Category: Politics

Bachmann Will Co-Host, Rick Perry Will Co-Chair Pro-Life Group’s November Gala

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Need a demonstration of the continued influence of the pro-life movement in Republican Party politics? When Americans United for Life announced its 40th anniversary gala, the long list of congressional co-hosts included Michele Bachmann — who just won the Iowa GOP straw poll — while Texas Gov. Rick Perry is among three honorary co-chairs for the event. Here is the press release from AUL:

Political Heavyweights Join
Americans United for Life
for its 40th Anniversary Gala
Honorary Co-Chairs Texas Governor Rick Perry,
U. S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions lead a stellar list of Honorary Hosts for an historic event.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (08-15-11) – National leaders and political luminaries will join together in November to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Americans United for Life — the nation’s premier pro-life legal team and the country’s first national pro-life organization — incorporated in 1971 before the infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. The high profile event is already marked by an impressive list of pro-life leaders serving as honorary hosts of the much-anticipated evening.
AUL President and CEO Dr. Charmaine Yoest noted that the anniversary gala would mark the “accumulated pro-life victories AUL has earned through years of public service and the people who made them possible.”
Milestones for AUL include: successfully defending the Hyde Amendment before the U.S. Supreme Court, establishing the intellectual groundwork for Fetal Homicide legislation now passed in 38 states, reducing abortions state by state through cutting-edge model legislation found in Defending Life (a catalogue of 39 pieces of model legislation), leading in the fight against assisted suicide, and testifying for life in state legislatures around the country and in the last two Supreme Court justice confirmation hearings. . . .

Details for attendance
What: AUL’s 40th Anniversary Gala
Where: The Newseum, Washington, D.C.
When: Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Honorary Hosts for the event include
FROM THE SENATE:
Senator Kelly Ayotte
Senator Roy Blunt
Senator Richard Burr
Senator Tom Coburn
Senator Jim DeMint
Senator Michael Enzi
Senator Lindsey Graham
Senator Chuck Grassley
Senator Orrin Hatch
Senator John Hoeven
Senator Mike Johanns
Senator John McCain
Senator Rand Paul
Senator Marco Rubio
Senator Richard Shelby
Senator Roger Wicker

FROM THE HOUSE:
Congressman Robert Aderholt
Congressman Todd Akin
Congressman Steve Austria
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann
Congressman Dan Boren
Congressman Paul Broun
Congresswoman Ann Marie Buerkle
Congressman Dave Camp
Congressman Jerry Costello
Congresswoman Renee Ellmers
Congressman Blake Farenthold
Congresswoman Virginia Foxx
Congressman Trent Franks
Congressman Scott Garrett
Congressman Phil Gingrey
Congressman Louie Gohmert
Congressman Bob Goodlatte
Congresswoman Kay Granger
Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler
Congressman Joe Heck
Congressman Bill Huizenga
Congressman Randy Hultgren
Congressman Darrell Issa
Congressman Sam Johnson
Congressman Walter Jones
Congressman Adam Kinzinger
Congressman James Lankford
Congressman Tom Latham
Congressman Steven LaTourette
Congressman Daniel Lipinski
Congressman Billy Long
Congressman Frank Lucas
Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer
Congressman Don Manzullo
Congressman Thaddeus McCotter
Congressman David McKinley
Congresswoman Candice Miller
Congressman Jeff Miller
Congressman Mick Mulvaney
Congressman Randy Neugebauer
Congressman Alan Nunnelee
Congressman Steve Pearce
Congressman Mike Pence
Congressman Collin Peterson
Congressman Tom Petri
Congressman Joe Pitts
Congressman Mike Pompeo
Congressman Ben Quayle
Congressman Denny Rehberg
Congresswoman Martha Roby
Congressman Mike Rogers
Congressman Todd Rokita
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
Congressman Paul Ryan
Congressman Tim Scott
Congressman Chris Smith
Congressman Lamar Smith
Congressman Cliff Sterns
Congressman Lee Terry
Congressman Scott Tipton
Congressman Fred Upton
Congressman Allen West
Congressman Lynn Westmoreland

Michele Bachmann and the Media Scrum

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Michele Bachman is surrounded by media as she greets
her supporters after the GOP Straw Poll in Ames, Iowa

NEWTON, Iowa
Yesterday, I was updating my post about the Iowa Straw Poll results when word came that the winner, Michele Bachmann, would be holding a press conference at her campaign bus in 15 minutes. By the time I got there, she was surrounded by a crowd of news media so thick I couldn’t get near her. Then she did a “rope line” — greeting supporters behind barricades. It was a huge mob scene, and I thought you might appreciate this glimpse of what it was like:

Remember: When I went to cover Bachmann in the mud and rain in West Des Moines on Aug. 5, there were only three or four reporters present, including me.

Well . . . no more Iowa media scrums for now. I had originally planned to go to Waterloo to catch Rick Perry’s Iowa debut, but constrained financial circumstances required a change of plan. Now, I’m riding to Alabama with Ladd Ehlinger, and hoping that by the time I get to Huntsville, there will be enough money in the tip jar for me to buy a plane ticket home from there.

Crazy? Of course. But what did you expect? “Hit the freaking tip jar!

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Tim Pawlenty Quits!

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NEWTON, Iowa
I was sitting here at breakfast with Ladd Ehlinger just an hour ago when he said, “Pawlenty’s quitting!”

Tim Pawlenty told supporters on a conference call Sunday morning that he is ending his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination after a disappointing third-place finish at the Iowa straw poll.
Mr. Pawlenty thanked his supporters in an early-morning call, two participants said, but acknowledged that he had decided overnight that his candidacy could not proceed.

That was quick, wasn’t it? I landed in Des Moines on Aug. 3 and, eleven days later, Pawlenty quits the race. Some people will say this is merely a coincidence.

Perhaps it was the “neo-Confederate sex panic.” Perhaps it was those rumors that Pawlenty was behind those vicious smears against Michelle Bachmann. And, of course, perhaps the sudden implosion of the T-Paw candidacy had nothing to do with anything I did.

Plausible deniability. “No fingerprints,” IYKWIMAITYD.

Let’s face it though: Any Republican praised by David Brooks is pretty much doomed.

By the way, you may be wondering why I’m having breakfast with Ladd Ehlinger. He was up here in Iowa pitching his work to  certain potential clients, and no he’s driving back to Alabama. He’s going to have a passenger — me.

It’s a long story. But it’s going to take a whole lot of explaining to make my wife understand my unexpected Alabama detour with the world’s most notorious political filmmaker. Hit the freaking tip jar!





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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.




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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.”

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Dave Weigel on the Undecided Iowans

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There is a lot of genuine ambiguity among Republicans here:

Romney leaves Pella and makes his way an hour up the road to Des Moines. He’s the honored guest at a Polk County Republican fundraiser at the home of Nick Van Patten . . . Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, and other candidates have already been to previous county party fundraisers, and these people aren’t necessarily sold on Romney yet.
“He’s got a big fish hook in him,” warns Jack Salzeider, a commodities trader who wears one ring made of gold from the Black Hills of South Dakota and one ring that contains a slice of every stone that’s mined in Arizona. “That’s Romneycare. I’m still waiting to hear from Rick Perry — he might be the guy.”

This is the same vibe I describe in my American Spectator column today, but I thought it might be worthwhile to show you how this “I’m not quite sure yet” vibe is perceived by another reporter. Weigel may be a sarcastic closet liberal, but he does actual reporting, which is what counts.

He Only Steals From the Best

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NEWTON, Iowa
When I showed up at the state capitol Tuesday for the Tim Pawlenty event, T-Paw had already split the scene and I found myself talking to Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle, who explained that Pawlenty had avoided reporters’ questions while making his early exit.

Joe and I started talking about the hot Texas coeds “Americans for Rick Perry” activists in attendance, and I shared my “Phantom Menace” view of the long-rumored Perry candidacy. Like all great journalists, Joe shamelessly steals brilliant stuff like that:

We will shamelessly steal from conservative blogger The Other McCain and say that Gov. Rick Perry is the Phantom Menace of the GOP presidential scrum. Dude just announced that he’s GOING to announce that he’s going to run for prez…and everybody’s trying to figure out how to respond. Announce that he’s going to announce…it doesn’t get more meta than that.
Now comes word that Perry will be in Iowa Sunday speaking in Rep. Michele Bachmann’s hometown of Waterloo. Oh, it’s on now…

You’ll notice that Joe linked me twice in that post, which is two more links than I’ve gotten from Allahpundit recently. But don’t get me started on that . . . Here is Joe’s video of T-Paw not answering questions about Rick Perry:

“We’re not doing a scrum,” Pawlenty says. “Scrum” being slang for “answering questions at an impromptu press conference” — which all the other candidates are doing at almost every stop along the way.

Tip for GOP media strategists: If your candidate doesn’t do “scrums,” reporters will get pissed off and start writing trash about your campaign, just for spite. I’m not saying it’s fair for reporters to do that. I’m just saying that’s what they do. It’s a matter of “is,” not “ought.”

Iowa Notebook: Romney Coming to Town; Pawlenty and the ‘Plausible Chance’ Trick

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DES MOINES, Iowa
Mitt Romney will be the featured guest at a “Road to the White House Republican House Party” in Des Moines this evening. That starts at 5 p.m. and then at 7 p.m. Tim Pawlenty has a rally in Ames. It’s a 45-minute drive from Des Moines to Ames, so as long as I leave the Romney event by 6, I’ll have plenty of time to get to the Pawlenty event. So those are my campaign events for today. ABC News notes Romney’s long absence from Iowa:

Romney has not spent the summer attending an endless series of campaign events like many of his fellow contenders (he’s been concentrating on fundraising) and he’s taken heat for staying a little too above-the-fray on important national issues. (He didn’t take a position on the debt ceiling deal, for example, until the last-minute.)
He’s also largely avoided the highways and dusty country roads of Iowa that candidates like Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Herman Cain have been crisscrossing for weeks. Romney’s last visit to Iowa was in May.

If you want know why Americans hate journalists, look no further than this story by Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman in Politico:

He’s spent a seven-figure sum and the bulk of his time on the campaign trail courting the Iowa grassroots. Operatives call his expansive Iowa organization the best in the state.
As the only mainstream Republican candidate actively competing in the Ames straw poll — thanks to Mitt Romney’s decision to skip the event and Rick Perry’s presidential race slow-walk—Tim Pawlenty may never have a better opportunity to break through in the 2012 campaign than this Saturday.
With so much firepower behind Pawlenty and so few candidates who have a plausible chance at coming out ahead, Hawkeye State politicos say Ames will be a potentially campaign-changing test of the Minnesotan’s strength.
But if Pawlenty fails to deliver, it will be a grim — and possibly fatal — omen for his underfunded presidential bid.

Who anointed Burns and Haberman with the authority to declare which Republicans are “mainstream” and “have a plausible chance”? Is it their place to decide that, e.g., Michele Bachmann is not a “mainstream Republican” and therefore doesn’t “have plausible chance”? There will be many thousands of Iowa Republicans at the Ames Straw Poll who will cast their ballots for candidates who evidently don’t merit the “mainstream” sobriquet which Burns and Haberman consider themselves uniquely fit to bestow.

And this “plausible chance” trick would not be nearly so insulting if we didn’t know in our hearts — and we do know it, don’t we? — that both Burns and Haberman (like practically everyone else at Politico) voted for Obama in 2008 and intend to vote for Obama again in 2012, so that we have partisan Democrats telling us which Republicans are “mainstream” and “plausible.” Meanwhile, here’s the lead of my latest column:

DES MOINES — Tim Albrecht likes to tell a joke about an Iowa Republican being asked whether he’s going to support a certain presidential candidate in the Ames Straw Poll. “I don’t know,” the Iowan replies. “I’ve only met him twice.”
The joke by Albrecht, spokesman for the state’s popular Republican Gov. Terry Branstad, refers to how accustomed Iowans are to being personally solicited for their support in this state whose first-in-the-nation caucuses have long been a crucial proving ground for presidential candidates. While most Americans go their entire lives without ever meeting a serious candidate for the nation’s highest office, campaigning here is a face-to-face business where voters expect to shake hands and talk directly with those who seek their votes.
That tradition of old-fashioned politicking is what the Ames Straw Poll is all about, which explains why some Iowa Republicans seem a bit miffed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s long-rumored entry into the 2012 presidential field. Last week I began calling him the “Phantom Menace” of Iowa because, like the sinister Sith of the “Star Wars” series, he seems omnipresent even though he is far away.  Ads promoting Perry’s candidacy have been running in fairly heavy rotation on Iowa TV recently, and his shadow campaign has been soliciting write-in votes for Saturday’s straw poll. However, the governor himself hasn’t yet stumped here, while the other GOP candidates have been frenetically crisscrossing the state imploring Iowans to “join me here in Ames,” as Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann says in  her own TV ads. . . .

Read the rest at The American Spectator. And while I make no claim to rate as a “mainstream Republican” on the Burns-Haberman Scale, I think there is a “plausible chance” you’ll hit the tip jar.





Just as a final note: I’m meeting today with Will Upton of Americans for Tax Reform, who flew into Des Moines today to attend a Wednesday morning meeting of Iowa conservative leaders. Will called me after he landed at the Des Moines Airport and reports that Mitt Romney was on his American Eagle commuter flight into town: “He was in coach with the rest of us!”

Oh — and Ladd Ehlinger Jr. is coming to town to meet with a potential client.


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