Iowa Caucus Guy's 2024 Blog

I like to blog about the funny and weird parts of the Iowa Caucus campaign.  My last post had mentioned the Lincoln Dinner held in Des Moines in July. There have been several notable “viral” moments but this may be the one that caused the most buzz.  The Huffington Post reported: Former President Donald Trump faced the music at a campaign event in Iowa ― and the irony was off the charts. As Trump took the stage, the song lyric “one could end up going to prison, one just might be president” played from Brooks & Dunn’s “Only in America.” Trump pumped his fist after “prison” but probably wasn’t hearing the words. News outlets reported that the dozen candidates who spoke to the crowd all walked out to snippets of the same song.  Armchair pundits postulated that it surely wasn’t an accident.  Politico reported: - that it could have been a retaliation to a then recent verbal attack by Trump on Gov. Kim Reynolds (Reynolds had been a shortlist Veep candidate on most pund...

  For some time now, I have written about the primary elections in the US There are plenty of places to read serious political discussion but that’s not what I do.  I don’t love politics, but what I do love is those early days of an election where every is patriotic, everyone is hopeful and the problems of the world look solvable.  It is those times where even the most obscurest of politicians feel the call to help their country.  You can blame Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Pete Buttigieg among others who actually went from obscurity to national headlines.  But, those are the exceptions. Only a real election historian is likely to remember Wayne Messam, Rubin Askew, Alan Cranston, Gary Bauer, Fred Karger, Carol Mosley Braun, and Arlen Specter to name a few.  For the 2024 cycle, I haven’t been able to be timely- so I have been cherry picking the most interesting things to write about.  It is for that reason, that I haven’t gotten around to writing abou...

This past week, Mike Pence came to Iowa.  I have kind of dismissed Pence though I do know he has been spending a lot of time in the state.  I mentioned his recent trip to Newton .  This came as news from WPA Intelligence’s Iowa poll that showed Pence in front of Nikki Haley and Tim Scott.  Trump 51 % DeSantis 14 % Ramaswamy 9 %  Pence 7 % Haley 6 % Scott 4 % Christie 4 %  Now, the poll may be an outlier as another recent poll -Civiqs puts Haley in third place with 11% in Iowa.  Trump 55 %  DeSantis 17 % Haley 11 % Ramaswamy 5 %  Scott 4 % Christie 2 %  Binkley 2 % Burgum 1 % Pence 1 % So two possibilities. If Pence is indeed ahead, I can come up with a theory. Scott and Haley run TV ads constantly while Pence hasn’t. I’m not saying people do the opposite of what TV ads tell them, but maybe …  When a politician interrupts your favorite TV show and tells you to vote for them Politico’s Adam Wren covered Pence’s travels in Io...

The 2024 GOP race was always going to be Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.  Ronald Reagan always said the 11th GOP Commandment was “Thou shall not speak ill of another Republican”  But that civility doesn’t exist in the post - Trump landscape. Trump and DeSantis have went at each other hard.  The Iowa State Fair was probably the peak moment where Trump really just seemed to troll his opponent.   The Daily Beast reported this: Ron DeSantis was holding a “fairside chat” with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds when a plane trailing a banner suddenly appeared above the Iowa State Fair on Saturday. “Be likable, Ron,” the banner read—an obvious reference to the criticism that DeSantis does not have the charisma needed to win the Republican nomination for president and is often awkward on the trail. The Washington Post reports the display was paid for by Donald Trump—who arrived at the fair with supporters from Florida, handed out MAGA hats, and did not meet with Reynolds or take par...

 I keep this blog of all the weird (and sometimes things that are normal but become weird in context) things that go on the Iowa Caucus Campaign Trail.  I am not always timely and I am definitely not the best resource, but I am just having some fun. I think at times, that I have seen it all, but sometimes things like this news item from yesterday still surprises me.  The Washington Examiner reported this headline yesterday:  Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign vehicle involved in car crash with protesters   Definitely weird.  Probably didn't look like this picture, if I am being honest We talk about “getting close” to the candidates but this is ridiculous cha-cha-cha.  I don’t want any candidate to be harmed. Obviously, I am a big supporter of candidates making themselves available and I don’t want to be jeopardized. I do think of the possibility of it being intentional but I have also been at many campaign events in my lifetime and I know there is always ...

One of the fun moments of the Caucus Season is the Corn Kernel Poll- the very unofficial State Fair event where anyone can express their Presidential preference via a corn kernel.  At least I don’t take it seriously. Eric Trump clearly does when he made headlines in multiple outlets in 2019  This morning on Fox and Friends, Eric Trump claimed media bias over coverage of the famed “Cast Your Kernel” polling at the Iowa State Fair, in which attendees place a single kernel of corn into the jar of the presidential candidate they favor. Trump claimed the jar of his father, President Donald Trump, was overflowing compared to the turnout of some Democrats such as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, but that news outlets covering the poll were only displaying images of Democrats’ jars.   Held every four years starting in 2015, the Trumps shouldn’t complain as Donald won that first Poll with 29-19-8 win place show ahead of Ben Carson and eventual Iowa Caucus Winner Ted Cruz...

While I know that I can’t keep up with the movement in jockeying for the GOP nomination, I have decided that I would as much as possible like to document some of the more important moments.  So I am going to do a snapshot of September 24.  Polling shows Trump still has a commanding lead and the race for second place seems to be in question now. Yes, DeSantis owns it for now, but Nikki Haley, Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy all have a claim at it.  When speaking of Iowa politics, one of the biggest names is Bob Vander Plaats- CEO of the Conservative activist group The Family Leader, three time candidate for Governor and wanna be Kingmaker.  Whether you like VanderPlaats or not, his record is quite interesting. He has backed the last three winners of the Iowa Republican Caucuses- Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz. You might notice that none of those men would win their eventual nomination.  I think most people forgot the contentious 2016 caucus where Cruz ...