LIVE! AMES STRAW POLL COVERAGE: Fear and Loathing at Hilton Coliseum UPDATE: BACHMANN WINS!

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UPDATE 6:41 p.m. ET: AMES, Iowa – Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann has won the Iowa Republican Straw Poll of 2012 presidential candidates.

UPDATE 6:47 p.m. ET:

Bachmann 4,823 (28.5%)
Paul 4,671 (27.6%)
Pawlenty 2,293
Santorum 1,657
Cain 1,456
Perry 718 (write-in)
Romney 567

Quick analysis — obviously, Pawlenty’s toast. He spent more than a million bucks to finish a distant third. Santorum gets a real boost from his 4th-place finish. Herman Cain made the top five, but not as strong as he had hoped.

Rick Perry — as a write-in — out-polled Romney, who was on the ballot.

UPDATE 7 p.m. ET: Just interviewed Frank Luntz: “Rick Perry, who wasn’t even on the ballot, got more votes than Mitt Romney, who was in the debate 48 hours ago. Wow.”

UPDATE 7:11 p.m. ET: Also interviewed Mike Huckabee, who said: “I think it was a great day for all the Republicans — a big win for Michele Bachmann. But, it was probably not a day that takes Pawlenty completely out of it. It’s going to be tough for him, but on the other hand, I don’t think he’ll quit right away.” On Rick Santorum’s fourth-place finish: “I think it shows that he’s beginning to get some mommentum. Rick’s got a strong message and he’s a strong candidate. He’s a good guy.”

I’ve got more, but I was just told that Michele Bachmann will give a statement in five minutes at her bus.

UPDATE 7:40 p.m. ET: So much for the “statement” — she was surrounded by a giant media scrum, and I could barely see her. Readers who’ve followed this campaign trip from the start know that, last Friday, I covered Bachmann during her appearance at a muddy rain-soaked Christian music festival in West Des Moines. There were only three or four reporters at that event, including me. Now? Everywhere she goes, she’s surrounded by reporters and cameras.

And I just scored an exclusive video interview with Rick Santorum, who’s feeling very optimistic about his chances. You remember his visit to the barn in Roland, right?

I’ll upload that video — and many, many more — later on. But not on this craptastic WiFi connection. So I’m getting out of here and heading back to the hotel. Tomorrow, Rick Perry’s coming into Iowa, and I may cover that, too. Please hit the tip jar.




* * * PREVIOUSLY * * *

In front of T-Paw’s tent at the Ames Straw Poll

AMES, Iowa
“No parking for miles around,” they said. But I drove right up to within 100 yards of the Hilton Coliseum here on the campus of Iowa State University, then drove over a curb and pulled up on the grass in the shade of a tree. Is this legal? Is it moral? Is it permitted by the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics?

I dunno. The SPJ never asked me to join.

Just as I don’t know whether illegal parking constitutes an ethical violation, neither am I sure what the SPJ Code of Ethics says about scarfing up free barbecue provided by Republican presidential campaigns. But I’m not here to teach an ethics seminar. I’m here to report the news.

UPDATE: Currently experiencing a WiFi bandwidth suckage issue here in the Coliseum. Struggling to maintain a connection while I upload photos. Uploading video? Fuggedabout it!

An Iowa family for Rick Santorum.

UPDATE II: Just heard Ron Paul’s speech. It’s amazing, really, that this cranky old coot could inspire such a fanatical following among youth. He is a lousy speaker. His voice is not pleasant to hear, especially when boomed over the P.A. system in a basketball arena.

The Paulistas representin’ the man.

David Gregory is interviewed by a reporter for a local NBC affiliate.

UPDATE III: Tim Pawlenty is now speaking. His campaign clearly has a strong turnout, and I’d be very much surprised if they get fewer than 3,000 votes.

UPDATE IV: Inside the T-Paw tent, where supporters chowed down on Famous Dave’s BBQ:

UPDATE V: Just figured out why the WiFi is so craptastic today. Fifteen thousand people in the Coliseum are using their iPhones to update their Facebook statuses and check their e-mail.

UPDATE VI: Herman Cain just finished speaking — his basic stump speech, but it really fired up the crowd here. You can see why nobody ever wants to follow him onstage.

What comes next: The straw-poll balloting is open until 4 p.m. Once the votes are tabulated, they’ll be announced from the stage here.

The craptastic WiFi prevents me from uploading photos and video right now. Grrrrrrr.

UPDATE VII: OK, now the Coliseum is clearing out for a minute, so I have a bit of bandwidth:

Young Herman Cain supporters cheer his speech.

UPDATE VIII: The voting has now closed and we await tabulation of the vote before they announce the results. The WiFi connectivity issues got so frustrating a few minutes ago that I threw my fedora on the floor, shouted a string of frightful epithets and went outside to smoke a couple of cigarettes to calm down. When I returned, the WiFi connection had slightly improved, so apparently the cussing worked.

UPDATE IX: While I was out having my smoke, three of Rick Santorum’s kids wandered by — evidently unrecognized as such by anyone else but me.

Of course, if their Dad should get the GOP nomination, they’ll be constantly surrounded by very serious armed men with wires in their ears. At this stage, however, everything is kind of informal and it’s possible to get to know the candidates personally. This is why the early part of the campaign is so much fun — at least when the #$%& WiFi is working.

UPDATE X: The rumor here is that 16,000 ballots have been cast in the straw poll — substantially up from 2008, when 11,000 ballots were cast — and that Michele Bachmann paid for tickets for 6,000 of her supporter. One nationally known journalist said to me: “If that’s true [i.e., about her buying 6,000 tickets] Bachmann’s gonna clean Pawlenty’s clock.”

We await announcement of the totals.

UPDATE XI: Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is going to be on the grounds here at Iowa State University to share her reactions to the results of straw poll. Hope it turns out better than her speech Friday at the State Fair.

UPDATE XII:  Just talked to a Bachmann adviser who says they are “very confident” at this point.”

PREVIOUSLY:

64 comments

  4. I like all the not so subtle digs against Ron Paul. How can anyone like him, he does not have great oratory like Obama. Oh, and he is old so how come young people like him?

    Well maybe it’s the message and not the messenger. Maybe someone actually telling us why we have a problem and not just cheerleading the problem is what young Conservatives like and appreciate.

    Maybe someone that says that $750 million in defense is too much. 170 military bases flub world wide creates hatred and not admiration. And maybe, just maybe liberty and Constitutional government should just be on bumper stickers, but should be a part of Republican principles again.

    Just saying.

  5. I haven’t followed this. Iowa afterall has been missin’ da mark in recent election cycles.  But, I think it’ll go like this:  Romney, Bachmann, Paul, T-Paw, ……  and way behind ………

  6. I’m not a Paulista and people who know me around the intertoobs are aware I am backing Bachmann but practically all the young people I converse with, and that’s dozens of different kids every week, are liking Ron Paul.
    I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he wins this today.

  7. And re “Cranky Old Coots” (a rare slip by Stacy from his generally studied politeness toward we Paulistas), there’s no question that Paul doesn’t have an inspiring speaking voice.  And there are plenty of policy areas that I disagree with him on.  But what attracts people (including me) to Paul is that he is the ultimate Anti-politician.  Young people, especially, gravitate toward his authenticity.  He is 0% style, 100% substance, and on the economy, federalism, etc. he’s been positively prophetic, relaying the same message now that the rest of the GOP field is just now catching up with. In addition to his economic chops, he is very religious and socially conservative, he’s been a pro-life warrior with with a 50+ year marriage and a large family, but he never comes across as holier than thou.

    There are plenty of other GOP candidates out there I feel positively about this cycle (Cain, Bachmann, Pawlenty, etc. all have their strong points) but Paul to me, is, despite his legitimate and oft-remarked-upon shortcomings, the best in the field.

  8. The WiFi connectivity issues got so frustrating a few minutes ago that I
    threw my fedora on the floor, shouted a string of frightful epithets
    and went outside to smoke a couple of cigarettes to calm down. When I
    returned, the WiFi connection had slightly improved, so apparently the
    cussing worked.

    Calm down old man, your going to pop a vein. 😉

  11. Wow!!! Bachmann actually stopped the ronPaulies from screwing another poll??!? Ladies and Gentlemen, our First female president, with “America’s Godfather” for VP.

  13. You can’t screw a poll that counts individual heads.
    You can screw an online poll that lets you vote multiple times.
    Like the ones over at DU and Daily KOS

  15. RonPaul’s been in Congress since the Reconstruction, yet he’s the ultimate antipolitician to young people? Time to raise the voting age again…

  18. I’m actually thrilled that both Bachmann and Paul did as well as they did. I think it indicates that the TEA Party is very much alive and kicking.   

  19. Seriously? You’re talking about Mitt Romney and Rick Perry finishing six and seventh?  Bachman and Paul finished in a statistical dead heat.  Paul is an avowed Austrian Economics disciple.  Bachman said her summer reading was Ludwig Von Mises’ “Human Action.”  The two most libertarian Republicans in the pack just tied for first with, between them, four times the votes of the nearest challenger (Pawlenty).  That is the story.  Mitt Romney is not the story.  Mitt Romney is not the “front-runner” except among people who want to see a repeat of the McCain disaster.  The likely front-runner, nationally, about two weeks from now will be Rick Perry.  Bachman is building quite a case for VP.  Paul is moving the debate ever more toward Austrian, free-market, no-central-bank, no-ability-of-government-to-inflate-the-currency, economics and libertarian governance.  But by all means lets talk about Mitt Romney, because the same media honchos that pushed McCain over the top in 2008 as the quadrennial sacrifice to the Messiah say Romney is the front-runner, so we should too.

    Unbelievable.

  21. Excellent results! And Stacy, as always, you have done a stellar job out there in corn country, thanks for all your hard work! 
    I am pleased with Rick Santorum’s respectable finish, his campaign is on the ascendancy!
    I offer up a big fat HEH! over Mittens’ BIG FAT LOSS. Bwahahahahaha!!!
    MY candidate of choice got triple the votes Romney did!
    Romney loses to Perry who wasn’t on the ballot and wasn’t even running before today. LOLz!
    No surprise on Ron Paul’s numbers, he’s really good at busing his fans in pretty much everywhere. But I can never take seriously someone who doesn’t recognize that Iran is a threat to the United States and denies that they are pursuing nukes. He must not have been listening to the Iranians OWN WORDS bragging about their nuke program and their incessant “death to America” stuff.

  23. Yeah, you can.  Go the the candidate’s booth.  Get one of the free tickets they’re giving out.  Then go vote for another candidate.  Denies a ticket to a potential voter for the first candidate and maximizes the number of tickets for your trained monkey.

  24. Ron Paul says what he means and lets the chips fall where they may.  he is not afraid to take the heat from the Republican establishment.  And of course, he had a substantial career as a physician before he ever touched on politics.  With Paul it is always about the message– not about him. That is why he’s the ultimate anti-politician. 

  26. Bert– I agree with you 100%- the real story here was the dominance of the conservative-libertarian Tea Party Austrian School Republicans over the establishment hacks.

  28. Zilla, the question isn’t what some blowhard in Iran says, it’s what they can credibly do to threaten us.  In my judgment, the potential threat that they imply is not large enough to justify the literally trillions of dollars we have thrown down a sinkhole trying to bring democracy to the Middle East.  I recognize that this is a minority view among conservatives, but my only insistence is that it is not the “litmus test” for whether one is, in fact a conservative.

     I went through this war in the 2008 campaign, where a bunch of neocon liberals who couldn’t in a million years touch Paul with respect to either fiscal or social conservativism wanted to read him out of the Republican Party because he lacked their enthusiasm for bombing Iran and Iraq, the only way in which they were “conservative” at all.  Many of my favorite Republicans (e.g. Jim DeMint) have definitely had more aggressive views on the U.S. policy in the Middle East, but they are happy to work with Paul on their many points of strong agreement and not marginalize him.  That’s the example I would like the party to set.

  29. Yes, and too often what Ron Paul has to say is deranged, ahistorical monkey talk, like the letters of marque nonsense or his ignorant and ill-informed comments on Iran in the debate.

    Paul suffers from what seems to be a widespread malady among libertarians; he’ll be tooling along making interesting and sensible observations on a topic like the Fed and suddenly something will come flying out of his mouth that is so motherfrackingly deranged you  not diagree with it but you wind up questioning your other beliefs you thought he was making sense on.

  30. That’s right Zilla, keep a stiff upper lip. When they announced the results, I noticed they were playing “Don’t Stop Believing” in the background. Rumor has it that at that exact moment, in some little out of the way diner on the outskirt of Des Moines, Rick and his family had just sat to a big bowl of onion rings when Rick’s political future suddenly went black.

  31. Iran is the biggest problem in the region. They are the most important funding source of Hamas, Hezbollah, and I think are also aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. Their reach extends far beyond Iraq. They are the major reason we need to maintain a military presence in the Persian Gulf. And this is coming from a person who wants to pull our troops out of Europe, Japan, and South Korea. Paul is just dead wrong on the issue of Iran. He’s even wrong about the nuclear issue. Nobody suggested they had the capacity to attack the US mainland with a nuke in the form of a missile. But they could still do immeasurable damage, and in fact have been for some time. As for this insanity about 1953, that’s so off the wall its almost not worthy of comment, were it not for the fact that so many people are taken in by that. The coup we supported then, when we installed the Shah, was against a regime that was socialist and aligned with the Soviets, and which posed a danger not only to the region, but to the energy infrastructure of Iran itself, and to our own growing energy needs. In the context of the Cold War, taking that ass clown out was the right thing to do.

  32. One thing everybody should know about Ron Paul. He is not the father of the Tea Party. He’s not the grandfather of the Tea Party. He’s not even the Godfather of the Tea Party. He’s the god damn crazy uncle of the Tea Party and somebody needs to lock him back up in the attic. He’s not going to win the nomination. I know it and so does everybody else. Stop the madness Ron.

  34. Name calling is not an argument.

    But in any case, Re: Letters of Marque “International Law” does not trump the Constitution– or at least it shouldn’t for anyone who calls himself a conservative.  And yes, I’m aware of the U.S. legislative history here.  We have an 80 year legislative history of New Deal madness– doesn’t make the New Deal any less unconstitutional.  But my quibble isn’t with people who don’t like Paul’s views on Iran– I don’t like some on Ron Paul’s views on Iran.  My beef is with people who seem so obsessed with what is going on in Iran that they attack Paul viciously while they gave a free ride to all of the  pseudo-conservative BS that went on for eight years during the Bush Administration.  It makes me wonder where their conservative priorities lie.  Bush-Cheney nearly destroyed conservatism.  Ron Paul helped bring it back from the brink as a leading instigator of the Tea Party movement.  If you think that someone else is better to be the GOP Standard-bearer in 2012, that’s fine– but respectful disagreement would seem to be far more appropriate than vitriol.  Save the anger for Stacy’s idiot cousin John and the rest of the GOP establishment.

  36. Ron Paul has been one of the biggest ear-markers and pork barrel spenders in the Congress since he’s been there.  His modus operandi is to get his pork and earmarks into the Omnibus appropriations bill in committee and then, when the final version is assured of passage, to vote against it and make a speech against spending.

    This is because his supporters are too stupid or too stoned to check the record.

    Had Ron Paul’s foreign policy been in place after WWII, we would be living in Soviet America today.

    So yeah, great guy.

  37. Romney decided not to waste his money this cycle.  Wise decision. 

    There is actually a rather negative correlation between winning the Ames Straw Poll and winning the nomination or the general election.  It only gives slightly better than even chances at winning the Iowa Caucuses.

    It’s only purpose – the reason it was formed and the Iowa GOP makes no bones about it – is to raise money for the state party.

    Congratulations to Bachmann.  It also gives Obama the best news he’s had in a while.

  38. Ron Paul has always been completely above-board about earmarking.  His view is that because earmarking does not increase overall spending but only allows elected representatives, rather than bureaucrats to choose spending priorities, that it is good practice.  You may or may not agree (I tend to not agree, though Paul’s earmarks are for basic projects back home, not corrupt deals for political supporters.), but in the context of his overall spending/taxation record, it’s less than an asterisk.  Ron Paul isn’t getting re-elected because he’s so great at bringing big pork projects to Brazoria.

    Re: The Soviet Union, Ron Paul was actually in Congress for many years  during the Soviet Era– He was one of four sitting Republican Congressmen to support Ronald Reagan in 1976.  While he was never a super-hawk, he recognized the danger in a conflict with an expansionist great power who controlled much of historical Europe and wanted to impose a totalitarian economic system on us.  Neither he, nor I, see similar danger in the rantings of some tin-pot dictator in a backwards mullahocracy somewhere in the World’s armpit.

    But again, my goal is to see Paul treated with the basic civility he deserves, not to solve every foreign policy disagreement within the GOP.

  39. So I’m getting out of her and heading back to the hotel.

    Reckon if I start a tip jar drive of my own now I’ll be able to make it to the next straw poll. In four years time I should have enough to pay for a room for two.

  40. Um, actually as one of the people who organized Paul’s main Boston Tea Party Day rally (one of hundreds that took place that day) during the 2008 campaign, during which Paul set a one-day fundraising record for actual dollars (not pledges) raised, I’d beg to differ.  That rally was keynoted by a then-unknown Rand Paul (now founder of the Tea Party Caucus in the Senate). So Paul is certainly one the the primary fathers of the Tea Party movement.

    I agree with you that he won’t be the nominee, but he’ll move the debate on the size and scope of government in the way that I like. Given that all of the people who were castigating him in 2008 (again I know from personal experience) have now stolen 70% of his platform, I can only hope that Ron Paul “fails” in 2012 just like he did in 2008. 

  42. Yeah, they “stole” seventy percent of his platform, and thankfully left out the crazy as a shithouse rat other thirty percent. How much of this record fundraising dollars in 2008 came from the 9/11 Truther movement? How much of it was courtesy of Stormfront?

  43. Ah come on now. That Newsweek cover pic might be an omen. You’ve seen what the presidency does to people. That might well be how she looks in four years. It takes a titanium spine to hold up that well through four years of living hell.

  44. To be fair though, I’ll give you this, Paul as President would have its advantages. For example it would be fun watching him try to sell Alex Jones as his Attorney General.

  45. Here’s what Michele Bachmann (a regular attendee at Ron Paul’s weekly
    lunches) had to say about Paul when she invited him to Minnesota for a
    joint Rally in 2009)

    http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2009/09/has_ron_paul_converted_michele.php

    So given that the majority of the votes in the straw poll just went to
    Ron Paul and someone who thinks enough of Ron Paul to specially invite
    him to her state for rallies, and attend his weekly luncheons, why all
    the Anti-Paul hysteria?

     But to go back to the 70% vs. 30%– the problem is that the 70% was
    stolen.  And for the most part the GOP establishment hasn’t manned up
    and acknowledged that Paul was right and they were wrong, and all of the
    stuff they are saying about that 70% of issues now was what Paul (and
    not they) had been saying all along.  If they stepped up and owned their
    previous failure on the 70%, They’d have a lot more credibility with me on the other 30% some of which I don’t like any better than they (or obviously you) do.

  47. International Law doesn’t have to trump the Constitution; we signed the treaty.  It’s American law Ron Paul is unaware of.

  49. “Just heard Ron Paul’s speech. It’s amazing, really, that this cranky old coot could inspire such a fanatical following among youth. He is a lousy speaker. His voice is not pleasant to hear, especially when boomed over the P.A. system in a basketball arena.”

    Thats just it.  Unlike every other politician in the race, it isn’t who he is but rather what he says that makes people fans. He’s said as much himself.  

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