Skip to main content

What's in a Caucus?



Ever since the Iowa caucuses propelled McGovern in the 1972 Democratic race, a lot of interest has been put into this state.  What this bodes for Rick Santorum remains to be seen, but here is a short history of the Iowa caucuses.

You have to marvel at how the former Pennsylvania senator went from a virtual nobody in this election cycle to a virtual tie with Romney in Iowa.  But, with the two of them together barely getting 50% of the caucus vote, you can still say it is a "hung jury" as far as a clear frontrunner in the GOP race.

Comments

  1. [somewhat off topic ...]

    Newt Gingrich says our Founding Fathers opposed cannabis:

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/04/gingrich-founding-fathers-would-have-violent-reaction-to-pot-growers/


    He obviously needs a few history lessons as our Founders were growers of that good stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think they grew cannibis mostly for hemp products, but ol' Newt is too busy playing into the religious right wing of the party to bother with any facts.

    Meanwhile, the Newt is lashing out at Romney and Paul as he tries to warm up to New Hampshire voters,

    http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/newt-gingrich-unloads-mitt-romney-ron-paul-hampshire-184017787.html

    It's fun watching the GOP primaries this year, especially now that the gloves are off.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's amusing to see the media fawning all over Santorum after dismissing him for most of the campaign. Not that he deserved any attention. But, I think this "Santorum mania" will be very short lived. He better enjoy it while he can.

    Although I found this odd piece on the relationship between Santorum and U2's Bono,

    http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/rick-santorum-foreign-policy-combative-hawk-according-bono-132121994.html

    Interestingly, the Santorum campaign linked a fundraiser with a U2 concert by inviting persons to his box seat, but apparently neither Bono nor any other member of U2 are prepared to endorse him,

    http://www.santorumexposed.com/serendipity/archives/82-Bono-Quickly-Distances-Himself-from-Rick.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. "Front-runner Mitt Romney came under attack today in the second Republican presidential debate in two days, with rivals saying he couldn't defeat President Obama."

    As if . . . oh, never mind.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This race appears over before it hardly began. Shaping up a lot like what happened to the Democrats in 2004. The only question is whether the teabaggers can bring themselves to support Romney, or if they jump ship and vote for Ron Paul or someone else as an "Independent." Either way, the Republicans lose in November.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Kamikaze Newt,

    http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/it-s-on-to-south-carolina-for-kamikaze-newt--20120110

    ReplyDelete
  7. Seems Newt now considers himself part of the Reagan team,

    "I participated in the '80s in an enormous project of economic growth and, with President Reagan's leadership, the American people created 16 million jobs," he said.

    http://news.yahoo.com/south-carolina-debate-critical-romney-gingrich-looms-002206719.html

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005