BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
They’ll call final boarding in less than an hour, so there’s no time now for a lot of fancy stuff. I’m scheduled for a three-hour flight to Detroit, a one-hour layover and then a 40-minute hop to Cedar Rapids.
What does it mean? Who knows? Maybe Mitt’s got more money than George Soros and has bought the GOP lock, stock and barrel. My mind isn’t on Mitt’s money, it’s on Iowa, where I just discovered that Rick Santorum’s schedule has him holding a press conference this afternoon:
4 p.m. CT — Senator Santorum and several prominent Iowa conservative leaders will hold a media availability following a pheasant hunt in Adel, IA.
Hmmm. Two hours from the airport in Cedar Rapids, where I’ll arrive about 1:15 p.m. A guy named Aaron has offered to pick me up at the airport, but would he be up for a 140-mile run to the other side of Des Moines? And then we’d have to turn around and drive back to be at a volunteer-training event in Cedar Rapids at 7.
But what the heck, huh?
If you’re gonna go gonzo, go all the way. This is the kind of situation where the only question is: What Would Hunter Thompson Do?
We know the answer, I think, and so my friend Aaron had best be prepared to do some high-speed driving across Iowa when I arrive, because my plans just changed in the time it took to drink a Bloody Mary in the airport lounge.
The National Affairs Desk, 8:10 a.m., Monday, Dec. 26, 2011
Drinking a Bloody Mary at 8 o’clock in the morning may seem strange, but this is purely medicinal: Three hours cooped up on a plane isn’t the kind of ordeal I can endure in an unmedicated condition, and tomato juice helps fortify my immune system as I prepare for this grueling expedition onto the campaign trail.
What I need is more sleep. I got up at 6 a.m., and if I can catch a couple hours sleep on this flight to Detroit, I’ll be rested and ready when I finally arrive in Iowa. Grab a large cup of coffee for the drive from Cedar Rapids to Adel, and I’ll arrive at that “media availability” as fresh as a daisy and as sober as a judge. No problem.
Well, one problem: Rich Lowry. But he’s a chronic problem, and I don’t have time to deal with it this morning, because I’ve got to get on that plane and fly the friendly skies. Wish me luck, and hit the freaking tip jar.
“Santorum is a social conservative, and everybody seems to have convinced themselves that social conservatives are a dead weight impeding the Republican Party and therefore no one should ever express support for any social conservative anywhere, under any circumstance.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Slouching Toward Cedar Rapids”
“How long, O Lord, how long? Where will it end?
“All I ever wanted out of this campaign was enough money to get out of the country and live for a year or two in peaceful squalor in a house with a big screen porch looking down on an empty white beach, with a good rich coral reef a few hundred yards out in the surf and no neighbors. . . .
“What worries me now . . . is the strong possibility that my involvement in politics has become so deep and twisted that I can no longer think rationally about that big screen porch above the beach except in terms of an appointment as Governor of American Samoa.”
– Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72
Among the Christmas gifts I received from Mrs. Other McCain today: New luggage, thermal underwear and a wool overcoat — appropriate and much appreciated by a guy who’s about to head out on the campaign trail to Iowa and New Hampshire.
This trip wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of readers who have contributed to the Shoe Leather Fund, and there are more tip-jar hitters to thank on my last night at home before I fly the friendly skies to Cedar Rapids: Ronald in Charlottesville, Joe in Olympia, John in West Hartford, Victor in Virginia, Lamon in Missouri, Stephen in Alabama, Philip in Englewood, Dewayne in Evansville, Mike in New Hampshire, Barry in Florissant, William in Dallas, and Scott in Ontario.
A special kind of prejudice causes pundits to disparage the campaign Holy Trinity of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — the crucial early states that have dominated the presidential nominating process for more than three decades now.
What the pundits want is an orderly system that delivers credible Big Name nominees quickly, so that the pundits can then cover the Main Event between the Serious Contenders. What the traditional process provides, however, is an extended, unpredictable and at times anarchic struggle in which Big Names often flop, while voters sometimes deliver enough votes to Obscure Underdogs to embarrass the Political Wizards who had predicted victory for the Big Names.
Let the reader do some research as to what the pundits were prognosticating in autumn 2007, and cite examples in the comments if you wish. My own memory is that all the Political Wizards were wondering which of the alleged GOP front-runners — Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney — would emerge victorious to take on the Democrat nominee, Hillary Clinton.
Oh, those damned voters!
Three months ago, right before those Florida GOP bastards wrecked Christmas by jumping their primary date to Jan. 31, I briefly stated the case for the early-state tradition in an American Spectator column:
. . . There are logical reasons why the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries, especially, have become sacrosanct as the first events of the quadrennial presidential campaign calendar. Both are states with small populations (Iowa about 3 million, New Hampshire about 1.3 million) where TV and radio advertising are relatively cheap. This permits little-known long-shots with small budgets to campaign on a fairly even playing field with better-known and better-funded candidates. Furthermore, Iowa and New Hampshire are states where retail politics — the old-fashioned business of shaking hands and meeting voters one-on-one or in small meetings — are a huge factor in the campaign. Barack Obama famously beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa four years ago because of Obama’s greater strength in grassroots organizing, and Jimmy Carter won New Hampshire in 1976 by bringing scores of Georgians (the “Peanut Brigades”) to go door-to-door for him in the Granite State. So unless we wish presidential campaigns to become all about money and what pollsters call “name ID,” having Iowa and New Hampshire go first looks like a good idea.
Yet we ought not confine ourselves to merely logical reasons for keeping Iowa and New Hampshire first. Aren’t Republicans conservatives, and don’t conservatives believe in the value of tradition? There is something wonderfully traditional — indeed, downright reactionary — about having presidential candidates go through the quaint custom of waiting for returns from tiny precinct caucuses in Iowa and shaking hands with voters in the snowy streets of small-town New Hampshire in February. Nor are these traditions merely sentimental. The pragmatic and utilitarian value of tradition is evident in that voters of Iowa and New Hampshire, long accustomed to their role in vetting presidential candidates of both parties, have become quite shrewd judges in these matters. A joke told by Tim Albrecht, spokesman for Iowa Gov. Terry Brandstad, is quite relevant here: An Iowa Republican is asked whether he supports a certain presidential candidate and answers, “I don’t know. I’ve only met him twice.” Early-state voters are not over-awed by “rock star” candidates and media hype, because they’ve seen it all so many times before. Such is the real value of tradition. . . .
Read the whole thing. Either Jim Geraghty ignored that column or else his Fear and Loathing of Iowa is so profound he could not be persuaded to abandon his hateful vendetta against the Hawkeye State.
Iowans are a gentle and peaceful people, and it’s unlikely they would seek revenge against Geraghty. On the other hand, rural Iowa is a lonely place, and if a journalist were to make a wrong turn somewhere between Pella and Oskaloosa, he might find himself confronted by an outraged Iowan with a long memory: “Did you say ‘Geraghty’? Wait a minute, feller, whilst I fetch my hog-slaughtering knife . . .”
Out in the cornfields, they say, no one can hear you scream.
“Some people claim that the ancient Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world in 2012. While I am generally skeptical toward such doomsday prophecies, recent events have undermined my habitual skepticism and filled me with foreboding premonitions. If 2012 doesn’t bring the end of the entire cosmos, there are those who say it is likely to destroy the Republican Party as we know it, and the first cataclysmic event is now less than two weeks away. . . .
“Pundits were thrown into a full-blown schizophrenic frenzy by the prospect that Texas Rep. Ron Paul might win the Iowa caucuses. Since late November, no poll has shown Paul worse than third place in Iowa. Two polls this week have Paul first, with Gingrich slipping to third behind Romney in one poll, and all the way to fourth place in another. According to some conservatives, a Paul victory in the Hawkeye State would be the worst thing to happen to the Republican Party since Lincoln’s assassination. It might even be a sign of the final apocalypse foretold by the ancient Mayan calendar.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Hawkeye Fever,” The American Spectator
Apocalyptic prophecies are a dime a dozen these days and, thanks to Ben Bernanke’s inflationary policies at the Fed, a dime ain’t what it used to be. But we at least see the fulfillment of Thompson’s prophecy: The going in Iowa has become genuinely weird, and who is more prepared for that weirdness than a pro like me?
Five days from now — Dec. 26, the day after Christmas — I’ll fly into Cedar Rapids to try to get a handle on the campaign madness that is now, according to pundits, turning Iowa into a vast Midwestern insane asylum.
Here are some of the latest Hawkeye State headlines:
Lots of Republicans have been calling Newt Gingrich that for years, but only in Iowa does an ordinary citizen get a chance to say it to his face.
Fear and loathing are rampaging out of control in the American Heartland, you see, and I’m just five days away from being right in the thick of it, thanks to readers who have contributed to the Shoe Leather Fund the past three days. Thanks are owed today to tip-jar hitters including Chris in South Dakota, Paolo in St. Petersburg, Buffy in Peachtree City, Michael in Texas, Peter in Spring Hill, Richard in New Jersey, Bill in Falls Church, Mike in El Segundo and my blog-buddy Jimmie Bise Jr.
Be assured of my gratitude, and my commitment to make this the best road-trip ever. And I’m sure some of you may wonder, “Can Stacy handle all that savage weirdness erupting in the Hawkeye State?” Continue reading The Weird Turn Pro →
One of the hardest things about blogging is maintaining morale during times of discouragement. And so I’m grateful to the readers who responded to last night’s emergency request for contributions to the Shoe Leather Fund for my rapidly approaching Iowa trip: Jeff in Walla Walla, Richard in North Hollywood, and Glen in Dubai — yes, I said Dubai.
There were other bits of encouragement: Mike Rogers at Granite Grok promoted my fundraiser, and used some “points” to arrange for me to have a nice hotel room near Des Moines for Jan. 2 and 3. So that’s two days of the eight-day trip coverage, and Dan Collins’ Romanian friend in Cedar Rapids (who will unfortunately be out of town when I arrive Dec. 26) will nonetheless permit me use of his home during his absence. That covers another day or two, and so we approach the minimum feasibility horizon.
I’ve already paid for my airfare to Cedar Rapids, as well as the Jan. 5 flight from Des Moines to Boston to cover the New Hampshire primary, so that’s covered. It’s the first few days of the Iowa trip that have me worried right now. Because it takes three or four business days for PayPal transfers to clear the bank, and because the banks will take a long holiday weekend, unless you hit the tip jar in the next 24 hours — by midnight Wednesday — there’s no way I’ll have that money available to rent a car or pay other expenses when I land in Cedar Rapids the day after Christmas.
Online fundraising during the holiday season is, of course, a difficult prospect. Blog traffic slumps this time of year and people understandably are busy shopping, but if any reader is feeling the urge to kick in $10 or $20 right now — hey, don’t fight the feeling!
Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats called Michele Bachmann and urged her to drop out of the race and endorse Rick Santorum, a source with knowledge of the conversation told POLITICO Tuesday . . .
Bachmann declined, the source said, noting to Vander Plaats that she has consistently polled ahead of Santorum in the race and still does. . . .
Of course, Vander Plaats shouldn’t have been telling Bachmann to quit. I’ve met Bachmann, I like Bachmann, and I expect to cover Bachmann when I get to Iowa. But she got her “Flavor of the Month” moment in June and couldn’t push it past 14 percent nationally, whereas Rick Santorum never got that shot, and I’m naturally partial to the longest longshot, the lowest underdog in the race. (Which is where Herman Cain was when I jumped aboard the Cain Train a year ago.)
Furthermore — and this is something a lot of Sarah Palin fans saw at the time — much of the media hype that Bachmann got in June was driven by the hope of liberals that, if Bachmann did well, her success would discourage Palin from entering the race and fighting Bachmann for the “Tea Party woman” vote.
Allahpundit is being completely bogus in trying to spin this Vander Plaats thing against Santorum, initially seeming to do so in favor of Bachmann, while ultimately using it to plug Perry:
How come Vander Plaats didn’t ask Bachmann to drop out and endorse Perry instead? Like I say, it makes perfect sense for social conservatives to want to unite behind a champion; what doesn’t make sense is uniting behind Santorum instead of a guy with loads of executive experience and a dynamite jobs record to throw in Obama’s face. Perry’s also much likelier to parlay an Iowa upset into a sustained campaign against Romney than Santorum is, I think.
Bachmann endorse Perry? Oh, hell, no. It was Perry’s bigfoot entry into the race that deprived Bachmann of the bump she would otherwise have gotten from her Ames straw poll win. The candidates who had spent weeks campaigning in Iowa prior to Aug. 13 are united in despising Perry’s campaign for that South Carolina publicity stunt.
Santorum’s surprisingly strong fourth-place finish at Ames was another story that got buried in the Perry hype. Despite the fact that he and Bachmann are both competing for the same social-conservative votes in Iowa, Santorum has always spoken well of Bachmann. A lot of Bachmann voters have Santorum as their second choice, and vice-versa. With the way the caucuses work, there will be some voters who go in Jan. 3 planning to vote for one of them who end up voting for the other.
Has Insty linked anybody’s endorsement of Rick Santorum? I don’t think so. And why not? Because Insty hates Rick Santorum with that special kind of hate that the vast majority of the conservative blogosphere reserves for Santorum.
What’s that all about? Santorum is a social conservative, and everybody seems to have convinced themselves that social conservatives are a dead weight impeding the Republican Party and therefore no one should ever express support for any social conservative anywhere, under any circumstance.
OK, if you feel that way, fine. It’s a free country, but hasn’t Rick Perry also been rather desperately trying to convince Iowa Republicans that he, too, is just as much a social conservative as Rick Santorum? Wasn’t that the whole point of this TV ad?
Perry deliberately contrasts “gays in the military” vs. “prayer in school” — a rather obvious play for the social conservative vote, don’t you agree? And yet Santorum isn’t acceptable because he’s a social conservative?
Perry is acceptable because, I suppose, the bloggers endorsing him figure he’s just engaged in insincere hypocritical pandering: Perry doesn’t really mean this stuff, so it’s OK to support him. Perry’s not going to lift a damn finger to actually implement any kind of social-conservative policy, he’s just talking up this stuff to fool those hicks in Iowa.
Also, as any Perry supporter will tell you, mandatory Gardasil injections are cool! All the kids in Texas, they love them some Gardasil.
UPDATE IV: Further encouragement in the form of tip-jar hits from Jeanne in Drexel Hills, Mark in Horsham, Lisa in Kentucky, Ross in Lakeland, and from our libertarian friend Tom Knapp, whom I suppose will expect me to get some good Ron Paul coverage while I’m in Iowa.
Actually, covering the Ron Paul campaign is easy because whenever there’s an event, the Paulistas are all around the place waving signs. A lot of the major media types covering the GOP campaign tend to ignore the Paulistas, mainly because the sign-waving hordes are such a commonplace feature of every event but also because — until quite recently — nobody thought the Paulistas would actually have an impact on the outcome.
By this time a week from today — Dec. 26, the day after Christmas — I’ll be in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, covering the final campaign leading up to the Jan. 3 caucuses, and I’m already getting advance vibes of serious Fear and Loathing in the Hawkeye State.
There is so much to do between now and my departure date that I’m beginning to worry that I’ll never get it all done in time. The chief task now is to say some long-overdue thanks for all the readers who have already contributed to the Shoe Leather Fund to help make this trip possible: Doug in Cincinnati, Mr. E in Alabama, Mike in Ardmore, Barry in Missouri, Maggie in Broken Arrow, Chris in Patterson, Mike in El Segundo, Philip in Lakeland, Jeff in Elizabethtown, Nathan in Illinois, Susan in Concord, Howard in Texas, Ross in Lakeland, Daniel in New Port Richey, Michael in New Hampshire, Joan in Georgia, Lisa in Clarkson, Bonnie in Utah, Stacy in Colonial Heights, John in Cambridge, Ronald in Oakland, Mike W. in Falls Church, Jeff in Walla Walla, and Charlie in Oregon.
On the day after Christmas, Dec. 26, I’m leaving for Iowa.
Smitty has introduced me to this concept he calls “planning,” and so a few weeks ago, as soon as the 2012 campaign calendar was finally set, I sat down and figured out my itinerary. Dec. 26, I fly to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to begin a 35-day trip that will take me all the way through the Florida primary on Jan. 31. So it’s time once more to ask you to contribute to the Shoe Leather Fund.
Of course, when I land in Iowa three weeks from today, the Republican field won’t be exactly what it was when I first started plan this trip. Four polls taken between Oct. 7 and Oct. 19 — Rasmussen Reports, University of Iowa, Insider Advantage and Public Policy Polling — showed Herman Cain leading in Iowa by an average of 8 points.
“People have asked me what I have to do to get my spark . . . and I’ve believed it from the very beginning, that my spark will be the people of Iowa . . . (who) come out to these town hall meetings . . . Having been to every county and having done about 250 town hall meetings…people are coming our way.”
— Rick Santorum, interviewed on Iowa Public Radio
One more long-shot underdog, 29 days until the Iowa caucuses, and three weeks until I’m there. Hit the freaking tip jar.
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up . . .
— Ecclesiastes 3:1-3 (KJV)
“There are many elaborate theories as to why American religion persists. The best answer is so obvious it’s easy to miss: The founding idea of America is a theological statement. Take away the Almighty and problems sprout like crabgrass.”
— Jeremy Lott, “One Nation Under God”
Some people believe in luck but, although I seem to be on a losing streak lately, I don’t believe in luck. Nor do I believe in accidents. When a deer destroyed my KIA last year, the insurance company called it an “accident,” but surely there was some larger purpose served by that event, although the purpose is as unknown to me as it was to the deer.
Seemingly random things happen every day that are not really as random as they seem. Why do I wear a fedora? Because Pete Da Tech Guy wears fedoras. One day in January 2010, we were on our way to cover a Scott Brown campaign event and I picked up one of Pete’s spare fedoras on our way out the door of his house in Fitchburg, Mass.
How was it, that out of all the sofas in all of Massachusetts, I spent that week on Pete’s sofa in Fitchburg? How did I come to be Pete’s friend? See, it involved this guy named Charles Johnson — maybe you’ve heard of him — and on that day in September 2009 when I swore the war oath of Clan Cameron, it touched something in Pete’s soul.
Oh, did I say “soul”? Excuse my transgression of the separation of church and blog. I merely meant to say that my friendship with Pete was no more accidental than my acquiring a blog sidekick who plays the bagpipes and knows enough Gaelic to translate the war oath of Clan Cameron.
Luck? Accident? Nope. Don’t believe in that stuff. It was neither luck nor accident that accounts for these things, nor was it luck that brought me to the intersection of 100th Street and 570th Avenue that August afternoon in Iowa. My schedule in Iowa had certain fixed dates and locations, but on that Saturday I had nothing in particular on my schedule and so . . .
Perhaps 50 voters showed up Saturday for a campaign event held in a barn on a dirt road amid cornfields near Roland, about 20 miles north of Ames. While a few dozen voters isn’t much of a crowd by Republican presidential campaign standards, the audience inside the barn was enlarged — and enlivened — by the presence of scores of children, the offspring of several Christian homeschooling families in attendance. One family brought eight kids, another brought nine, and the hosts, Scott and Susan Hurd, have seven of their own, as did the guest from Pennsylvania whose “Road to Ames Barn Bash” was the occasion of this gathering.
Rick Santorum has been campaigning across the state for months and, as he told the voters (and their numerous children) during his speech in the barn, he has visited 51 cities in Iowa by now. . . .
— The American Spectator, Aug. 8, 2011
If there was any special purpose to that trip, it was as a favor to my devoutly Catholic friend, Lisa Graas, whom I first knew as the Twitter phenomenon “PalinTwibe,” which she abandoned in 2010 when Sarah Palin endorsed Rand Paul in the Kentucky Senate GOP primary where Lisa (a Kentuckian) favored another candidate.
One month from now, I plan to be in Iowa, reporting the results of the Republican caucuses. And I’m asking readers to contribute to the Shoe Leather Fund to get me there — $10, $20, $50, whatever you can afford.
My plan is to leave on Dec. 26, the day after Christmas, so you’ll have a full week of on-the-scene campaign coverage. I’ll cover all the candidates, but you guys know I’m a hopeless sucker for dark horses, long shots, underdogs and lost causes.
On this day, a month before the Iowa caucuses, what cause seems more hopelessly lost than Rick Santorum‘s campaign? He’s been stuck in single digits in all the polls. Nobody thinks he has a chance.
People laughed at me when I spent months covering Herman Cain, but they stopped laughing when magic happened in Orlando:
What Herman Cain did in Orlando this weekend was both completely unexpected and entirely predictable. As late as Friday afternoon, none of the pundits expected the Atlanta businessman to win the Florida GOP’s “Presidency 5” straw poll. But if what it took to win was a dynamic speaker who could bring a roomful of grassroots Republicans to their feet, Cain’s victory was in some sense inevitable.
“Send Washington a message!” Cain thundered from the stage of the Orange County Convention Center, prompting one of seven standing ovations he received Saturday in his speech preceding the vote in which he stomped Texas Gov. Rick Perry so badly that the Republican front-runner may never recover.
Perry’s disastrous debate performance Thursday — in which he said opponents of college tuition subsidies for illegal immigrants “don’t have a heart” — was the precipitating event of Cain’s triumph. As the old saying goes, luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity, and Cain was perhaps uniquely prepared to take advantage of the opportunity Perry’s stumble presented. . . .
— “Cain’s Magic Moment,” The American Spectator, Sept. 26, 2011
How quickly things can change, you see. And just as Cain’s years of experience as a public speaker was exactly the kind of preparation that made Orlando such a turning point, aren’t Rick Santorum’s months of grassroots campaigning exactly the kind of preparation needed to seize the opportunity in Iowa?
You say it can’t be done? You say Rick Santorum can’t possibly win the Iowa caucuses? One month before Election Day in 2009, I had never even heard of a guy named Doug Hoffman, and by the time it was over, that geeky accountant had become “an electric symbol of conservatism.”
Some of my friends who spent months riding with me on the Cain Train may not be huge fans of Rick Santorum’s politics. And if you don’t want to take this ride, I’ll understand. But to me, the message and the mission are the same things that made NY-23 a national crusade: To wreck the plans of those GOP Establishment insiders who think they can shove their bogus sold-out candidates down our throats.
We must rally the people to a good man who stands firmly for what he believes to be Right and True. And those who complained constantly about Cain’s weaknesses must admit that Santorum is strong exactly where Cain was weak: Experience in office, a firm grasp of foreign policy details, and the kind of solid campaign structure needed to turn grassroots enthusiasm into votes on Election Day.
Rick Santorum is a different kind of candidate than Herman Cain, but I know him to be a good man. I’ve met his family. I’ve hung out with him when other reporters on the campaign trail were ignoring him. He actually bought me lunch once. And he inspired Lisa Graas to write something beautiful:
I may be a crippled and mentally broken single mom in poverty in the Appalachian foothills — a coal miner’s daughter — but to hold onto and speak up for what is true … that is the kind of person I have to be because, as noted, to do otherwise is death for me. Rick Santorum knows that about me, and that’s why he called this broken woman in Kentucky and said, “You’re an inspiration.” No matter how broken I may be, I will stand, and seeing that in the various people he meets in his travels is what keeps his hope for our country alive. I know that to be true about him.
“Karen and I understand how trying national political campaigns are — not just on the candidates, but the candidate’s family. We respect Herman’s decision to suspend his campaign and trust that he made the best decision for his family. As we have for all our fellow candidates, we will continue to keep Herman and his entire family in our prayers.”
— Rick Santorum
UPDATE II: Thanks to Joan in Georgia and Mike in New Hampshire (both Cainiacs, BTW) for hitting the tip jar. Here’s some groovy and hopeful music for you:
You know, I remember when Sarah said “no” and broke the hearts of the Palinistas. A lot of them ended up on the Cain Train. Now that’s gone off the rails and so here’s to hoping we can pull a shocking upset that will let the Establishment know that We the People are still willing to fight back.
