Category: Fear and Loathing in Iowa

Two Excellent Arguments in Favor of a Jon Huntsman Presidency

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HOLLIS, N.H.
At tonight’s Hillsborough County GOP dinner I had the enormous pleasure of meeting Mary Anne and Abby Huntsman:

For all the grief I’ve given “Governor Asterisk” in the past several months, I must confess that his daughters were not only lovely, but also quite gracious. I gave them one piece of advice: “Whatever you do, don’t turn into Meghan McCain.”

They laughed: “Don’t worry about that!”

UPDATE (Smitty): Welcome, Instapundit readers! If I may pile on the advice, Chelsea Clinton might be worth a wide berth.

UPDATE II (RSM): Just want to point out that, despite the charm and pulchritude of Mary Anne and Abby, the Santorum surge is still the big story.

Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Eight Days in a Mustang Later …

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“What I fear will happen is that Perry will spend several months sucking up media oxygen and burning through GOP donor cash, only to collapse early next year. This will have the effect of suffocating other conservative candidates, and thereby lead to … Romney 2012.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Aug. 9, 2011

“Stacy’s not smooth and polished and TV plastic. He’s brash and opinionated and homely as a hickory walking stick. But smooth and polished and plastic got it wrong, and hickory got it right.”
— Richard McEnroe, Three Beers Later

DES MOINES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
When I stumbled into the hotel lobby Wednesday morning in search of coffee, I noticed a guy working on a laptop and, figuring him to be another reporter in town to cover the caucuses, struck up a conversation. My opening gambit was to remark how wretchedly merciless it was for Michele Bachmann to call a 10 a.m. press conference the day after the caucuses, when most of the press corps had been up until 2 or 3 a.m. the night before.

“Why couldn’t she have let us sleep in?” I said, and groused about the fact that a 10 a.m. press conference meant that I’d be rushed to check out of the hotel afterwards.

We laughed about being victims of Bachmann’s revenge on the national media and I asked the guy who he worked for. When he said he wrote for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I started ranting about my grudge against my hometown paper (see “Henry Grady Weeps,” Dec. 5) and alluded to my longstanding opinion that the paper’s publisher, Anthony C. Kennedy, should be eviscerated in broad daylight on Marietta Street and his entrails fed to wild dogs.

The conversation continued and it turned out that the guy was Jeremy Redmon. When I checked later, I noticed his story on the Bachmann event contained an error:

Bachmann is the second Republican to quit the race. Businessman Herman Cain of McDonough suspended his campaign last month amid sexual harassment allegations, which he vigorously denied.

Actually, Bachmann is the fourth Republican to quit the 2012 race, preceded not only by Cain, but also by former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson. But little details like that tend to slip through the cracks in modern journalism, where there are fewer and fewer editors to fact-check stories and most papers end up publishing whatever the hell the reporters turn in.

Quibbles about errors in articles were not what Jeremy and I were talking about in the hotel lobby Wednesday morning. Instead it was discovered that we had both once worked for the same paper. Jeremy was a reporter for the Metro section of the Washington Times for a couple of years during the decade when I was on the national desk there. Jeremy talked fondly of working with one of our Metro editors, Hank Pearson, a legendarily gruff newsman of the Old School. “He’d tell me, ‘Put some balls on that lead,'” Jeremy recalled.

Yeah, Hank was a classic. Died of cancer a few years ago.

The Old School guys are few and far between in the news business nowadays. The motley collection of staffers in the newsroom of the Washington Times back in the day — including guys like Jerry Seper, who typed his stories by the hunt-and-peck method — could never be assembled by any 21st-century editor, simply because guys like that don’t go into the news business anymore. Journalism has become an elite profession, and attracts basically three kinds of people:

  1. “Save the World” types who think of journalism as a sort of humanitarian charitable endeavor, wherein they’ll “make a difference” on behalf of the oppressed victims of society. Such people should be encouraged to join the Peace Corps instead.
  2. Neurasthenic intellectuals with literary pretensions. These people are essentially dilettantes, slumming it in the news business as a way to pay the bills until they can sell a screenplay or a novel.
  3. Would-be TV stars. The cable-news era has created a niche market for camera-friendly “personalities,” and a lot of these young kids in journalism nowadays are writing news or punditry as a means of auditioning for a TV gig. They wake up in the morning, turn on MSNBC, and imagine the days when they’ll be sitting at the table with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski, who will chuckle at their pithy aphorisms and bon mots.

Good luck with that, OK?

When I got into this racket 25 years ago, there was no MSNBC, no Fox News and no Internet. A job as a $4.50-an-hour staff writer at a tiny weekly paper in Austell, Georgia, was a pleasant alternative to driving a forklift in a warehouse on Fulton Industrial Boulevard as a way to pay the bills while playing with a garage-rock band.

My career plan to sell 10 million records, tour the world, marry Brooke Shields and retire by age 30 didn’t work out, and so I stayed with the journalism gig until I won some awards and came to Washington and . . .

Look, we don’t know when we begin something where it will take us. And the last thing I expected when I got into this racket was to be here in the Des Moines International Airport, two days after the Iowa caucuses, waiting for a flight to Boston to begin my coverage of the New Hampshire primary campaign.

What has made this possible, of course, is the “Army of Davids” effect: The Internet allows a writer to reach readers directly, in a personal way, without the intermediaries — publishers, editors, et cetera — who were necessary to the writer’s livelihood before the rise of New Media. And the kids nowadays who take all this for granted don’t have the hard experience of having worked in the pre-Internet era when a writer had to jump through all those hoops, and deal with all the hassles, necessary to get a chance to earn a living in the news business.

Write for the reader. If this plane I’m waiting for in Des Moines should crash on takeoff, let those be my final words of advice to aspiring journalists. Try to picture in your mind the person who is reading your words, and try to write something that person would actually want to read. The tragedy of modern American journalism is that the industry has lost sight of the reader, the paying customer who is the whole point of the enterprise.

Yesterday after the Bachmann press conference, I had to wait my turn for an interview with Bachmann’s press secretary Alice Stewart. And when I got my turn, I introduced myself as Stacy McCain of The American Spectator and The Other McCain, to which Alice replied, “Yeah. I know. You’re famous.”

It’s the kind of “fame” which, with $1.49, will get you a cup of coffee. For what it’s worth, however, Richard McEnroe is correct in observing that I didn’t get here because of my good looks. Nor did what people usually call “talent” have anything to do with it. Writing is a skill, not a talent, and this difference is important because a skill can be improved by practice. And I practiced like hell during all those years when I was covering stuff a lot less important than a presidential election campaign.

In 1987, I was working as a sports editor in Douglas County, Georgia, and the two news reporters for the paper were a couple of 20-somethings of the literary dilettante type. They did the necessary minimum of reporting while one of them worked on his novel and the other worked on his one-act plays. Meanwhile, I was burning the midnight oil trying to put out a sports section and, observing these two other guys, I vowed not to be like them. Maybe journalism wasn’t my first career choice — hello, Brooke Shields, wherever you are — but if I was going to do it, I was going to do it with all my might.

So now it’s 2012, and I’m on the campaign trail. Whatever happened to the two dilettantes, I don’t know. But I shared a cab ride from the Super 8 motel to the airport with a kid named Noah Rothman, who covered the Iowa caucuses for a site called Ology.com. I asked if he was going to New Hampshire and he said, no, the company wouldn’t pay for that trip.

We exchanged business cards and Noah said, “Oh, I know who you are. I follow you on Twitter.” Him and 10,000 other people. But it is you, my readers, who have paid for this trip, and I try to keep writing for you.

They just called boarding for my flight, and it’s time to go, onward toward the final humiliation of “Governor Asterisk.” The ultimate collapse of the Perry campaign will come later.

My intent in this post was to name-check everyone who has contributed to the Shoe Leather Fund to send me out on this crazy journey, but there’s no time for that now. They’ve just called final boarding and I can’t afford miss that flight because, after all, you paid for it. I hope you feel like you’ve gotten your money’s worth so far. But there are still many miles to go, and so there’s just enough time now for me to type the Five Most Important Words in the English Language: Hit the freaking tip jar!

— 30 —

PREVIOUSLY:

Iowa Victory Lap

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DES MOINES, Iowa
Today I checked out of the hotel near Santorum HQ in Johnston and drove down toward the Des Moines International Airport where I checked into a cheap motel. Then I went to Taco John’s and got four tacos, a burrito, chips and salsa. On the way back to the motel, I stopped into a convenience store and got a 40-ounce Budweiser. Dropped that off at the motel, then drove over to the airport and returned the Mustang.

God, I’m gonna miss that car.

And I’m gonna miss Iowa, too. All the pundits who badmouth the Iowa caucuses have no idea how much fun it is to take a 40-mph curve doing 80 in a Mustang, while running late for a candidate event in some small town out on the prairie. I don’t know what these pundits do for amusement, but they’ve never done anything as fun as making that run from Montezuma to Pella in a sweet black Ford Mustang convertible.

(Aside: Do they have car rental agencies in Vanuatu? And do those agencies have any Mustang convertibles on the lot? What’s the daily rate? Someone should investigate this.)

On my way to the airport, I called Richard McEnroe of Three Beers Later to thank him for the linkage. And after returning the Mustang to the rental agency, I called Jimmie Bise of the Sundries Shack because I needed a shoulder to cry on. Continue reading Iowa Victory Lap →

Bachmann Quits 2012 Campaign

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UPDATE 10:40 a.m. CT:
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Rep. Michele Bachammn just announced she would quit the 2012 presidential race. She praised God and spoke about the Founders of the American Republic, vowing her continued determination to repeal ObamaCare, calling it a formula for leading America down the road to socialism.

UPDATE 10:55 a.m. CT:  Bachmann’s speech here was, in some ways, typical of her campaign, including the fact that it began 20 minutes past the scheduled time. She was almost constantly behind schedule during her travels here.

Also, an event that a media advisory announced as an “availability” — a term that usually means “press conference” — was in fact just a speech. The candidate took no questions. Afterwards, her press secretary Alice Stewart spoke to a gaggle of reporters for about 10 minutes. Stewart said that Bachmann has no plans to endorse any other candidate at this point.

But of course, plans change. Bachmann had plans last night to continue her campaign, Stewart said, but woke up this morning and decided to quit the race.

I’ll try to update later with some more news, photos, etc.

UPDATE 11:27 a.m. CT: ABC News has the quotes:

“Last night, the people of Iowa spoke with a very clear voice, so I have decided to stand aside,” Bachmann said at a news conference, flanked by her parents, husband and five children. “I have no regrets, none whatsoever. We never compromised our principles and we can leave this race knowing we ran it with the utmost integrity.”

Just spoke to Alice Stewart again. I told her that when I was complaining about the disastrous communications operation of the Herman Cain campaign, I forwarded Alice’s press releases to J.D. Gordon and Mark Block with notes: “This is what a campaign ‘media advisory’ looks like!”

I’ve always liked Bachmann, and still do, and the role she played in this campaign was at times crucial. It was her remark during the September 12 Tampa debate — “innocent little 12-year-old girls” — that put the first serious wound into Rick Perry. And her phrase “Newt Romney,” lumping Gingrich in with the moderate Massachusetts governor, did a lot to undermine Gingrich’s credibility as a Tea Party candidate.

So why, you may ask, did I jump from the Cain Train to the Santorum Express, rather than shifting my focus to Bachmann? I don’t really know. Sometimes, I think, you just go where God leads you and take whatever you find there. And I hope that Michele Bachmann finds only blessings and joy in wherever God leads her now.

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*** PREVIOUSLY (9:35 a.m. CT) ***

JOHNSTON, Iowa
So much for sleeping in on the day after the caucuses, huh? She is expected to announce she’s quitting, but who knows, In a crazy year like this, what she might do? But if this is the last time I get to see her on the campaign trail, I can’t miss it.

Now I’ve got to get ready for a 10 a.m. CT press conference on the other side of Des Moines, which will probably delay my packing up here at the National Affairs Desk until past checkout time.

Dadgum Republicans. No wonder Hitler hates ’em.

UPDATE 10:08 a.m. CT: I’m now at the Marriott in West Des Moines, where Bachmann is late for her own press conference.

IOWA CAUCUS RESULTS HQ
UPDATE: Santorum Surge in Precinct Numbers Exceeds Poll Projections

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JOHNSTON, Iowa
UPDATE 2:30 a.m. CT: Well, I’ve hit my deadline for The American Spectator, and Phil Klein of the Washington Examiner has invited me to breakfast. All rest of the press corps have left the Stoney Brook here, except for a guy filing an article for a French magazine. And this will be my final update of the night/early morning. Here’s a picture of the candidate and his family:

They were accepting a gift from one of their Iowa supporters. And I want to thank all of our readers — and Smitty, and my wife — for helping make this trip possible. Here’s the obligatory photo of the National Affairs Desk:

I’m outta here. I’ll be flying out Thursday to New Hampshire. Hit the freaking tip jar!

UPDATE 12:20 a.m. CT: Finally collected the beer that Santorum’s Iowa field director Jake Braunger had promised me. That 24-year-old kid just became an American political legend. Not for buying me a beer, but for leading the grassroots army which — as of this point, with 99% of the precincts reporting — has Santorum winning with an 18-vote margin.

UPDATE 11:50 p.m. CT: Just got through with Senator Santor’s victory speech. Robert Costa of NRO and I were back by the door. The room was packed past fire-code capacity and the cops wouldn’t let anyone else in. That was when the New York Times photographer showed up and tried to get past the cops.

No way, the cops wouldn’t yield. “But … I’m from the New York Times.”

The cops didn’t care. Nobody was getting past them.

A triumph for The Rule of Law in the American Heartland.

And I remember when Santorum couldn’t get any national media coverage except . . . Well, me.

UPDATE 10:53 p.m. CT: Rick Perry just began his concession speech — a humiliating fifth-place finish for the former front-runner. Can’t hear the TV here in the Loose Moose Saloon, so I’m not sure, but I think he started his speech with four words: “Howdy. Thank you, Erick.”

UPDATE 10:45 p.m. CT: Gingrich and Bachmann have given their concession speeches. When will Mitt Romney give the speech admitting that he just got beat by Rick Santorum, a guy who spent a mere fraction of what the perennial front-runner spent? The natives here are getting restless waiting for the victory speech, and I’ve got an editor in Washington, D.C., waiting for me to file a column tonight.

Best thing about being a U.S. ambassador, I’m told: There are no deadlines in the diplomatic corps. Hit the freaking tip jar!

UPDATE 10:10 p.m. CT: Ron Paul just conceded. He’ll finish third. Here at Santorum Victory HQ, a campaign spokesman just did a mike-check at the party: “Let’s just say that Senator Santorum is in high spirits.” A speech by the man of the hour is expected shortly. The scene inside the big room:

I’ll have to go wedge myself into that room, if I’m gonna get video. So it will be a few minutes before I can update again.

Hit the freaking tip jar!

UPDATE 9:27 p.m. CT: Results with 49% of precincts:

Rick Santorum …. 13,594 (24%)
Mitt Romney …… 13,204 (24%)
Ron Paul …………. 12,205 (22%)
Newt Gingrich ….. 7,426 (13%)
Rick Perry ……….. 5,544 (10%)
Bachmann ………… 3,140 (6%)

Santorum now has more votes than Gingrich and Perry combined.

UPDATE 9:20 p.m. CT: Demonstrating the power of Rick Santorum to bring America together, I have just revoked all my previous threats to whup David Brooks’s ass:

Good-bye, grassroots populist street cred! Hello, Vanuatu!

UPDATE 8:55 p.m. CT: The latest with 31% of precincts:

Mitt Romney …… 7,844 (23%)
Rick Santorum …. 7,726 (23%)
Ron Paul …………. 7,655 (23%)
Newt Gingrich ….. 4,440 (13%)
Rick Perry ……….. 3,433 (10%)
Bachmann …………. 1,922 (6%)

Just bumped into a member of Santorum’s South Carolina organization — y’know, the organization that all the Smart Guy pundits keep saying Santorum doesn’t have — who said to me: “Vanuatu’s looking pretty good now, huh?”

Yeah. They read my stuff.

(9:15 p.m. CT: Smitty compiled the following aggregation of links.)

Nate Silver: “Why I’d Bet on Santorum (and Against My Model)”

Our model is more optimistic about Mr. Santorum than those of other objective forecasting systems, which give him about 16 percent of the vote. The reason is that our model gives extra credit to Mr. Santorum for his momentum in the closing days of the campaign. But there is some reason to think that it is still giving Mr. Santorum too little credit.
The momentum factor in our model is derived from an analysis of competitive primaries and caucuses throughout the country since 1980. It does not contain any Iowa-specific variables, although it does recognize that polling in Iowa and other early-voting states tends to be more erratic than polling in later-voting states.
There is reason to think, however, that momentum might be especially important in Iowa.

Erick Erickson: “What if Santorum Wins?”

If Santorum wins, a lot of people will be correct in saying Mitt Romney is still a winner because Santorum has no money or real organization to go beyond Iowa.
But my God in Heaven, the media is finally going to be confronted with an “Emperor Has No Clothes” moment on Romney too. That remains the most under reported story of 2012. Mitt Romney, campaigning since 2006 for President has managed to go from 23% to 23% in six years.

The Hill: “Ron Paul supporters heckle Santorum“:

Rick Santorum was heckled by Ron Paul supporters as he left a high school in West Des Moines on Tuesday. The crowd chanted “Big-spending Rick” and “nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye.” When The Hill asked Santorum what he thought of the crowd as they began chanting, he paused, smiled tightly and said “It’s the crowd at the caucuses that matters.”

UPDATE 8:32 p.m. CT: The latest numbers, with 24% of precincts reporting:

Ron Paul …………. 6,067
Rick Santorum …. 6,060
Mitt Romney …… 6,018

I hereby demand a personal apology from everyone who ever said that either Gingrich or Perry were the only candidates who could stop Romney.

* * * PREVIOUSLY (7 p.m. CT) * * *

Greetings from the beautiful Stoney Creek Inn, scene of tonight’s Rick Santorum victory party. It is now 7 p.m. CT, which means that Iowa Republicans have just assembled in precinct caucus locations across the Hawkeye State where they will cast the ballots that will determine the GOP nomination next President of the United States destiny of the Free World fate of all humanity.

If you’re in Iowa tonight, it’s important that you come to the beautiful Stoney Creek Inn so you can celebrate Rick Santorum’s victory and also, incidentally, buy me beers.

If you’re not in Iowa tonight, we will be bringing you all the news and results from tonight’s contest, the results of which are impossible to predict beyond the fact — a Neutral Objective Fact — that Rick Santorum will crush all rivals like Godzilla stomped Tokyo. And you’ll want to refresh the site throughout the night for continuous updates as soon as these dadgum Iowa voters decide whether they want to

A. Vote for Rick Santorum, the Only Man Who Can Save America From Another Four Years of Barack Obama™;
B. Sell their souls to the GOP Establishment by voting for the Worst RINO in the History of RINO-dom.
C. Cast a protest vote against the “Israel lobby,” IYKWIMAITYD; or
D. Waste their votes on some doomstruck loser.

You may disagree with that assessment, but it’s as valid as Joy McCann’s ridiculous arguments on behalf of one of those doomstruck losers.

UPDATE 7:44 p.m. CT: Bad news. Rick Santorum Victory Celebration has . . . a cash bar.

I just told the lady I should be covering the the Romney campaign, where I’m sure the press gets all the free booze they want.

UPDATE 7:54 p.m. CT: A couple of photos:


The lady at the Media Credentials Check-In Table searches her database for the name of the Future Ambassador to Vanuatu.


Campaign manager Mike Biundo, who just gave an impromptu press conference here at the Loose Moose Saloon, which is where the press filing center is located. Zeke Miller of Buzz Feed Politics supplies the quotes. (I figure the junior members of the press corps do the transcription.)

The first results on TV showed a neck-and-neck tie, with Santorum actually leading and, when I said, “Santorum leading!” Somebody in the press filing center said, “Four percent” — the percentage of precincts reporting. To which I replied, “Don’t harsh my mellow, man.”

UPDATE 8:20 p.m. CT: Guess who showed up at Santorum HQ? The guy who’s been badmouthing Santorum for days:

The latest Iowa returns show Rick Perry a weak fifth place, barely 10% in Iowa. “Howdy. Thank you, Erick.”


Pre-Caucus Night Nap Time

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The rented Mustang convertible I got for the price of a Toyota

JOHNSTON, Iowa
Just got back from the Stony Creek Inn, across the highway from my hotel, where they’re setting up for tonight’s big victory celebration for Rick Santorum. Just so you know: Election Night events are always billed in advance as “victory” parties, because nobody wants to send out invitations to a “Hey, We Might Finish Second” party.

If Santorum finishes third here — let’s say, 19% — that’s a huge victory for a campaign that was in single digits in all the polls two weeks ago. And by finishing third, Santorum would place ahead of three candidates (Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann) who have out-spent him many times over.

If Santorum finishes second — say, 22% — that would be enormous, since it would indicate he’s out-organized the fanatical supporters of Ron Paul.

And if . . .

We’re not even going to go there, OK? I’m ruling out any such possibility. Everybody knows Mitt Romney is going to win this thing, even though he’ll win it with less than 30% of the vote. But if somehow the impossible happens, all bets are off.

When I arrived at the Stony Creek Inn, Senator Santorum and his family were on their way out to visit Des Moines Christian School for one of their final pre-caucus appearances. He was cheerful, but obviously weary from the grueling pace of this all-out campaign blitz of the past two weeks. I’m amazed at his stamina. This is wearing me out, and I’m just blogging about the campaign.

Some quick news before I lay down for my nap:

Anyway, that’s enough to do you for a few hours. Like Rick Santorum’s final surge here in Iowa, my expenses on this trip have exceeded expectations. So reader contributions to the Shoe Leather Fund are, as always sincerely appreciated.

They’re setting up a big party over at the Stony Creek Inn and, because of limited space, the press filing center will actually be in the hotel bar, which is called “The Loose Moose.”

That seems somehow ironically appropriate, doesn’t it?





PREVIOUSLY:


Desperate Hours in the Hawkeye State

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JOHNSTON, Iowa
Republican voters are getting bombarded with robocalls all over Iowa. Last night, I talked to the night clerk at my hotel here. She’s a mother of three and a Republican, an undecided voter who isn’t even sure she’ll attend her precinct caucus tonight in Grimes. She told me she’s getting calls at home nearly every 30 minutes.

Some of these robocalls are nothing but flat-out lies. There are calls claiming that Rick Santorum isn’t pro-life and isn’t pro-Second Amendment when, in fact, he’s a famously staunch pro-lifer and has an A+ career rating from the National Rifle Association.

Of course, I suspect that Rick Perry’s campaign is behind this. And whether my suspicion is right or wrong, the Perry campaign is a lamentable joke here in Iowa. I’ve been talking to experienced Iowa Republicans during my travels the past week, and experienced observers are united in the opinion that Perry has wasted millions of dollars on a campaign that has done him more harm than good. 

The campaign I dubbed “The Phantom Menace” in August has been an even more wretched disaster than I predicted. According to Nate Silver’s final pre-caucus poll analysis, Perry will be lucky to get 10 percent in the Hawkeye State. A fourth- or fifth-place finish here would, by the normal calculus of politics, cause Perry to quit. But if he did quit, his campaign advisers and consultants would be out of work, so they have convinced him to keep going. And even though they have apparently come to grips with the fact that they’re going to get their asses handed to them in Iowa tonight, they’re still flooding the airwaves with TV ads and pestering people with robocalls.

As I’ve said, if desperation was a cologne fragrance, they’d reek of it. 

Those who have supported Perry should be furious at how they’ve been humiliated, outraged by the arrogant incompetence of Perry’s staff and (ridiculously overpaid) campaign consultants.

And isn’t it time that some people started re-assessing the potential for Rick Santorum to turn a strong showing in Iowa into a campaign that can defeat Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination? Continue reading Desperate Hours in the Hawkeye State →