Time for Perry, Bachmann, Huntsman to quit?

Iowa has a pretty bad history of picking winners. At this point the three top candidates are in a virtual dead heat. Santorum is currently leading Romney by about 45 votes. Iowa and New Hampshire have a much better track record of identifying losers.

Actual election results have a way of forcing no-hopers to face reality in a way that opinion polls can't quite manage. Huntsman is set to receive less than 1% of the vote. It is a crowded field and Iowa is not his best state, but it is clear that Huntsman has no chance of winning the nomination or even placing well enough to justify a spot in future debates.

Bachmann has no such excuse for her 5% showing. She was running as a social conservative and targeted the religious right as her core constituency. She needed a good showing in Iowa to justify staying in the race, she missed by a mile. Time for her to leave as well.

William Kristol on Fox is mistaken when he says Perry's 9% is an embarrassment for him. If Perry has proved one thing on the campaign trail it is that he is impervious to embarrassment. Perry has been an embarrassment for his state since the start of the debates. Perry really should withdraw but his showing in Iowa is probably just about good enough for him to survive through to NH.

Gingrich's 15% suggests that he is a fading force, but he did a lot better than anyone was predicting just a month ago, and Santorum is not expected to repeat his performance in NH. Read the rest of this post...

Santorum taking slight lead

96% in. Santorum ahead 79 votes.

93% in, Santorum is ahead of Romney by 99 votes.

Is a uniformed member of the military permitted to give a campaign speech on national TV in favor of Ron Paul's presidency? Read this - it's a bit confusing, but sounds like it's not allowed.

89% in, Romney now ahead by 100 and some votes.

CNN predicts 3rd through 7th:
Paul
Gingrich
Perry
Bachmann
Huntsman

88% in, per CNN: Santorum 45 votes ahead of Romney, 25% to 25%. Ron Paul in 3rd at 21%.

What does it say about Romney that he dropped over $4m in the state and still can't (so far) win a decisive victory. Against Santorum, no less.

From a Tweet by Chris Johnson:

Santorum taking lead in Iowa. With 52 percent reporting, Santorum has 24.3 percent of vote, Romney has 23.7 percent, Paul has 21.6 percent.

Read the rest of this post...

It may be a while before we know about Iowa... so how about another kitten video?

Two newborn kittens get into a slapping fight. (H/t HuffPost Hill)

Read the rest of this post...

Romney, Santorum, and Paul neck and neck in Iowa

From a HuffPost tweet:

CNN reporting that 1/3 of #iacaucus votes are in. Romney leading with 24%, Santorum and Paul tied at 23%

Read the rest of this post...

What’s your prediction for the outcome in Iowa?

Our colleagues over at AMERICAblog Elections: The Right's Field have posted their guesses.  What's yours?  I'm thinking Romney, Santorum, then Paul. Read the rest of this post...

Why the GOP’s Ron Paul nightmare will continue

Ron Paul is a crackpot. But don't expect him to disappear from the 2012 race any time soon.

The only constant in the 2012 nomination has been that three quarters of Republicans plan to vote against Romney. The problem is not merely his Mormon faith, its the fact that Romney is a transparent phony. A 25 cent billionaire who claims to be 'unemployed too'. A man whose core beliefs change depending on the audience he is addressing.

GOP voters knew that Perry and Bachmann are fools, that Cain was unqualified and Gingrich and Santorum are unelectable. Nobody seems to want to ask the question in an opinion poll, but isn't the most likely reason they prefer such obviously flawed candidates to Romney is the fact that Mittens makes people's flesh crawl?

Paul looks set to do very well in Iowa tonight. The next stop on the trail is New Hampshire, the 'Live Free or Die' state. Conventional wisdom has been that this is a 'must win' state for Romney. If Paul does well in Iowa there is a real chance that he continues that momentum to New Hampshire and knocks the establishment candidate clean out of the race.

lf Paul looks set to win the GOP race will plumb whole new depths of ugly as the establishment rushes to kill the possibility of a Paul bid. Politicians look to their own interests first and foremost and the last thing they want to see is a sudden influx of libertarian leaning Paulistas. Ron Paul is an anti-choice, homophobic racist but most of his supporters are not. How do they become foot soldiers for the GOP culture war?

There is already talk of a third party bid, expect that talk to get much louder. Trump has good reason to keep his options open: If Paul is the GOP nominee in name, many in the party would be more than ready to back Trump in practice. Alternatively the libertarian party nomination is probably Paul's for the asking if he decides he has been unfairly treated by the GOP. And don't forget that Trump has an ego the size of Rhode Island. If Trump is asked to run as a 'stop Paul' candidate he is not going to fold his tent just because the eventual GOP nominee is Romney.

Unless Paul has an unexpected defeat tonight, the GOP looks set to be talking about Paul for a long time to come. Read the rest of this post...

Why Iowa matters

Brendan Nyhan at the Columbia Journalism Review looks at how reporters unintentionally skew their own Iowa coverage. But he also makes an interesting point about why these initial small contests, like Iowa, actually matter:

First, the good news. While it may be democratically dubious to give such disproportionate weight to a few small states, early primaries and caucuses do play a crucial role in the primary process, by giving Republicans (or Democrats) useful information about the candidates vying for their nomination. As the political scientist Jonathan Bernstein has argued, the function of these early contests is to “produce the information that party actors want [about candidate viability], do so in a timely way that allows them to incorporate that information into their decisions, and allow for coordination and orderly competition by party actors.” In this way, both elites and citizens who wish to cast their votes strategically can coalesce around the candidates who perform best.

Read the rest of this post...

TSA bans cream cheese, unless it’s on a bagel, then it’s okay (seriously)

God, I hope they ban Boursin too. I got sick on that stuff once when I was 19 and OD'd on it. Don't you tell me that it's not dangerous. Anyway, so cream cheese is now a dangerous weapon, unless it's spread on a bagel. And last week we learned that cupcakes are super duper dangerous. (And forget about cupcakes with cream cheese filling).

My luggage from my last
trip, left unzipped by TSA.

All of which has me wondering. If TSA can't even manage to zip my bag closed after they inspect it nearly every single time I fly from Chicago to Washington, DC - like this past Friday, when the bozos left the zipper open 24 inches worth, with clothes sticking out. Apparently, it takes a PhD for a TSA agent to figure out that leaving a zipper 24 inches unzipped is a bad thing. And this happens to me a lot on that leg from Chicago to DC. It's almost always left unzipped some amount, but this was the second time that two feet of my zipper was unzipped and clothes were starting to come up.  Who do I call?  There's no accountability.

So, if TSA can't manage to hire people who understand the basic concept of how a zipper works, or who are so lazy that they just don't care whether they lose the traveling public's personal belongings, how are they going to figure out who's a terrorist? Read the rest of this post...

The screwy way that Iowa picks a winner will surprise you

I honestly had no idea. From Kevin Drum (quoting a reader):

What’s going on in Iowa is that four or five election cycles ago, Republicans decided that the best way to deal with the precinct caucuses for maximum media impact was to simply hold a straw poll at the start of the caucuses and report that to the press as the result. After that, the hard-core insiders would hang around for the actual precinct caucus — the delegate selection phase. The straw poll is non-binding, but there’s kind of a conspiracy of the press and the state party to report it as the result because it comes in earlier and the results are clearer.

Read the rest of this post...

How much the GOP candidates spent in Iowa

Per Buzzfeed, Perry and Romney spent the most, lot of good it did Perry. And even Romney - what does it say that he spent over $4m in Iowa (through various sources) and is still struggling to eke out a win? Read the rest of this post...

Perlstein: It's been Romney since 2009

Historian Rick Perlstein on why you can snooze through Iowa and wake to a Romney nomination sometime in 2012 (my emphasis and paragraphing):

It's a curious thing. I study Republicans for a living—I've done so for almost 15 years. I write books about their history; I write articles about their present. But these days, you probably couldn't find a political junky in America less interested to the supposedly hotly contested race for the Republican nomination.

I called it for Willard "Mitt" Romney well over three years ago—the day he finished second to John McCain in 2008. That made him "next in line;" and our modern Republican Party pretty much always nominates the next in line, or at the very least The Logical Choice Of The Party Establishment.

In 1968, it was Nixon, the former vice president. In '76 it was the accidental president, Gerald Ford. The guy who came in second in '76, Ronald Reagan, was nominated in 1980; Vice President Bush, the man who finished second in '80, in '88. Old Man Dole in '96. Son of Bush in 2000. Mighty McCain in 2008.

So why are we hearing about Ron Paul? According to Perlstein, it's the "desperate attempts of the political press to drum up evidence of a competitive race". (Sound familiar?)

Another pattern: the desperate attempts of the political press to drum up evidence of a competitive race, whatever the historical lessons that point obstinately in the opposite direction.

It's not a hard argument to make: "on the ground," things always look competitive. The vaunted party "base" plain their disgust with the sell-out moderate party elites want to shove down their throats, dutifully falling in love with a series of far-right saviors in the earlier innings: President Pat Robertson, who nearly won Iowa in 1988; President Pat Buchanan, who took New Hampshire in 1992; and All Hail Huckabee the choice of Iowa caucus-goers in 2008—but not before Fred Thompson's moment in the sun later in the year, and after Rudy Giuliani dazzled conservatives who hadn't yet figured out that he was a cross-dresser with gay roommates[.]

The same thing always happens next: The insurgents fall by the wayside. The base comes around. Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line.

You would think the political press would have figured this all out by now.

It's a rather nice piece, well written and well reasoned. There's a nice point about Goldwater (the reason all the above is true) that's worth your thought.

Romney–Someone vs Obama–Clinton? If so, one slot left to fill.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Forget about Iowa. This kitten is just too darned cute.

Take a quick break from whatever Iowa you might be focusing on today. Watch the kitten. Feel good.

Read the rest of this post...

Animation of the Iowa horse race, literally (very cool)

I'd posted an earlier version of this a few months ago. Slate has prepared an actual animated horse race, showing how the various GOP presidential candidates are doing in the polls over time. It's absolutely fascinating to watch. They have one for Iowa, and one nationally. What's clear in each is that Romney has a solid base, more so than the other candidates, that doesn't fluctuate much, while the other candidates, one by one, surge and then sputter out. It seems clear from the video that the rest of the GOP, the majority of the GOP, is desperately seeking anyone but Romney.

Here's the Iowa animation.

And here's the the national polls. Read the rest of this post...

The Iowa caucus is finally here

Today is the Iowa caucus and the first time Republican base voters will get to express their opinions about the presidential candidates in a forum that counts for anything. Fittingly it is also the 500th post at AMERICAblog Elections: The Right's Field, our blog covering the GOP presidential candidates. We'll be updating on the Iowa caucus throughout the day and night as results come in, so stop on by. Read the rest of this post...

The many problems with Ron Paul

John asks 'why not Paul'. Kevin Drum has put together a long list of reasons, in short:

Can we talk? Ron Paul is not a charming oddball with a few peculiar notions. He's not merely "out of the mainstream." Ron Paul is a full bore crank. In fact he's practically the dictionary definition of a crank: a person who has a single obsessive, all-encompassing idea for how the world should work and is utterly blinded to the value of any competing ideas or competing interests.

Read the article for the full list.

The problem with Paul is not just the fact that he wrote a blatantly racist newsletter for many years and is obviously lying about it. Just as the problem with Cain was not just the fact that he was unable to give a credible explanation of the allegations of sexual harassment.

At least a Bachmann, Perry or Cain might be content to be (mostly) a figurehead. Paul would not be a figurehead.

None of the GOP contenders is an attractive nominee and that is not an accident of chance. It is a consequence of the politics that the GOP has been engaging in the past 12 years. Romney, Santorum and Gingrich are the very best, the finest that the party can produce. This is not a party fielding its B team while their superstars sulk in their tent, these are the best people they can put on the field. Read the rest of this post...

Why Ron Paul?

From Cillizza at the Wash Post:

Paul’s backers would, literally, walk over hot coals for the man. His detractors tend to roll their eyes when talk of Paul as a serious candidate is broached. (The latter sentiment was summed up nicely by Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen who headlined a recent piece: “Seriously, Iowa? Ron Paul?”

Then again, consider the Republican alternatives. Romney and Hunstman are the only sane ones in the mix. And Huntsman is too sane for the GOP, while Romney is so desperate to be president he becomes more slippery by the day. As for the rest? Perry, dumb. Bachmann, nuts. Gingrich, really nuts. And Santorum, dumb and nuts.

But it's not like Ron Paul isn't a little nuts too.

Keith Boykin's tweet earlier tonight is about right:

Barney Frank jokes that the Democrats 2012 campaign slogan should be "We're not perfect, but they're nuts."

Read the rest of this post...

Romney’s Mormonism still a sticking point in Iowa

The Post discusses Iowans ongoing concern about Romney being a Mormon (and a Mormon bishop at that). I'm continually intrigued by the notion that it's "bigoted" (as someone in the article says) to apply a religious test to Romney's Mormonism, while Romney is running to be the candidate of a party that routinely applies a religious test to every candidate and practically every piece of legislation.

And it's not just the GOP.  You'd better believe in God if you want to be president in this country.  And you'd better be a Christian (thus, the Romney problem).  But the GOP has raised feeding this Christian intervention in politics to an art form, as have its surrogates in the Catholic church and the religious right.  The Republicans made their bed as America's party of God years ago. (Remember when Romney was all upset about then- candidate Obama's Reverend Wright?)

It's a bit late for Mitt Romney and any other Republicans to now be defending a quasi separation of church and state, claiming that there should be no religious test for office.  Their entire party is one big religious test that the rest of us routinely fail.  So you'll pardon our schadenfreude as we watch God-zilla bite the GOP frontrunner in the rear. Read the rest of this post...

UK tax office accused of targeting small business

Odds are, the situation in the US or many other countries, is very much the same. It's a lot easier to target a small company than deal with the layers of bureaucracy and legal teams at Fortune 1000 firms. The big companies have a lot more money to throw at the system, whether it's lobbying or legal, so the chances of success are going to be much lower. If teams are given quotas to meet, they will of course go via the easiest route which in this case, is a small business. This is yet another big edge that the largest businesses have over the rest. The Independent:

The tax office faced accusations of double standards last night over plans to target thousands of small businesses with spot checks on their paperwork – despite letting big companies such as Goldman Sachs off millions of pounds in tax. Officials from HM Revenue and Customs with powers to fine small businesses intend to inspect up to 20,000 firms to see if they have adequate proof of expenses and income dating back years in a new drive set to begin in April. The move was condemned by Conservative backbenchers and business groups who warned it risked bankrupting some businesses and harming the already depressed economy. They said it went against a pledge by ministers to cut red tape for companies during the recession and added the arbitrary nature of the unannounced checks amounted to "harassment". "Despite the worsening economy, HMRC is launching this scheme regardless of the consequences," said John Walker, national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses.

Read the rest of this post...

Arab League recognizes killings continue in Syria

It must have been painful for them to admit that after such a glorious start, according to the Arab League. Of course they're still killing. So what is the Arab League going to do about it? Al Jazeera:

Nabil El-Araby said on Monday that security forces have not stopped shooting at protesters in Syria, despite the presence of an Arab League observer mission in the country. "Yes, there is still shooting and, yes, there are still snipers,'' El-Araby told a news conference in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, where the Arab League is based. "Yes, killings continue. The objective is for us to wake up in the morning and hear that no one is killed. The mission's philosophy is to protect civilians, so if one is killed, then our mission is incomplete.'' "There must be a complete ceasefire."

Read the rest of this post...

Human remains found in the Queen’s back garden

The BBC and Sky are reporting that human remains have been found in the back garden of the Queen's estate at Sandringham in Norfolk. It's worth bearing in mind that her back garden is 20,000 acres so there is no suggestion that the remains have been found by the Barbecue nook.

Reports are short on details. Somewhere, David Icke is convinced that proof that the Royal Family are carnivorous lizards is now at hand. Read the rest of this post...