Matt Stoller found this shameful tidbit in the Congressional Record from last Friday. The speaker is Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, who is mad that some senators want to find budget cuts to offset disaster aid for Iowa:

So I don’t want anybody telling me that we have to offset a disaster relief package for the Midwest where people are hurting, when we didn’t do it for New Orleans. Why the double standard? Is it because people aren’t on rooftops complaining for helicopters to rescue them, and you see it on television too much? We aren’t doing that in Iowa. We are trying to help ourselves in Iowa. We have a can-do attitude. It doesn’t show up on television like it did in New Orleans for 2 months.

Open Left commenter SpitBall raises an excellent point–a better question is “why federal aid to the flood victims in Iowa should require a budgetary offset, when the invasion [and] occupation of Iraq does not.”

But getting back to Grassley’s comment, it disturbs me that he would denigrate the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Can’t he just praise Iowans without portraying us as better than those no-good complainers in New Orleans?

And suppose the Iowa floods had left thousands of people trapped in their homes, unable to escape on foot or by vehicle. Is he saying Iowans would not stand on their roofs hoping to be rescued? Would we build our own rafts, or what?

The Iowa flooding this summer was unprecedented, but we didn’t have whole neighborhoods of people stranded without food or water the way New Orleans did the first couple of days after Katrina hit.

The unspoken contrast in Grassley’s comment is that (white) Iowans are better people than (black) Katrina victims.

Right-wing blowhard Rush Limbaugh started pushing this meme right away last month. Iowa conservative blogger Emily Geiger picked up the talking point from Rush or some other radio host and ran with it:

Iowans can fix most things ourselves. It’s just a matter of who is going to pay for it all after the fact. This isn’t like New Orleans, where (I heard some relief worker on the radio the other day say that) out-of-state volunteers had to wake up residents at 10 a.m. so that the volunteers could get inside the houses where the residents then sat around and watched the volunteers work.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: when the going gets tough, count on Republicans to make people feel better by reinforcing their racist stereotypes.

Meanwhile, Democratic Representatives Bruce Braley, Dave Loebsack and Leonard Boswell did something constructive on Thursday. They jointly wrote to Steve Preston, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, asking for the immediate release of $30 million in Community Development Block Grants to Iowa.

The full text of their letter to the HUD secretary, along with a joint press release explaining some background, is after the jump.

If you thought the deteriorating relations between Senator Chuck Grassley and evangelical Christians were just kabuki theater designed to make Grassley look more moderate than he is, maybe you should think again:

Evangelical Christians in Iowa, dominant in the state’s Republican Party, have denied Sen. Charles E. Grassley his request for a place on the state’s delegation to this summer’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.

Mr. Grassley may attend the party’s Sept. 1-4 nominating convention in St. Paul, but not as a voting delegate.

With a majority of nine out of 17 members on the Iowa Republican central committee, religious conservatives made Iowa Christian Alliance President Steve Scheffler chairman of Iowa’s 40-member delegation in a vote immediately after their state party convention July 12.[…]

Mr. Grassley had said “yes” when asked by Iowa Republican Chairman Stewart Iverson if he wanted to be a voting delegate to the national convention, Mr. Iverson said.

Political observers in Iowa saw the move against Mr. Grassley as retribution for his having tangled with evangelical pastors in his state. He initiated a Senate Finance Committee investigation of six televangelists for conspicuous personal spending.

“That had nothing to with it at all,” Mr. Scheffler said Sunday. He said Mr. Grassley and the other members of the Iowa congressional delegation already had national convention floor privileges – meaning they could walk the floor but not vote.

Grassley’s office refused to comment when contacted by the Washington Times regarding this story. Staffers quoted in the Des Moines Register today downplayed the significance of what happened:

Beth Pellett Levine, Grassley’s press secretary, said Grassley won’t be a delegate, but he will attend the convention and will have floor access as a federal elected official.

She said Grassley, as well as Iowa’s two Republican congressmen, Reps. Steve King and Tom Latham, will not be delegates “in order to give additional Iowa Republicans the opportunity to participate in the floor proceedings and activities of the national party convention.”

Levine said that Grassley told state party leaders he would be a voting delegate if they wanted, “like he has previously, but the more Iowa Republicans who participate in the event the better, in his view.”

James Carstensen, a spokesman for Latham, said the congressman “never requested to be a voting delegate so as to allow more party activists to participate in the convention.” Aides to King, similarly, said he didn’t want to take a spot away from other delegates.

Columnist Robert Novak wrote on Saturday that “evangelicals and their allies” dominating the state convention in Iowa earlier this month “dumped their critic,” Grassley.

I don’t know how much this is retribution for Grassley’s investigation of the televangelists and how much is just Christian conservatives flexing their muscles after their power grab at the Iowa GOP state convention earlier this month.

Either way, it seems like quite a snub to a five-term U.S. senator, who has held a voting delegate slot at previous national Republican conventions.

The Republican Party doesn’t have superdelegates, so members of Congress do not automatically become voting delegates to the national convention. But you would think the party central committee would show some respect to the Republicans in Iowa’s Congressional delegation.

I don’t think anyone would mistake me for a big fan of Representative Leonard Boswell, but I’d never support denying him a vote at the Democratic national convention in Denver.

That said, I can’t say I’m too unhappy to see Iowa Republican leaders antagonizing Grassley. Maybe he will get irritated enough to retire rather than seek re-election in 2010. After all, Democrats seem poised to pick up at least four seats in the U.S. Senate this November, and perhaps as many as eight or nine.

In case anyone cares, I’ve put the full list of GOP delegates to the national convention after the jump. The two Republican elected statewide officials, Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey and Auditor David Vaudt, are delegates, as is Polk County Republican chairman and blogger Ted Sporer.

The Nevada Republican Party didn’t want to take that chance. They canceled their state convention, set for next Saturday, because the number of RSVPs from delegates was well below the level needed for a quorum.

This was the second attempt to hold the Nevada GOP convention. State party officials abruptly ended the originally scheduled event in April when Ron Paul supporters outnumbered supporters of John McCain among the delegates.

Nevada is in my opinion the state most likely to go Democratic thanks to Libertarian presidential candidate and former Republican Congressman Bob Barr. Not only are there huge numbers of Ron Paul supporters who don’t back McCain, there is a relevant history. The Libertarian vote in the 1998 Senate race was large enough to hand a narrow victory to Democrat Harry Reid.

Speaking of Barr, he showed up at the liberal Netroots Nation gathering today. Daily Kos user dday landed an impromptu interview and put up this entertaining diary about it.

Via Jeralyn at TalkLeft, I saw this video from Progress Now. Today in Denver, McCain campaign staff got the police to escort a 61-year-old librarian from a public town-hall meeting on public property. She was issued a ticket for trespassing as well. Her offense was to stand there with a sign that said, “McCain = Bush”:

If you watch the video, you’ll see a man dressed up as a peapod with photos of Bush and McCain. It looks like he was also forced to leave the venue.

I don’t think it’s consistent with the First Amendment for the police or the Secret Service to remove Democrats from McCain’s public appearances.

But I’m gratified to know how worried they are about a “McCain = Bush” sign. At the end of that video clip, the librarian asks rhetorically why any Republican who voted for Bush would find her sign offensive. The obvious answer is that Bush is the most unpopular president in history.

In case you think this was an isolated incident that doesn’t reflect the judgment of McCain’s senior staff, watch the tv ad McCain has been running in Pennsylvania:

That’s right, the ad explicitly praises McCain for allegedly standing up to the president on global warming.

Chris Bowers explains why this ad spells doom for McCain:

McCain’s message focus for over a week now has been on how we need progressive change on energy and global warming. Even if his policies don’t match, he is at least running on a progressive, Democratic message. Not only does this imply that Democrats have the right ideas on energy, global warming and other ideas, McCain’s ad explicitly says that he stood up to other Republicans on this issue. In other words, McCain is bluntly saying that Democrats are right, and Republicans are wrong.

I don’t know how you win an election by making “the other guys were right [all] along” the focus of your message. Seems to me that it will only reinforce the growing notion that Democrats were right all along, and result in more people voting for Democrats.

Do you think the Republican Party is angry about McCain’s messaging? Not from the looks of this ad that the Republican National Committee is now running in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin:

Josh Orton notes the irony of the RNC paying to run ads that brag about how McCain pushed his own party to act on climate change.

As I mentioned a few days ago, the National Republican Congressional Committee is advising candidates to make their campaigns about personal and local issues.

Republican strategists know which way the wind is blowing, and it’s not at their backs.

Can you imagine how frustrated Mitt Romney must be right now?

I submit to you that if Romney’s opposition research team had discovered that John McCain didn’t pay property taxes on one of his seven homes for more than four years, or that McCain didn’t know the price of gasoline and didn’t think that it was important for him to know it, Romney would be the Republican presidential nominee.

He didn’t lose to McCain in Florida and California by much, and Mike Huckabee didn’t lose to McCain in South Carolina by much either. With most GOP primaries being winner-take-all, McCain would probably have been out of the running if primary voters had known about his tax problems.

I so wanted Romney to win the nomination. I think either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would have beaten him in a crushing landslide. Whatever the pundits thought about his telegenic nature, he came across as incredibly phony to me. A lot of evangelical Christians would have stayed home or voted for third-party candidates rather than vote for him because his change of heart on abortion didn’t seem authentic.

I’m surprised his well-funded campaign didn’t figure out that McCain defaulted on California property taxes.  

Some conservative Iowa bloggers didn’t take kindly to my recent post about their reaction to the floods.

Emily Geiger of Battleground Iowa seems pretty angry at the “uninformed” liberals who disagreed with her suggestion that state officials wait to see what the federal government provides before appropriating money for flood relief and reconstruction:

It seems my post was (intentionally) misinterpreted to mean that Iowans should sit on their heinies and wait for the feds to come in and fix everything.

Iowans can fix most things ourselves. It’s just a matter of who is going to pay for it all after the fact. This isn’t like New Orleans, where (I heard some relief worker on the radio the other day say that) out-of-state volunteers had to wake up residents at 10 a.m. so that the volunteers could get inside the houses where the residents then sat around and watched the volunteers work.

What would we do without conservative talk radio to reinforce our latent racist stereotypes? It’s a good thing we Iowans are not lazy like most residents of New Orleans are! We’ll have our towns fixed up in no time.

The main point of Geiger’s post, though, was that we don’t need to change state law to permit deficit spending, which would “give Supreme Iowa Democrat Mike Gronstal lots more (borrowed) money to throw around to his liberal buddies at the expense of Iowa taxpayers (and our grandchildren).” She notes that according to Krusty Konservative, state funds accounted for just 1 percent of the $1.4 billion spent on flood relief in Iowa after the 1993 floods. So by her calculation, we shouldn’t have to deplete our $600 million rainy day fund, even if much more damage was done in this year’s flooding.

Now, Krusty makes some valid points in that post, but let’s not kid ourselves. The federal government incurs huge annual deficits and is deeply in debt. Those costs are going to be passed on to our children and grandchildren.

So it’s disingenuous to pretend to be all about fiscal responsibility and living within our means if your main response to the floods is, “Let the federal government pay for everything.” That money comes from taxpayers as well.

Striker of In Flyover Country agrees with Geiger and with “EFJ,” a commenter on The Real Sporer who wrote:

We are missing the obvious here. We must follow some logical course of action:

1. Assess actual costs of flood recovery.

2. What costs are responsibility of the whole? (I hate to say government, because government is us and only has money they confiscated from us.)

3. What costs are the responsibility of the individualprivate sector?

4. Evaluate what should reasonably be done. (not all buildings, homes, businesses, and schools have some absolute right to be rebuilt. Prioritizing is ok)

5. Figure out how to pay for the work.

a. $600 million rainy day fund. No coincedence [sic] the name fits. It is a term started in our agrarian society to describe dealing with flooding.

b. CUT SOME FAT!!!

(I know, I know, there’s no fat in government. Every program is important as it buys another constituency group of “looters” for liberals)

The problem can be solved without borrowing, but it won’t because liberals will employ their hyperbole and make this about caring for the poor, and disenfranchised, the children, and the elderly.

The best way to to care for the future of Iowa is to NOT incur debt if at all possible.

Well, obviously, the costs of flood recovery will be assessed, including which costs are the responsibility of the individual/private sector.

And obviously, not every building will be rebuilt, just as Johnnie’s Vets Club in Valley Junction and the Holiday Inn on Fleur Drive were not rebuilt after the 1993 flooding. No one, not Chet Culver, not Mike Gronstal, and not David Yepsen, has said we must borrow enough money to rebuild every structure that was damaged in the floods.

Republicans always talk about “cutting the fat” as the answer for every budget problem, but sometimes, when a major calamity strikes, there just isn’t enough fat to cut.

As I said in my earlier post, it’s quite telling that Yepsen, who never met a tax cut he didn’t like and loves to write columns about fiscal responsibility, recognizes that we probably will need to borrow to address some of the flood reconstruction costs.

Most economists, even conservative Republicans, understand the need for deficit spending under some circumstances–for instance, to prevent a recession from becoming a depression. I believe even President Bush has made that argument to justify his own administration’s deficit spending.

We’re not going to rebuild Iowa’s infrastructure, homes and businesses without deficit spending. The question is whether all the deficit spending will be at the federal level, or whether the state may also have to go into debt to get the job done quickly and comprehensively.

Iowa is fortunate in that both our U.S. senators have a lot of seniority, which should help us secure a large amount of federal funding. But I would be very surprised if federal disaster aid proved sufficient.

Even if it did, I don’t think a special legislative session is a bad idea. Iowa’s elected officials need to do the assessing and prioritizing that EFJ was talking about. I understand why that worries the conservative bloggers, because they don’t trust Democrats to do anything. But it is not “politicizing the floods” to convene our elected officials to deal with an enormous natural disaster.

One more thing jumped out at me in Krusty’s post. It’s amazing how “konservatives” see lowering corporate taxes as the solution to every problem (in this case, the problem of how to keep flood-damaged businesses from relocating outside Iowa).  

I don’t spend a lot of time reading conservative blogs, but my brief tour around Iowa’s Republican blogosphere yesterday revealed acute concern about the prospect of a special legislative session to address the recent historic flooding in much of the state.

We have thousands of Iowans needing assistance with housing, as well as huge clean-up and reconstruction tasks.

But the Flyover Country blog is convinced that the nasty Democrats are talking about a special session solely to reap political benefits. That blogger sees Democratic efforts to “politicize the floods” everywhere he looks. He names June 11 as the first day of this nefarious strategy, citing this story about Governor Chet Culver mobilizing National Guard units and talking about a possible special session of the legislature.

Side note: it seems like a distant memory, but back before George W. Bush was president, National Guard units were mostly used to deal with this kind of situation, rather than to fight foreign wars.

But I digress.

Why wouldn’t our elected officials convene to address such a huge catastrophe? The Iowa flooding has been dominating national news. I’ve gotten phone calls and e-mails from all over the country and even abroad, asking if we are ok and how bad the damage is.

Members of Iowa’s Congressional delegation (Republicans as well as Democrats) are working fast to get federal money to assist with cleanup and reconstruction efforts in flood-ravaged areas.

I expect representatives from other states to expedite this process, because the damage to Iowa’s infrastructure could have far-reaching economic effects. For more on that, read SlyDi’s piece, “How A Midwest Flood Can Drag Down A Nation.”

A different conservative blog, Battleground Iowa, thinks state officials and legislators should wait and see how much damage there is, how many people are insured, and what the federal government will do before getting the state involved.

In other words, “Don’t just do something–stand there!”

Do you think the public expects our elected officials to just wait and see who else will step in to deal with a historic natural disaster affecting tens of thousands of Iowans?

I would love to see Iowa Republicans come out against a special legislative session to focus on state flood relief and reconstruction efforts. Let them make the case for state government doing nothing.

The Real Sporer had a slightly different angle, taking offense mainly at the idea that Iowa might go into debt to pay for flood relief and reconstruction:

Democrat Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal’s knee jerk reaction saw only the opportunity to outspend the State’s emergency fund and incur debt to finance the difference.

Here’s a thought; if the emergency fund isn’t adequate to cover the socialist’s blue sky list of flood relief start cutting other items. Start with a deep Dave Vaudt audit over at the Departments of Education and Human Services. At a time when Iowa will have thousands of real victims of tragic circumstance on our hands when would be a better time to ask why the cost of education is five times faster than the general rate of inflation in Iowa’s larger economy?

Please, Republicans, please tell Iowans that we should cut education spending if our state’s “rainy day fund” is not sufficient to cover the cost of flood relief.

Seriously, when even the notorious tax-hating deficit hawk David Yepsen says we need to “Borrow to bankroll massive rebuilding,” it’s time for Republicans to question their automatic distrust of every government effort to help people.

Just to show that I don’t automatically distrust every comment by every Republican, State 29 raises some valid questions about government support for economic development in flood zones (even if I don’t share all of his conclusions).

Also, I agree with Krusty Konservative that it was inappropriate for Senator Wally Horn (who represents much of the Cedar Rapids area) to say, “These are good loyal Democrats, and they need our help.”

Residents of flood-ravaged areas deserve equal attention from the government, no matter what their voting patterns.

I was offended when the Bush administration was quicker to get post-Katrina aid to Mississippi than to the most devastated areas of New Orleans, and I would be offended if officials in Iowa seemed to favor certain towns or neighborhoods because of how their residents vote.

Commenting on my latest post about John McCain’s problems with conservative Republicans, Bleeding Heartland user johnnyschad, a onetime young Republican inspired by Ronald Reagan, wondered, “What is a good way to discuss the GOP implosion with die-hard Republicans?”

I wouldn’t know the answer, but Daily Kos user Press to Digitate, a former Republican activist, wrote a good piece on “How to Market Obama to Your Republican Friends.” I didn’t see it when he first published it, but he brought it to my attention in the comment thread below my diary on how to talk to skeptical Democrats about Obama.

Press to Digitate’s diary on “Why Have All the Republicans Gone?” is a useful backgrounder that may give you some ideas for talking to disaffected Republicans.

Devilstower cites a report by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, which concluded that Obama is proposing a much larger middle-class tax cut than McCain.

Finally, it couldn’t hurt to let Republicans know that Obama picked a “free trade” advocate distrusted by labor unions to be his chief economic policy adviser.

Use this as an open thread to discuss effective talking points to use with Republicans.

A little bird has told David Yepsen that social conservatives are not happy with Iowa Republican Party chairman Stew Iverson:

Religious conservatives, led by Iowa Christian Alliance president Steve Scheffler, are unhappy that more mainline party leaders, led by state GOP chairman Stewart Iverson, want to install some moderates and big donors, such as Marvin Pomerantz, as delegates to the national convention.

The social conservatives, who have never been very happy with McCain, want delegates to make sure that he selects a vice president who is acceptable to them and that the platform reflects their views on abortion, gay rights and immigration. […]

“If he doesn’t get a huge percentage of our people, John McCain can’t win,” Scheffler said. “It’s simple arithmetic.” In a letter to fellow religious conservatives, Scheffler wrote “there is a very serious threat to our issues and the pro-family agenda. The country club Republicans, which involves some of those in Republican Party leadership positions, are making a concentrated effort to dilute and rid the Republican Party of individuals like you who consider themselves social conservatives.”

His group held a meeting Tuesday night at a Windsor Heights church to plot strategy, and some party leaders showed up uninvited. Some spirited shouting matches ensued, according to several in attendance who said they were surprised at the profanity that got used inside a church building.

I don’t envy McCain the task of choosing a running mate. He needs to pick someone to shore up his support from conservatives, but which conservatives? In last week’s South Dakota primary, McCain only got 70 percent of the GOP vote, with 17 percent favoring Ron Paul and 7 percent favoring Mike Huckabee.

A running mate with a more libertarian bent might prevent Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr from taking a lot of votes from McCain in swing states like Nevada. But that wouldn’t help McCain with the religious conservatives who want one of their own on the ticket.

I think McCain can’t choose Huckabee, who is hated by business conservatives and joked at the recent National Rifle Association convention about someone pointing a gun at Barack Obama.

But if McCain chooses some other white southern evangelical as his VP candidate, he may alienate the Ron Paul wing of the party as well as some suburban swing voters.

Some have suggested he should choose a woman, like Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, or a person of color, like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.

Use this as an open thread to discuss which VP candidate would give McCain the best chance of winning, and which VP candidate you’d most like to see him choose.

P.S.- An interesting tidbit from Yepsen’s column is that one of the names being floated as a possible replacement for Iverson is the Iowa blogosphere’s own Real Sporer, aka Polk County Republican chairman Ted Sporer.

UPDATE: At least 14 Republican members of Congress have so far refused to endorse McCain:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008…

For some reason, I occasionally receive mass mailings from the Iowa Republican Party. Usually I toss these in the recycling bin without reading them, but for some reason I opened the latest one, which arrived this week.

It was a letter from state chairman Stew Iverson, who urged me to make a donation and thereby become an “official Member” of the party. He even enclosed a personalized membership card for me.

I won’t bother transcribing the whole letter, because it was the usual GOP language about big, bad, liberal Democrats and their social programs, “bloated budgets” and higher taxes that will take away your hard-earned money.

One line jumped out at me. It is underlined in the letter, but I can’t figure out how to make it underlined here:

It’s time to join together and stop the Democrats from gaining more seats in 2008!

Is that the best they’re hoping for?

Can’t they even pretend to their own supporters that the goal is retaking the Iowa House and Senate for the GOP? There is nothing in the letter suggesting that my donation will help put Republicans back in power. There is nothing about the positive agenda the Republicans would enact if they regained control of the legislature. It is all about trying to limit the damage Democrats can do.

In case you had any doubts, know that Iowa Republicans are still downbeat about their election prospects. It seems like not much has changed since a prominent Republican told the Des Moines Register in January:

“We’ll be lucky with anything we get this year,” said Steve Roberts, a Republican National Committee member from Des Moines. “I don’t think there are a lot of people with high expectations this year. It’s a long road back for us this time.”

Don’t be complacent. Get involved in a statehouse race. If your district is not competitive, volunteer for a Democrat in another district that is up for grabs, or at least donate to one or more candidates you believe in.

I’ll be helping Jerry Sullivan take House district 59 for the Democrats. Republicans have represented my district since before I was born, and it’s time for that to change.  

Scout Finch put up a link to this article about Bob Barr announcing his presidential candidacy:

He first must win the Libertarian nomination at the party’s national convention that begins May 22. Party officials consider him a front-runner thanks to the national profile he developed as a Georgia congressman from 1995 to 2003.

Barr, 59, helped lead Bill Clinton’s impeachment. He quit the Republican Party two years ago, saying he had grown disillusioned with its failure to shrink government and its willingness to scale back civil liberties in fighting terrorism.

I despised Barr during the 1990s, and I still think impeaching Clinton was an abuse of the process intended to punish presidential “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

But I have to admit that he has shown a sincere belief in conservative principles during the past few years. Read this article about the reception he got at the February 2006 Conservative Political Action Conference:

“Are we losing our lodestar, which is the Bill of Rights?” Barr beseeched the several hundred conservatives at the Omni Shoreham in Woodley Park. “Are we in danger of putting allegiance to party ahead of allegiance to principle?”

Barr answered in the affirmative. “Do we truly remain a society that believes that . . . every president must abide by the law of this country?” he posed. “I, as a conservative, say yes. I hope you as conservatives say yes.”

But nobody said anything in the deathly quiet audience. Barr merited only polite applause when he finished, and one man, Richard Sorcinelli, booed him loudly. “I can’t believe I’m in a conservative hall listening to him say [Bush] is off course trying to defend the United States,” Sorcinelli fumed.

Even if he only gets a percent or two of the vote, Barr could throw some states to Barack Obama this November.

John McCain still has problems with some elements of the conservative base, including libertarians who voted for Ron Paul in the primaries. In a few states, such as Nevada, Paul outpolled McCain in the GOP primaries.

Neiaprogressive noted that Paul got 8 percent of the vote in the Indiana and North Carolina GOP primaries last week. That’s after he received nearly 16 percent of the vote in the Pennsylvania primary.

It will be interesting to see if the beltway media give Barr more coverage than a minor-party presidential candidate would usually receive. He was an important figure in Washington for many years.

Remember that Republican group, Iowa Future Fund, which has been running advertisements against Governor Chet Culver since last summer?

Mrs. Panstreppon alerted me to an article she wrote at TPM Cafe: American Future Fund & Iowa Future Fund, GOP Fronts. You should read the whole thing, but here are some excerpts (the embedded links did not come through–you’ll have to click over to TPM Cafe to see those):

American Future Fund (AFF) is running ads in support of Senator Norm Coleman (R-Minnesota) and Iowa Future Fund (IFF)is running ads against Governor Chet Culver (D-Iowa)and there has been speculation in the media as to who is behind AFF and IFF. Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker posted about AFF and IFF and the Des Moines Register and Minnesota NPR among others have run stories about the two entities.

Last week, Minnesota Democrats filed an FEC complaint against American Future Fund.

I reviewed AFF and IFF documents filed with the Iowa Secretary of State on 8/7/07 and the incorporator is Jessica Young at 98 Alexandria Pike, Ste 53, in Warrenton, VA. That is the address of Holtzman Vogel, a law firm owned by two very influential and well-known Republican operatives, Alex N. Vogel and his wife, Jill Holtzman Vogel.

[…]

On 2/7/08, an Eric Peterson filed a fictitious name resolution in order for Iowa Future Fund to do business as “IFF”. Peterson listed himself as IFF president, secretary and director but no address or phone number was provided.

Jessica Young as IFF incorporator has the power to appoint directors so I assume she appointed Eric Peterson. But Young isn’t talking. I called her at Holtzman Vogel and was referred instead to an attorney named Teresa who told me that it was the firm’s policy to keep client matters confidential. When I pointed out that HV seemed to be the client, she refused to comment.[…]

According to Stu Rothenberg at the Rothenberg Report, Republican operatives Ben Ginsberg and Edward T. Tobin III are also involved in IFF and AFF. Ginsberg, former counsel to the Bush-Cheney campaign, is a partner in Patton Boggs’s public policy and lobbying group. Tobin, former executive director of the Republican Governors Association, is a partner in Wilmer Hale’s fairly new Public Policy and Strategy Group.

David Kochel has acknowledged that he is an IFF advisor but refuses to say anything more. Kochel, a former Iowa Republican Party director, was most recently an advisor to the ill-fated Romney campaign and he advised Lamar Alexander in 2000. Kochel, along with Jennifer Dean, owns JDK Marketing and Public Affairs.

Who is Eric Peterson, Iowa Future Fund president, secretary and director? One guess is that he is Eric Peterson, Summit Farms business manager. A 2007 Iowa State U. grad, Peterson donated $2k to Rudy Giuliani in December as did other Summit Farms employees along with Peterson’s employer, wealthy Iowan businessman, Bruce Rastetter.

Bruce Rastetter, a big Republican donor, owns Hawkeye Renewables which owns and operates four ethanol plants in Iowa.

[…]

Rastetter himself is politically ambitious and considered running against Senator Tom Harkin this year.

[…]

Is Bruce Rastetter, a least in part, funding Iowa Future Fund and American Future Fund? It would certainly suit him politically to do so because he can keep the extent of his financial support of the Republican Party secret. Rastetter seems to be a practical guy in that he just made his first ever contribution to a Democrat, $25k to Gov. Culver. I doubt if Rastetter would want the governor to know he is funding ads criticizing him.

Bleeding Heartland readers, do you know anything more about Eric Peterson or other people behind the Iowa Future Fund?  If so, please put up a comment or e-mail me confidentially: desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com.

We don’t watch much tv, so I wasn’t aware of the ads that have apparently been running against Governor Culver since last summer. The Des Moines Register reports that the Iowa Future Fund has not disclosed its donors. A former GOP state director, David Kochel, is the only person who has acknowledged involvement with the fund’s ad campaign. The Register notes:

Iowa Future Fund has been running ads sporadically in Iowa since August, all criticizing Culver. The latest round accuses him of vastly increasing spending and criticizes him for signing a bill offering Microsoft tax incentives to locate a center in Iowa.

The group is registered with the Internal Revenue Service under chapter 501(c)(4), which allows it to advocate for or against legislation, but does not require it to disclose its contributors.

The Iowa Democratic Party recently asked the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board to determine whether the Iowa Future Fund’s ads are violating state law. Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Scott Brennan said at a press conference that the ad’s claims are not true, but the Register notes that “Iowa’s campaign law does not require ads be true.”

Brennan also said the fund broke the law by not filing disclosure reports, but it doesn’t sound like Democrats are going to be able to prove that these commercials trigger the disclosure requirements:

Charlie Smithson, Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board executive director, the ad must expressly call for the election or defeat of a candidate in order for the board to have jurisdiction.

If anyone out there knows more about who is funding these ads, please drop me a line or post a comment.

Big wins for Obama today in the Nebraska and Washington caucuses. Early returns in Louisiana also show him winning, not surprisingly.

I will be interested to see if there was more than a negligible vote for Edwards in Louisiana, since he began and ended his campaign there and has done a lot to bring the Katrina aftermath to the media’s attention.

On the Republican side, Huckabee embarrassed McCain (and Senator Sam Brownback, who backed McCain) in Kansas today. Huck seems to have a shot at winning in Washington and Louisiana too. That would be just fine by me. Anything that keeps the “Republicans divided, base can’t stand McCain” as the journalistic narrative has to be good for Democrats.

Results will be trickling in all evening, though it may be tomorrow before we know how many delegates each candidate won.

For those who say the popular vote and the state-by-state results are meaningless because “it’s all about delegates,” I disagree. Clinton and Obama may finish within 50 delegates of each other, but psychologically, and in terms of media coverage, it will make a big difference who won the popular vote in California.

Also, it will make a big difference in the media coverage if one candidate wins at least two-thirds of the states voting today, as opposed to each candidate winning about half of the 22 states.

UPDATE: Wow, an exciting night with both candidates able to claim victory.

Obama will win 13 or 14 of the 22 states, which is impressive. True, many of them have low numbers of  Democrats participating (AK, ID, ND), but it does impress me that Democrats in the deep-red states seem to want Obama at the top of the ticket. Obama won by a surprisingly large margin in DE and won narrowly in CT and MO. He won IL by a much larger margin than Clinton won NY.

He can credibly claim that he can compete in all parts of the country.

On the other hand, Hillary looks set to crush Obama in California, despite all of the endorsements and glowing media coverage for Obama there lately. Hillary also beat Obama convincingly in MA, where the governor and both senators were for Obama, and in NJ, where some pollsters had Obama leading toward the end. She won in red states like TN and OK, not to mention AR.

It will be a while before we figure out the delegate count. If it’s a tie or close to that, Obama will be very happy, because the states set to vote for the rest of this month heavily favor him. He could have a delegate lead going into March 4, when TX and OH vote.

But given how early the networks called California and Arizona, Clinton seems to have held on to her big edge among Latinos. That doesn’t bode well for Obama’s prospects of winning TX.

I am pleased with the outcome. I didn’t want the nomination to be wrapped up tonight. We benefit from more time with our candidates in the limelight.

I hope the media will now start asking Obama more tough questions, because I’d be a lot more comfortable with him as the nominee if he gets plenty of media scrutiny in the next month or two.

More debates will help our candidates sharpen their messages as well.

All in all, a good night to be a Democrat.  

As Simon Stevenson noted here last week, the Iowa Republican Party’s fundraising lags well behind what Iowa Democrats have raised for the upcoming elections.

Now the Des Moines Register reports that Tom Harkin has $3.4 million in the bank going into his re-election campaign. Prominent Republicans are taking a pass on this race, and Harkin’s only declared opponent

is Steve Rathje, a Cedar Rapids businessman. Rathje as of Sept. 30 had raised about $49,000 for his campaign and had $259 cash on hand.

Finally, Harkin gets to take it easy. He had to fight hard against Greg Ganske in 2002, although he ended up winning by a comfortable margin.

Meanwhile, Ray Hoffman stepped down as chairman of the Iowa Republican Party halfway through his term and has been replaced by Stewart Iverson, who used to be the top Republican in the Iowa Senate but was blamed by some for the erosion of the GOP’s majority in that body.

Hoffman has said he is stepping down to focus more time on his growing restaurant business in Sioux City, but I suspect that the GOP’s woeful election prospects weighed on his mind as well.

As the Des Moines Register reported on Sunday, Iowa Republicans are taking a pass on the big races this year. So far Congressman Leonard Boswell (IA-03) does not even have a declared Republican opponent. This passage from that article was revealing:

Iowa Republicans’ apparent hesitation to mount strong challenges in these two races [against Harkin and Boswell] represents what top GOP activists and strategists say is a low point for the party that might not begin to rebound until after legislative and congressional districts are redrawn in 2012.

“We’ll be lucky with anything we get this year,” said Steve Roberts, a Republican National Committee member from Des Moines. “I don’t think there are a lot of people with high expectations this year. It’s a long road back for us this time.”

Danny Carroll, a former state legislator from Grinnell, considered running against Boswell, but told the Register,

Boswell has won against credible GOP candidates in more competitive political environments and 2008 does not look good.

“I’ve watched the pendulum swing for us,” said Carroll, who went from second in command of the Iowa House majority to one of his party’s highest-ranking casualties in 2006. “I think it’s a time of re-evaluation and reorganizing. I think we’re all just trying to figure it out for ourselves.”

Carroll’s decision was based in part on his belief that the district’s most Democrat-leaning counties, where Republican candidates have done well without winning in recent elections, had become less competitive.

Now, some people in the Democratic establishment are going to warn us that we better not support Ed Fallon in the primary against Boswell, because if we do, we might lose the seat.

But let’s be realistic. Boswell has no Republican opponent. If he wins a tough primary, it’s not going to matter.

If Fallon wins the primary, will some Republican come out of the woodwork to challenge him? If so, that candidate will be starting to build a fundraising and outreach effort six months after Fallon started working the district hard:

Craig Robinson, political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, said a Fallon victory might convince an established candidate to enter the race. He also cautioned against such a strategy, which would keep a Republican from getting organized until after the June 3 primary.

“If the Democrats are going to have a contested primary, my advice is to get out there now and start raising money and building a campaign organization,” said Robinson.

In any event, the Register’s article from Sunday makes clear that Iowa’s third Congressional district leans even more Democratic following the presidential caucuses:

For instance, more than 8,600 Polk County voters changed their registration to Democrat in January, the vast majority to participate in the Jan. 3 presidential caucuses, according to a preliminary monthly report by the Polk County auditor. The changes represented an increase in Democratic membership of 8.7 percent compared to December 2007.

By contrast, roughly 3,100 Polk County voters changed their registration to Republican, an increase of 4.2 percent.

In Jasper County, 707 voters changed their registration to Democrat, an increase of 7.5 percent, compared to 284 who changed to Republican, an increase of 4.3 percent.

Some of those new Democrats may change their registration back to independent or Republican, but count on many to remain in the Democratic fold. Fallon already had a strong base in Polk County, where he got about 40 percent of the vote in the 2006 gubernatorial primary, and Polk County contributes at least 75 percent of the votes in the third Congressional district.

Democratic turnout for the general election is usually higher in presidential election years as well, which further improves our prospects of holding the district.

Republicans’ pessimism is great news for Iowa Democrats, and makes this an ideal year for us to build on our state legislative majorities while getting a stronger progressive to represent central Iowans in Congress.

The one good piece of news for Iowa Republicans is that Congressman Tom Latham (IA-04)

has been named the top Republican on a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

Latham, of Ames, is the only member of the U.S. House from Iowa on the influential committee, which controls government spending.

Latham’s district was always going to be an uphill battle for Democrats, and this will make it that much tougher.

But overall, it doesn’t look like Iowa Republicans will have much to celebrate this November.

I don't have the stomach for it, but if you watched the four remaining Republican candidates debate this evening, let us know what you thought.

Sigh. McCain pulled this one out and is the clear front-runner, especially since Rudy Giuliani is going to endorse him. I was hoping Rudy wouldn’t finish in the top three in a single state.

On the bright side, Romney has more money, and conservative groups are starting to target McCain, with ads such as this one comparing McCain to Hillary Clinton:

http://link.brightcove.com/ser…

Results with 77 percent of precincts reporting:

McCain 615,203 (36%)

Romney 531,139 (31%)

Giuliani 252,925 (15%)

Huckabee 228,687 (14%)

Paul 55,070 (3%)

Thompson 20,231 (1%)

—

Clinton 753,543 (50%)

Obama 497,341 (33%)

Edwards 218,899 (14%)

Put your guesses in this thread. Remember, you can't win if you don't play!

My best guess for the Democratic side:

Clinton 52
Obama 40
Edwards 8

For the Republicans:

McCain 37
Romney 32
Huckabee 15
Giuliani 12
Paul 4 

The latest research suggests that exposure to lead may diminish the functioning of the aging brain decades later.

The good news is that Americans’ exposure to lead has decreased markedly since lead was removed from paint and gasoline, beginning in the 1970s.

The bad news is that too many children who live in older buildings are still exposed to lead. We already know that lead poisoning can cause mental retardation. Now it appears that even children who appear to be unaffected could suffer adverse consequences from the exposure as they age.

Republicans, remember that next time you feel like mocking a Democratic proposal to test children for lead exposure.  

Great letter in the Des Moines Register on Sunday:

Thank goodness for Christopher Rants. As I drive down the highway smelling the stench from the hog lots, watching the filthy water roll under the bridge, worrying if my kids will fall behind as their schools fall apart, wondering if my elderly mother is receiving quality care and planning how to survive if I lose my job in this recession, Rants is leading the charge against gay marriage. Talk about a profile in courage.

Keep up the great work, Christopher!

I doubt I'll even bother to watch the repeat, but if you caught the Republicans debating, use this thread to “document the atrocities,” as Atrios would say.

Unfortunately, Mike Huckabee was not able to take this one. Fred Thompson won just enough evangelical voes to give John McCain the victory.

Yet again, Rudy finished behind Ron Paul, as he has in every contest so far.

From TPM, with 93 percent of precincts reporting:

McCain 33

Huckabee 30

Thompson 16

Romney 15

Paul 4

Giuliani 2

Hunter 0

Hunter is dropping out of the race. Thompson will probably follow soon and endorse McCain.

UPDATE: Jonathan Singer observes at MyDD that SC Republicans seemed less enthusiastic about voting this time than they did eight years ago:

Another way of looking at it, this is kind of an underwhelming win for McCain. Well, perhaps even a really unimpressive win. In 2000, McCain received 237,888 votes in coming in second place to George W. Bush. This time? A mere 134,474 votes, or more than 100,000 votes short of what he received eight years ago.

Link: http://www.mydd.com/story/2008…

I will update later when more results are available. For now, I am taking these Nevada results from TPM:

Clinton 51 percent

Obama 45

Edwards 4

Romney 52 percent

Paul 13

McCain 13

Huckabee 8

Thompson 8

Giuliani 4

Hunter 2

Time for Edwards and Obama supporters to face some hard truths.

Even if he had won Iowa and gotten the unions to jump off the fence, it looks like Edwards would not have been able to take Nevada from Hillary.

If Obama couldn’t win this state despite getting favorable media coverage, more than 80 percent of the black vote (according to entrance polling), and the key union endorsements in Nevada, then it seems that no one could have beaten Clinton here.

Hillary won at least 6 of the 9 at-large precincts on the Las Vegas strip, and one of them was a tie. Those precincts supposedly were going to be dominated by the Culinary Union, which backed Obama. That’s why Clinton supporters went to court (unsuccessfully) to try to block the at-large precincts. But Culinary was not able to deliver for Obama in most of those precincts.

I haven’t seen any data yet on what percentage of Democratic caucus-goers were independents or Republicans who switched party affiliation. Total turnout shattered predictions and exceeded 114,000.

Many of the February 5 states will hold closed primaries, which means Obama will not benefit from strong support among independents and Republicans.

Entrance polling in Nevada suggests that Clinton led Obama 51-38 among women (who made up 59 percent of caucus-goers) and crushed Obama 64-26 among Latinos. That suggests a steep uphill climb for Obama in some of the larger February 5 states.

Obama supporters have been calling for Edwards to drop out, but I am not convinced that doing so would benefit Obama. In South Carolina, Edwards is  taking more away from Hillary.

Whichever candidate you favor, it’s obvious that Clinton is in the driver’s seat. She will have to make some big mistakes to lose the nomination now.

Obama was not able to put her away in New Hampshire, and it’s going to cost him big.

The Nevada caucuses and the GOP primary in South Carolina take place tomorrow. How do you think the candidates will do? Here is my stab in the dark:

Nevada

Clinton 42

Obama 38

Edwards 20

Romney 35

McCain 30

Huckabee 15

Paul 5

Thompson 3

Giuliani 2

South Carolina

McCain 32

Huckabee 28

Thompson 20

Romney 12

Giuliani 5

Paul 3

If you ever want to look up which states are voting on which dates this year, click on this page at the Project Vote Smart site.  

Oh, my. Watch this ad Mike Huckabee is currently running in Michigan (hat tip to noneed4thneed).

Key line:

I believe most Americans want their next President to remind them of they guy they work with, not the guy who laid them off.

Michigan is must-win for Mitt Romney, whose father used to be governor of the state. That line should be devastating for him.

Huckabee has long been despised by the Club for Growth set. He wisely decided that as a presidential candidate, he would do better to advocate for middle-class interests rather than pandering to the business wing of the GOP. Noneed4thneed put up this amazing clip of Huckabee on Hardball a few months ago. It’s worth watching. I still can’t believe a Republican presidential candidate is willing to say his party should stop being “a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the corporations.”

If you missed this a few weeks ago, take Politico’s “populist pop quiz” and try to guess which quotations are from Huckabee and which are from John Edwards.

I do worry about the prospect of running against Huckabee. He is a strong communicator, and he could pull Reagan Democrats his way.

On the other hand, a lot of moderate Republicans would probably vote Democrat if he were the nominee. Also, it shouldn’t be hard for our candidate to make the public understand what a truly awful idea the “fair tax” is.

I'm not watching, but if you are, please share your impressions of that crowd.

While I still think Edwards would be our best candidate against the Republicans, lately I've been thinking that if we only could choose among the front-runners, Obama would do better against Huckabee, while Hillary might do better against McCain. Either of them would crush Romney. What do you think?

UPDATE: I caught most of the rerun on Fox. Apparently the focus group liked Thompson, which amazes me. Huckabee is clearly the superior communicator in my mind. He has a talent for keeping your attention without overdoing it.

Last month I put up this post on Republican culture, inspired by an article about a Republican focus group watching a presidential debate.

Reading this piece by Joe Klein today, I noticed that the Republican focus group watching the latest debate preferred Mitt Romney to John McCain. Among other things,

They just adored his position on illegal immigration (their dials plummeted when McCain said we had to be “humane.”)

No, we sure wouldn’t want to be humane in our approach to a complicated issue affecting the lives of millions. That’s Republican culture in a nutshell.

It’s put up or shut up time. How are the candidates going to do tomorrow night?

I don’t think all three will finish closely bunched together. Either someone will win by a clear margin, or someone will be in third by a clear margin.

I am having trouble making my final prediction, because I wouldn’t be too surprised by any one of the top three winning. Here goes:

Edwards 35 percent

Obama 28 percent

Clinton 27 percent

Biden 5 percent

Richardson 4 percent

Dodd 1 percent

Kucinich 0 percent

In my precinct: 2 delegates for Edwards, 2 for Clinton, 1 for Obama, 1 for Biden

I would so love to get that third delegate for Edwards, but I fear we will fall short.

On the Republican side, I have no clue about the numbers, but I think the order will be Huckabee, Romney, McCain, Giuliani, Paul, Thompson, Keyes, Cox, Hunter. I don’t think Steve King is going to deliver anything significant to Fred Thompson.

UPDATE: I forgot to include my prediction for Democratic turnout: 140,000. I have no clue about the Republican turnout, except that it will be less than 100,000.

I was knocking on doors in my precinct on Sunday, and I noticed a few Ron Paul brochures stuck in the doors of Democratic households. At first I thought they might be homes where one spouse is a Democrat and the other is a Republican, but checking my list, they seemed to be homes where both residents are registered Ds.

I did not examine the flier closely, so I don’t know whether it came from Paul’s campaign or from an outside group supporting him.

On Sunday night or Monday night, I got a robocall supporting Paul. The script emphasized that Democrats in Congress have failed to end the war, and none of the Democratic candidates would be able to end the war. It urged me to caucus for Ron Paul because unlike the Democrats, he has always been against the war and would be able to end the war. It also mentioned a few of Paul’s other policy positions.

My kids were making too much noise for me to hear the name of the group that paid for the robocall. I did catch the “not authorized by any candidate or any candidate’s committee” at the end, so it wasn’t the Paul campaign.

This seems like a complete waste of money to me. Are there really a bunch of Democrats who can’t find anyone they like in our current field? Even hard-core antiwar Democrats can still caucus for Kucinich if they like.

But maybe I’m wrong and these tactics will persuade a significant number of Democrats to cross over and caucus on the GOP side.

Anyone else get this phone call or leaflet? Do you know any Democrats who plan to caucus for Ron Paul?

Well, well, well. The conservative establishment loves when evangelicals vote Republican, but apparently they don’t love it when evangelicals plan to vote for one of their own.

Blogger Jeff Fuller, who supports Mitt Romney, put up this incredibly long list of “conservative/GOP icons” who have criticized Mike Huckabee lately. (hat tip to Jerome Armstrong)

Will Huckabee be able to withstand so much incoming fire?

By the way, a homeschooler who supports Huckabee tells me that Ron Paul supporters are circulating the hit piece I referenced a few days ago, which claims Huckabee is no friend to homeschoolers.

Mike Huckabee’s rapid rise in the polls, both national as well as early-state, may have come a bit too soon. Romney has been running negative ads against him, and other information that does not cast Huckabee in a flattering light is trickling into the media discourse.

Mike Allen is reporting on the Politico blog that Huckabee is still earning an undisclosed amount of money from speaking fees while campaigning for president. It’s nothing like the kind of cash Rudy Giuliani pulls in, but could this story damage Huckabee’s image?

Meanwhile, below the radar, a hit piece claiming Huckabee is “no friend of homeschoolers” is apparently making the rounds on conservative homeschoolers’ blogs.

I’m betting Huckabee can ride this stuff out, at least in Iowa. But probably he would have been better served by peaking a few weeks later. What do you think?

It’s obvious from the recent polling in Iowa that the top three candidates are bunched closely together. The ground game will decide the outcome on January 3.

Jerome Armstrong, founder of MyDD and “blogfather” of Daily Kos, came up with this prediction about how turnout will influence the Democratic results:

Turnout numbers        Favors

<150,000               Edwards

150-170,000            Clinton

>170,000               Obama

Basically, if it’s all the tried and true 2004 caucus goers, plus another 25% or so, that Edwards has the advantage. If it winds up being a blown out caucus that has greater than 50,000 more attendees than 2004 (most of the polls are working off this assumption), then Obama wins. If it’s somewhere in the middle, bigger than what would be usual but less than what’s being projected in the polls, then it’s basically going to be something like this poll.

Although many speculate that a record turnout would favor Obama and Clinton, I am hoping for good weather and a strong turnout on January 3. I don’t want an Edwards victory to be spun away as the result of a snowstorm.

I highly doubt turnout will exceed 150,000, though. Many regular caucus-goers will miss the caucuses this year because they’d already made vacation plans and will be out of state on January 3.

What do you think about Jerome’s prediction? And how do you think an unusually high or low turnout would affect the Republican results? I have to believe that Huckabee’s ground troops will turn out for him no matter what the weather.

As Chris Woods predicted, Tom Tancredo dropped out of the presidential race at a Thursday press conference. The Des Moines Register reports that he endorsed Romney, saying the former Massachusetts governor “is the best hope for our cause.”

The cause that vaulted the Colorado congressman into the race illegal immigration also motivated him to abandon his pursuit of the nomination, Tancredo said.

His continued presence in an election he could not win, he said, may have helped the campaigns of Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. John McCain candidates Tancredo says are soft on immigration.

If you want to relive some highlights from Tancredo’s Iowa campaign, check out this post by Don at Cyclone Conservatives, which includes links to previous posts he wrote after seeing Tancredo in person.

Alternatively, check out noneed4thneed’s posts at Century of the Common Iowan about Tancredo’s tv ads:

http://commoniowan.blogspot.co…

http://commoniowan.blogspot.co…

Interesting how these social conservatives are desperate not to see Huckabee win. First Sam Brownback endorsed John McCain, then Steve King went with Fred Thompson (the two campaigned together on Thursday), and now Tancredo is going with Romney.

Earlier this month, Romney started running this ad in Iowa hitting Huckabee on the immigration issue:

Incidentally, FactCheck.org found some problems with that ad.

I found this short anti-Huckabee YouTube focusing on immigration:

Now Huckabee is touting his own immigration plan on the stump in Iowa. Will he be able to withstand attacks from so many rivals? I’m betting he will as long as the anti-Huckabee forces are divided among several candidates.

Incidentally, a college student I know who interned for Brownback’s campaign this summer and is now volunteering for McCain says the mood is VERY upbeat at McCain’s Iowa HQ.

They say that a great political ad gets the message across even if you watch it with the sound turned down. Check out the bookshelf that looks like a white cross in the background behind Huckabee as he wishes us all a merry Christmas:

(hat tip to Don at Cyclone Conservatives)

Did anyone watch? Did anything interesting happen?

Let us know what you thought.

The Des Moines Register ran an interesting piece today about the network of conservative Christian home-schoolers who are going to volunteer countless hours for Huckabee in the coming weeks: Home-schoolers propel Huckabee

I have secular progressive friends who are home-schoolers, but they seem divided among several candidates, and I don’t think they are contributing significantly to any Democratic campaign the way conservatives are to Huckabee.

I spend a little time on non-political blogs related to mothering/parenting (not posting as “desmoinesdem”). I noticed support for Huckabee on a few of those blogs back in the spring and summer. For instance, see this Christian home-schooler’s blog Making Home. It’s full of Bible interpretation and marriage tips for Christian wives and mothers, with a constant link to a pro-Huckabee site on the right side of the screen.

By the way, you may recall that Making Home is the blog where I was banned from commenting after only a few months. I had to laugh–I’ve hardly ever been troll-rated in several years at Daily Kos and MyDD.

I just got a robocall paid for by “Common Sense Issues,” whatever that is. It was a brief survey with questions intended to generate interest in Mike Huckabee. The voice said the phone number at the end of the call too fast for me to catch it. The voice referred me to this website, “Trust Huckabee”:

http://www.trusthuckabee.com

These were the questions, as closely as I can remember them. I may have missed some–I didn’t have a pen and paper handy–but I sat down at the computer within a minute of the call ending, so my memory is fresh.

Do you plan to participate in the Republican caucus on January 3?

Do you plan to participate in the Democratic caucus on January 3?

On the issue of abortion, do you consider yourself pro-life?

Do you believe that a marriage should be between one man and one woman?

[I can’t remember the wording, but it was something about Bill Clinton praising Mike Huckabee saying everyone likes him, followed by a question about whether that makes me want to learn more about Mike Huckabee.]

Does the fact that Mike Huckabee raised his state’s education rating from 49th to [can’t remember, some number in the 20s] make you interested in learning more about Mike Huckabee?

Does the fact that for the last 19 years there has been either a Bush or a Clinton in the White House concern you? [I think that was the question–it may have been: does the possibility of having either a Bush or a Clinton in the White House for 27 years concern you?]

Those are all the questions I can remember. The voice was talking very fast at the end, encouraging me to go to www.trusthuckabee.com, saying the call was paid for by Common Sense Issues and giving a phone number with a 719 area code. (I couldn’t catch the whole number, and I don’t have caller ID.)

I don’t know if I would have gotten more questions if I had answered some of the robocall questions differently (e.g. if I had said yes, I identify as pro-life). Probably the questions would have been the same no matter what I said, though.

I am not an expert on campaign finance law. I noticed this disclaimer on the Trust Huckabee website:

Trust Huckabee is a grassroots independent organization committed to educating voters to support Governor Mike Huckabee for the Republican Nomination for President of the United States. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

Since the robocall did not explicitly ask me to caucus for Huckabee, I assume there is no potential FEC problem. But I also saw this on the Trust Huckabee website:

Governor Huckabee can win the Iowa Caucuses if you commit yourself to attending your Precinct Caucus and become a Precinct Captain. It is all about numbers and organization. We have the numbers, we have the names, we need to build the organization.

Join Now!

Can an independent group recruit precinct captains for Huckabee’s presidential campaign? Do FEC disclosure requirements come into play here? Any election lawyers in the house?

UPDATE: Daily Kos user “omegajew” got the same call and reminded me that there was an anti-gay marriage question in there, so I added that to the list above. I can’t remember the exact wording, but what I wrote is a decent paraphrase.

Ben Smith of Politico broke this story, but Josh Marshall's team at Talking Points Memo is doing the most follow-up. (By the way, Josh should get the Pulitzer next year for his coverage of the Bush administration's abuse of power in firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons.)

Anyway, click the link. It turns out the NYPD didn't just drive Rudy to visit his girlfriend, and didn't just drive Rudy's girlfriend when he wasn't around, they also sometimes drove her friends and family in a city-owned car. 

Also, New York City cops sometimes walked her dog.

No way can Rudy's campaign last another month. 

UPDATE: Take a minute and fourteen seconds out of your life to watch this video.