Category: Politics

Santorum’s Hope

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From my American Spectator column today:

SIOUX CITY, Iowa — 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. Despite his dogged persistence, however, Santorum’s candidacy has yet to strike the kind of sparks that garner major national attention — a problem the former Pennsylvania senator blames on the media. “The national media has done a very good job of ignoring Rick Santorum,” he said, lamenting the fact that polls show him as the only GOP candidate whose name-recognition hasn’t increased in recent months. “Everybody else was being covered and promoted by the national media, even people that are below me in the polls, even people who most people say have no chance of ever getting the nomination.” The reason for this, he explained, is that the liberal media knows he is a conservative who can win and have decided “maybe the best way to get rid of this guy is to simply suffocate him by making sure that nobody talks about him?” . . .

Please read the whole thing.

And you should also read today’s profile of Santorum in the Des Moines Register, which quotes one of Santorum’s longtime friends:

“Rick is a very devout Catholic guy, and he believes in the principles of the founding fathers of this country. . . He is not willing to compromise on that. He will stand for his beliefs and his principles above any political expediency.”

And he’s never embraced global warming theory, unlike some other Republicans I could name.

Are You Ready for Tonight’s ‘CainCast’?

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Press release from the Herman Cain campaign:

“CainCast,” a weekly Internet radio show offering an inside look at Herman Cain’s presidential campaign, will premiere at 7:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday, August 7, 2011.
“CainCast” will be hosted by Friends of Herman Cain Communications Director Ellen Carmichael and Director of New Media Michael Johnson. The hosts will be joined by special guests, and the program will run for 30 minutes. Listeners can submit questions through the “chat-room” function.
“Our aim is to be an extension of Mr. Cain using a dynamic platform that engages supporters and press,” Johnson said. “This is yet another fun and innovative approach to utilizing new media in our campaign.”
This week’s “CainCast” will broadcast live from Sioux City, Iowa, as the Herman Cain campaign prepares to embark on its “Common Sense Solutions” bus tour throughout the state, leading up to the FOX News debate and straw poll in Ames. Listeners can tune in Sunday evening by visiting http://www.blogtalkradio.com/caincast

OK, so that’s 7:30 p.m. ET — something new and different and I’ll be interested to see how it works. The call-in number is 714-816-4675, although I think they’re mainly expecting listen input via their online chatroom. Me? I’ll be here in my cheap motel room pounding away on deadline, so readers should go check it out tonight and then tell me how you think it went.

Listen to internet radio with CainCast on Blog Talk Radio

Liberal Head-Explosion Warning VIDEO: Michele Bachmann Testifies for Jesus

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SIOUX CITY, Iowa
Friday at the rain-soaked Midwest Spirit Christian Music Festival in West Des Moines, I recorded this eight-minute video, but didn’t upload it immediately because the WiFi connection was so crappy at my hotel in Des Moines. But now I’m on a good WiFi link and it’s Sunday, so it seems appropriate to post this video that is guaranteed to make liberals run screaming from the room:

People who weren’t raised in the evangelical culture are necessarily unfamiliar with the phenomenon of testimony, wherein the speaker recounts how it was that he or she came to faith in Jesus Christ, a narrative usually accompanied by declarations of what awesome — indeed, miraculous — signs and wonders have attested the power and love of the Savior.

What’s strange is that liberals find this type of narrative perfectly acceptable when what is being testified to is some appropriately secular conversion: “Why I became a lesbian feminist” or “When I learned the undenjiable scientific truth of global warming” or “How I discovered that my Republican parents are closet Nazis.” It is only the conversion narrative of Bible-believing Christians that liberals find obnoxiously repellant. And the idea that a Bible-believing Christian might think themselves called to high public office . . .

Well, liberals just can’t handle that — at least when the self-identified Christian is a pro-life conservative Republican. It was OK for John F. Kennedy to be Catholic, it was OK for Jimmy Carter to be a Baptist, and it was OK for Barack Obama to be whatever it is you want to call devotees of what Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaches. But let a conservative Republican speak in public about his or her Christian faith, and liberals immediately start screaming about “theocracy.”

It’s like Ann Coulter says in Godless: Liberalism is a religion and abortion is its sacrament. Any Republican testifying to the gospel truth of Jesus Christ obviously isn’t a member of the Church of Liberalism, and so Michele Bachmann’s unapologetic expression of her faith is anathema to the liberal brain.

Of course, as Coulter elsewhere observed: If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans

The Santorum Family’s Iowa ‘Vacation’

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SIOUX CITY, Iowa
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum brought his entire family — his wife, Karen, and seven kids ages 3 to 20 — to Iowa for his three-week tour leading up to the Aug. 13 Ames Straw Poll. After yesterday’s “barn party” in Roland, I caught Santorum for a minute just before he left, running late for his next event:

Clark Griswold, eat your heart out!

You can check out the rest of Santorum’s Iowa schedule here.

Rick Santorum’s Iowa Barn Party

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ROLAND, Iowa
Rick Santorum just finished doing a “barn party” here at the home of Scott and Susan Hurd. While I have no firm estimate of how many eligible voters were in attendance, I can state officially that the number of kids was ginormous. Lots of big home-schooling families showed up — families with seven, eight, nine kids. Santorum is traveling with his own family of seven kids, so the super-size families certainly seem simpatico with the former Pennsylvania senator.

Also in attendance was local Republican Rep. Steve King, who introduced Santorum. The candidate spoke for nearly a half-hour and then took questions. I’ve got video, audio and notes, but that will take time to process, and I’m blogging this from a McDonald’s beside the I-35 exit and just want to get up a quick post with a few photos. Santorum noted that he has visited some 51 different cities in Iowa, with more than 100 stops. He spoke about the need to repeal ObamaCare and – in response to a question about foreign policy – gave a splendid account of Obama’s failures, going into some detail about Honduras. (How many candidates have you heard talk about Honduras? How many of people even know how Obama screwed over Honduras?) He was quite impressive, and I very much agree with Santorum’s complaint that the media has unfairly ignored his candidacy.

Santorum and his wife Karen talk with supporters. You can see Rep. King in the background.

Santorum talks on the phone with Lisa Graas, his No. 1 Twitter supporter, who was positively ecstatic about the chance to talk to her hero — on my cell phone.

Karen Santorum with her two oldest daughters, Sarah and Elizabeth. Right after I took this photo, Santorum’s press aide told me that the family are “off limits” to the media. But, of course, I’m just a friend of Lisa Graas, right? It’s not fair to treat me as “media.”

OK, so that’s it for now. I’ll have more later, but I’ve got to hit the road to Sioux City tonight. And you’ve got to hit the tip jar.

VIDEO: Bachmann Demands Resignation of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner

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DES MOINES, Iowa — As reported last night at The American Spectator and at Libertarian Republican, here is video of Bachmann’s statement:

The text of Bachmann’s statement:

“Tonight’s decision by S&P to downgrade our credit rating to AA+ is a historically significant and serious event for the United States. The United States has had a AAA credit rating since 1917. That rating has endured the great depression, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the terrorist attacks on 9/11. This President has destroyed the credit rating of the United States through his failed economic policies and his inability to control government spending by raising the debt ceiling.
“We were warned by all of the credit agencies that a failure to deal with our debt would lead to a downgrade in our credit rating, but instead he submitted a budget that had a $1.5 trillion deficit and then requested a $2.4 trillion blank check. President Obama is destroying the foundations of the U.S. economy one beam at a time. I call on the President to seek the immediate resignation of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and to submit a plan with a list of cuts to balance the budget this year, turn our economy around and put Americans back to work.”

UPDATE: A statement from Herman Cain:

On Tuesday, April 19, 2011, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner promised that America faced “no risk” of a credit downgrading. Less than four months later, he is proven shamefully wrong. As I have feared for months, the S&P has chosen to downgrade America’s credit rating from AAA, which we have always enjoyed, to AA+.
Perhaps this is because the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats never once demonstrated a willingness to propose its own ideas for meaningful spending cuts, something credit agencies signaled were necessary to redeem America’s financial standing in the world.
As a corporate executive, I’ve rescued companies from the brink of bankruptcy and returned them to profitability. That involved balancing budgets or even creating them in the first place, something that the Democratic leadership in Congress hasn’t done for 828 days. If I couldn’t run companies without budgets, how can the government?
I also had to make tough budgetary cuts to save companies. Leadership is about doing what’s right, even when it’s difficult. But somehow, that sort of idea was never floated among those within the Obama Administration.
Now, Americans are fearful for their retirements and for their children’s educational savings. This is a country known for dreamers and innovators, for thinkers and doers. And now, we are a nation living in fear.
This is a sad day for America. Such a rating is unfitting of the greatest and most prosperous nation the world has ever known. And such a weak leader is, as well.

The Treasury Department is claiming to be victim of a mathematical error by S&P. Who do you trust to do math, S&P or Geithner?

Linked by Da Tech Guy — thanks!

UPDATE II: Linked by Reaganite Republican and by Tea Party Libertarian — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

Fear and Loathing at the Quality Inn

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DES MOINES, Iowa
Just got off the phone with Dale Peterson, who’s meeting with agriculture groups — including the Iowa Turkey Federation — on behalf of the Herman Cain campaign today. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out the logistics for the rest of my trip.

Right now, I’m staying at the Quality Inn downtown, which is a nice enough place — free breakfast every morning in the restaurant — except that it’s across the highway from Mercy Hospital, and this means that many of the guests are relatives of patients being tended there. Yesterday, while I was waiting for the elevator, there was a lady talking on her cell phone, crying about her father who just had a heart attack and is in ICU at Mercy.

Speaking of people on life-support (this is what we journalists call a “transition”) the TV just showed this Tim Pawlenty ad again:

TV in Iowa is crammed full of these ads, as well as ads for Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann. I’ve posted all three at Right Wing News so you can watch them back-to-back, which is how they’re running during local cable breaks here on Fox News. Like the weeping relatives of ICU patients, these non-stop ads are bumming me out, so I’m going need to get back on the road.

Yesterday, Herman Cain made news during his appearance at the Greater Des Moines Partnership, as Karen Obradavich of the Register reports:

Herman Cain seemed to raise the bar Thursday for his performance in the Iowa Republican straw poll, saying he needs a top-three finish in the Aug. 13 event.
However, the presidential candidate added later that failure to reach that wouldn’t drive him out of the race.
“I don’t believe I have to win the straw poll, but I do believe I need to finish in the top three,” Cain said during a forum sponsored by the Greater Des Moines Partnership.
But when asked what would happen if he didn’t place third or better, he said, “We’re not going to stop. That’s just the desired place where we would like to finish, that’s in the top three. If we finish fourth or fifth, we’re going to evaluate that to determine what the implications are. So it’s not the end of the road, it’s just going to be a harder analysis that we would do to decide if we go forward.”

The stakes for Cain in the straw poll aren’t nearly as high as they are for Pawlenty, as I explain in my Spectator column:

While it is notoriously difficult to predict the outcome of that vote, a third-place finish for Cain at Ames would likely put him ahead of Pawlenty. At least one longtime Iowa GOP operative has said that, given how much Pawlenty has already invested in this state, his campaign’s viability would be in jeopardy if he didn’t place at least second at Ames. If Pawlenty actually were to place fourth — behind Cain, who wasn’t even considered a “first-tier” candidate three months ago — that likely would be seen as a humiliation for the former Minnesota governor. But that’s a huge “if,” and few Iowa observers expect Cain to place better than fifth at Ames.

Those of you who remember my lost $10 bet with Da Tech Guy last week understand why I don’t usually do predictions. But if Cain finishes ahead of Pawlenty at Ames . . . dude. Here are some photos from Cain’s visit yesterday:

The press corps at Cain’s appearance in Des Moines, including Craig Robinson of The Iowa Republican and Meghan Malloy of the Iowa Independent.

Cain talks to a local reporter at the Smokey Row Coffee shop in Oskaloosa.

I’ve got lots more photos and videos, but the slow WiFi connection makes it difficult to upload them in any kind of efficient fashion. And I’ve still got to figure out how and when I’m getting to Sioux City for the start of Herman Cain’s bus tour Monday. His advance team is supposed to arrive in Sioux City tomorrow night, but I need to catch up with Bachmann on the campaign trail.

My phone just rang with a tip from a source who says his Texas sources tell him that Rick Perry is going to unofficially announce this weekend that he’s going to make an official announcement next week. So the Phantom Menace looms even larger now and, even worse: I just ran out of cigarettes.

So I’m hitting the road and will report back later.





Long Knives in Iowa

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Michelle Bachmann pushed “a pardon … for a convicted drug dealer/money launderer in 2007”?

They’re bringing it all now — as predicted — and check out this bit buried in today’s Wall Street Journal profile of Bachmann:

Ms. Bachmann has gone through four chiefs of staff and two acting chiefs in less than five years in Washington, payroll records show, an uncommonly high turnover rate. On average, House chiefs of staff serve for nearly seven years, a study for congressional administrators showed.
“I found out real fast that the Michele I knew publicly is not the behind-the-scenes Michele,” said Ron Carey, who was hired as Ms. Bachmann’s staff chief last year and says he quit less than six months later. Mr. Carey said that Ms. Bachmann was consumed with getting herself on television and seemed indifferent to the task of tending to her district, a view expressed by more than half a dozen other former aides.
“It was all about building the Bachmann brand,” Mr. Carey said. A former chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, Mr. Carey had helped Ms. Bachmann win her first two congressional elections, in 2006 and 2008. He now supports former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty for president.

Former Bachmann aides now working for Pawlenty and attacking their former boss? And he expects to win:

Pawlenty is projecting confidence.
“This is going to be the start of the formal season. And I think we are going to do very well. I’m confident of that,” Pawlenty said Thursday night on Fox News.
The stakes couldn’t be higher for Pawlenty, either. His campaign faces perceived financial problems following a second quarter fundraising report that failed to meet expectations; some top aides are working for the Pawlenty campaign either for free, or for a meager salary.
To that end, the Pawlenty campaign’s poured thousands into radio and TV ads leading up to the straw poll . . .

UPDATE: Here’s the background on the drug-dealer pardon:

Bachmann wrote the letter urging [President Bush] to pardon Vennes for his 1987 conviction on federal money laundering, illegal firearm sales and cocaine distribution charges. He was sentenced to five years in federal prison. . . .
Vennes’ latest troubles involve an alleged giant Ponzi scheme with local billionaire Petters at the vortex of the widening probe. Although Vennes has not been charged, a federal search warrant affidavit accuses him of facilitating a $1.2 billion swindle of five investors in companies controlled by Petters, collecting more than $28 million in commissions in the process. . . .
Vennes, however, has been a major financial contributor to Bachmann since 2005. He and his wife, Kimberly, have contributed a total of $27,400 to Bachmann since 2005. Vennes’ brother and his wife, Greg and Stephanie Vennes, have contributed another $8,400 to Bachmann since 2005.

Matt Lewis reported on this in the Daily Caller in May.

UPDATE: Pawlenty’s prospects assessed by Doug Mataconis:

Pawlenty has been under performing in the polls from the beginning, and has never been able to get a boost to put him in the same category as candidates like Romney and Bachmann, or potential candidates like Rick Perry. Absent an outright win or a strong second, it’s going to be hard for him to maintain a credible campaign.

(Via Memeorandum.) The Wall Street Journal talks about Pawlenty’s attempt to manage the expectations game leading up to Ames:

Mr. Pawlenty’s prediction that he will do “very well” are the rosiest from the former governor’s camp as of late, and his campaign’s actions suggest it intends to place better than fifth place. . . . A fifth place finish would mean Mr. Pawlenty is outperformed by second-tier candidates such as Herman Cain and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.
His campaign estimates it will have spent $1 million in the Hawkeye State before the straw poll . . .
As the campaign notes, Mr. Pawlenty finished sixth in a late June survey of likely Iowa caucus goers. But the Real Clear Politics Average of Iowa polls shows Mr. Pawlenty in third place in state polls, coming in behind Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) and Mr. Romney. . . . It creates a difficult balancing act for team Pawlenty: The campaign doesn’t want to downplay its successes and strong organization in Iowa, but it also doesn’t want campaign watchers to expect Mr. Pawlenty to finish in first or second place Aug. 13.

Regardless of the expectations, if Pawlenty finishes third at Ames, it’s bad for him. If he’s fourth or fifth at Ames, it’s a catastrophe. So the main expectation is this: Pawlenty’s going to be fighting like a cornered rat for the next eight days.