Tag Archives: Des Moines

Life & Death of Political Campaigns

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

A political campaign is like a wedding or the launch of a space vehicle in that the planning and activity starts sometimes years in advance, reaches a frenzied pitch in the last days before the event, then it all stops with “I do,” the “The vehicles has cleared the tower,” or, “We’re reassessing.”

We assume, if none of the parties to the marriage are named Kardashian, the happy couple will settle down to years of house holding and child rearing while the florists, caterers, drivers, and bride’s maids go back to their regular lives.

Having handed control of a space launch over to mission control in Houston, the launch planners likewise turn in their three-ring binders and start the count-down clock for the next mission.

A political campaign that ends, often ends suddenly, and completely.

In the case of Rep. Michele Bachmann, there will be a few weeks of winding down; collecting cell phones and matching rental car records to states in which staffers were supposed to have been working but, that will be handled by the back office staff. Continue reading →

Presidential Candidates: Off and Running

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

From Des Moines, Iowa

At long last, real voters cast real votes on behalf of real candidates. One down, 49 to go and that doesn’t include American Somoa, Guam, the District of Columbia and other U.S. holdings.

You already know what happened last night: Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. Rick Santorum essentially tied for first with 25 percent apiece. Rep. Ron Paul faded to third with about 2 percent. Speaker Newt Gingrich preserved a semblance of a win by beating out Gov. Rick Perry about 13 percent to 10 percent with Rep. Michele Bachmann coming in sixth with about five percent of the votes.

The Santorum story here – and it’s a good story – is, months and months of hard work and long road trips finally paid off. After Conservatives in Iowa kicked the tires of the four other candidates: Bachmann, Perry, Cain and Gingrich; they decided to take a look at Santorum and decided he was as good as they were likely to get and they made their choice pretty clear. Continue reading →

Des Moines Des Bate

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The thing about telling you that I watched the GOP debate that took place in Des Moines, Iowa Saturday night is I have to admit I had nothing else to do Saturday night.

— Attend Joint Chiefs of Staff Christmas Party – Pentagon

— Fly to New York to see “Spiderman” – Broadway

— Weekend cruise to friend’s private island – Caribbean

— Feed the cat

— Make a meat loaf

— Watch GOP debate

Here’s the shorthand version of what I think happened.

Newt Gingrich won. No surprise. Gingrich is leading the pack because there have been 217 debates and he’s been great in all of them. Anyone who thought he was going to suddenly collapse under the weight of being the frontrunner simply doesn’t understand the Tao of Newt.

The Twitter-verse exploded when Mitt Romney offered to bet Rick Perry $10,000 on who was right about what was in Romney’s book regarding a national individual mandate for health care. Continue reading →