The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Santorum Gets 4 ‘Clean Kills’ in Pheasant Hunt With Steve King; No Endorsement

ADEL, Iowa Today’s hunt at Doc’s Gun Club was successful for Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who said he got four “clean kills,” and also saw his teenage son John get his first bird. Santorum also got some solid publicity for his campaign, as a horde of media turned out to cover his post-hunt press […]

Greetings From Iowa

Aaron Rupp is an industrial control systems engineer from Cedar Rapids who sent me an e-mail yesterday wondering if I needed a ride from the airport. By the time I took off this morning from BWI, my plan had already progressed to include a 140-mile drive to Adel — clear on the other side of Des Moines — […]

Fear and Loathing at BWI

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. The big headline on Memeorandum: Mitt Romney’s secret money What does it mean? Who […]

Memo From the National Affairs Desk: How’s the Weather Today in Vanuatu?

“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 […]

Hatin’ on the Hawkeye State, Or: Should Iowans Burn Jim Geraghty in Effigy?

Mob violence is rare in Iowa, but National Review‘s Jim Geraghty would be well-advised to avoid any gatherings of Hawkeye State Republicans after he blasphemed against the Sacred Caucuses this morning. 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 […]

The Weird Turn Pro

“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 […]

Slouching Toward Cedar Rapids

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, […]

Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Strange Rumblings in the Heartland

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 […]

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