December 2011
42 posts
Understanding Iowa: 'These are the people who would call the police on your illegal chickens.'
I’m told the reason it remains illegal to raise chickens in Iowa City, where I live, is because Iowans moved to our relatively cosmopolitan college town to get away from the country people and, by extension, their chickens. Twentysomethings from bigger cities, where it is fashionable to raise your own chicks and harvest fresh eggs and place them decorously on gingham dish towels, come to Iowa thinking they will live the country life for a little while, only to find their neighbors shutting them down. I mention this by way of explaining my first impression of the 400 people who came to see Mitt Romney in a hotel in Davenport, Iowa, on Tuesday night: These are the people who would call the police on your illegal chickens.
“A senior Romney aide, who declined to be named discussing strategy, suggested in an interview with Yahoo News that Romney will spend much of his time in the next few weeks directly quoting from the campaign speeches that Barack Obama gave four years ago during his Democratic presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton.”
—Ron who? Ignoring fellow Republicans, Romney targets Obama in Iowa
Attending an Iowa caucus? Share your photos with Yahoo News
Iowans: what are your Tuesday plans? If you’re attending a caucus, please consider sending us a photo to share with other Yahoo News readers.
Send us pictures of your local caucus: the posters, the sign-in sheets, the crowd around the coffee machine—whatever you see that evening that captures your participation in the first voting of the 2012 presidential campaign.
We intend to publish the best photos on Yahoo News, as we did in this slideshow of what you thought the Republicans needed to see before the Dec. 10 presidential debate in Des Moines, sponsored by Yahoo News and ABC News.
Hey Tumblr: you can get in on this to, email us at showthecandidates@yahoo.com, or photo-reply to this post.
Field reports: Iowa
Ron Paul has supporters, but will they come to caucus?
Meanwhile Mitt Romney doesn’t seem interested in running against Paul. But have you heard of this Obama guy?
And Rick Santorum isn’t doing so well in the Hawkeye state: “I feel very, very good about how things are going and it’s nice to see that reflected in some of the polls, but we have a lot of work to do. A lot of work.”
Family Leader president Bob Vander Plaats phoned Bachmann last Saturday to ask her to rethink her 2012 bid in hopes of uniting social conservatives behind one candidate in Iowa.
In an interview with CBS’s Early Show, Bachmann confirmed the call, which was first reported by Politico.
“Yes, there was a call that was made,” Bachmann told CBS. “But it didn’t make sense, because my numbers have always been above those of Sen. Santorum’s. It makes no sense for me to drop out.”
—Iowa evangelical leader asked Bachmann to drop 2012 bid | Yahoo News
Can Romney get the GOP nomination without winning South Carolina? Inside his mysterious campaign in the Palmetto State →
news.yahoo.com
The most telling sign of the uphill battle Romney faces in South Carolina is the skepticism he faces among many leading Republicans who backed his bid four years ago. At this point in the 2008 campaign, Romney had announced more than 100 endorsements among key public officials, political operatives and fundraisers in the state. By comparison, he has announced fewer than 10 endorsements in the state, including Haley’s, this year. And many of his key staffers from 2008 remain neutral.
“I made a personal decision to keep my powder dry,” Warren Tompkins, an influential Republican strategist in the state who worked for Romney in 2008, told Yahoo News. “I wanted to see how the candidates ran their campaigns and what their commitment would be to South Carolina before making a decision. I’m under a pretty good bit of pressure right now. … But I’m going to wait until after the dust settles in Iowa to make my decision.”
