google to stream interviews with candidates and attendees on the Net. They also gave away an iPad 2. The videos are still up at their web site and youTube channel.

A staggering amount of people attended. At least I was staggering…

On the bus we had an activist going to protest against wind turbines due to a project up by the Twin Cities. She was hopeful we would write anti-wind power slogans on the blade. I found a whopping one and it was a call to build more nuclear plants. Alternative energy is the touchy feely fad of the moment and it is in full swing.

To be continued…

The 2011 Ames Straw Poll Photo Tour, Vol. 2

Volume 1

In the first post, I mentioned the large presence of “green” energy advocacy groups. A blade from a wind turbine was on display to be signed by attendees and was very popular. I won’t get into the financial follies of windmills generating electricity, but please note that the politicians from Iowa all made a pilgrimage to sign the blade in front of the press.

Food lines dominated the back lot. You had to cut your way through them to get anywhere. Notice all the NRA caps. Multiple times I was stopped and asked where the NRA tent was because I was wearing one.

McCotter’s area got next to no attention except for those of us who realized there were no lines to get Bomb Pops from the ice cream truck. Oh did that taste good on a sunny day!

I felt bad about the lack of traffic and support there. McCotter can be a very funny guy but not many people know him. Hardly anyone stopped by to look at his literature.

Santorum’s tents were always jumping. Having a decent band didn’t hurt at all and I was pleased to hear some covers of Buddy Holly songs.

This sign had people stopping to take pictures of it. It summed up the feelings of the crowd pretty well.

The back of the FairTax tent. I’d gotten separated from everyone from the bus very quickly and was looking for my father there. That’s the penalty for having one’s eye in the viewfinder most of the time. There was a constant flow of people through the tent.

The FairTax tent adjoined the Tea Party Patriots’ stage and associated tents. It was a nice setup that was almost completely ignored by the crowds.

I don’t know if Santorum was going for the Scottish American vote or if the bagpiper was just there. There was no smell of haggis being grilled, so that can’t be the reason he came. Though I did hear the hot dogs tasted like haggis.

A lot of families visited the FairTax tent, just like four years ago.

The media was everywhere interviewing people and chasing candidates. Little did I know I’d end up on camera twice later on in the day.

A lot of animated discussions and occasional argument over the FairTax took place. At first it looked like a bad location compared to last time, but it turned out to be a great spot.

Next door, a gospel singer failed to get much of an audience at the Tea Party stage. It was a preview of things to come as even inviting people to speak from passersby fell flat.

The police presence was widespread. I still can’t take Segway scooters seriously even if police officers are on them. How can you command respect when you look so dorky?

The media outnumbered the cops by wide margin. An amazing amount of television trucks were present.

I kept waiting for a bird or two to be roasted by the microwaves, but that never happened so I had to settle for this shot of the satellite uplink dishes.

To be continued…