After announcing his candidacy on Jay Leno’s show last night, Fred Thompson flew to Des Moines, IA, with his wife Jeri and their two very young children.  This afternoon a few miles away from me, former Sen. Thompson held his first public event as a declared presidential candidate.
So how did it go?  I was not [...]

New poll numbers from the American Research Group reveal significant improvement in former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s standing in Iowa, bouncing to 14% support after the Iowa Republican Straw Poll earlier this month.  ARG’s polling indicated that Huckabee had the support of only 1% of Iowa Republican caucus-goers last month.
While the ARG’s likely caucus-goer screen is [...]

John Deeth snapped this photo of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s new Iowa City campaign office:

Giuliani is the first Republican to open an office in Iowa City, county seat of “The People’s Republic of Johnson County.” Iowa City is known for its large progressive community, but Deeth correctly notes why opening an [...]

“Mainstream Iowan,” a blog that is decidedly not mainstream, writes this morning that illegal immigration is “a public health issue for all Americans.”
Under a photo of a young hispanic male wearing a scary SARS mask, the blogger recounts this story:
When doctors told Francisco Santos he had tuberculosis Friday, health officials said the Gwinnett County 17-year-old [...]

After the Straw Poll, Huckabee and Brownback have both significantly downsized their Iowa campaigns despite their top three finishes.
For Huckabee, who got the second-place spot in Ames, the downsizing is temporary:
Rather than kicking his Iowa campaign up a notch, second-place Ames Straw Poll finisher Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas downsized his Iowa operation to just [...]

Greg Sargent at TPM Election Central noticed this nugget in the latest Strategic Vision poll of likely caucus goers:
 4. Do you favor a withdrawal of all United States military from Iraq within the next six months? (Republicans Only)
Yes [...]

If you hadn’t heard, French Fries are now Freedom Fries and Iowa Voice is now the Liberty Pundit.
And I’m not really accusing Brian and our other conservative friends at that site of hating our state, but come on.  You blog about national politics, and you think having Iowa in your name is a bad thing [...]

Because of what I do, I get asked a lot about how the “MSM” — I’ll call it the “traditional media” — approaches blogs in Iowa. Because I think that over the past few months I’ve developed an interesting answer to the question, and because at cocktail parties I am not always as articulate [...]

The as-yet-mostly-untold story of yesterday’s Iowa GOP Straw Poll in Ames is not about dueling bands and barbecues, of red inked thumbs or voting machine malfunctions; it is about tax policy. Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won the coveted second-place spot over Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback on that alone.Brownback’s record on taxes was spotless enough [...]

The primacy of the Iowa Caucuses is Chet Culver’s top priority, but (1) should it be? And (2) does it matter what Culver’s priorities are?
On the first question: being chronologically first isn’t sufficient; and, taken to the extreme, it could be a bad thing. Idaho could decide to hold its primary tomorrow, and [...]