Well…here we go. At least I think so. I have a few errands to run this afternoon, so I wrote this post well in advance and scheduled it to fire off at 5:00 pm, when the Iowa caucuses start. So…I might still be stuck in traffic or fixing a flat tire or even dead right now.
So…feel free to go on (and on and on) without me, and I’ll catch up right after I order myself a beer. I mean, unless I’m dead.
We will mostly focus on the Republican caucus this evening because, as the LA Times points out:
For Democrats, the process will be simple since President Obama is the party’s de facto nominee.
(And for the benefit of our “low-information commenters” [a.k.a trolls] I’ll point out that, no, “de facto” is not some kind of racial epithet.)
The LA Times does a pretty good job of describing the Republican caucus. But…the Republican Party of Iowa does a better job…they have it down to bullet points:
All caucus participants arrive at their precincts where they will sign in at the door upon arrival. Caucuses will begin at 7:00PM CT.
That would be 5:00 our time.
The caucus meetings begin with the pledge of allegiance. A caucus chair and secretary will be elected by the body to run the meeting and take notes.
What! No reading of the Constitution?!? What a bunch of Constitution-hating reactionaries! (And shouldn’t the second sentence be its own bullet point?)
After the chair and secretary are elected, candidate representatives from each campaign are given time to speak on behalf of their candidate.
Here is where uncomfortable things might happen—like, say, Santorum getting smeared by a Paulinista.
Once the speakers have finished, sheets of paper are be passed out to every registered Iowa Republican from the precinct. Voters then write down their candidate preference.
Wait…where is the part where they check for government-issued photo ids?
All votes are then collected. Every vote is counted. The caucus chair and secretary will count the votes in front of the caucus and a representative from each campaign is allowed to observe the counting of the votes. The results are recorded on an official form provided by the Republican Party of Iowa and are announced to the caucus. A caucus reporter is chosen to report the results to the Republican Party of Iowa, accompanied by campaign representatives to verify the results reported to Iowa GOP officials.
Republicans sound so distrustful of Republicans!
RPI officials do not count results; they aggregate them from around the state and report them to the media. To ensure consistency in reporting, campaign representatives have the opportunity to be present with RPI officials as votes are reported to the public.
I hope they at least add them up (which is kind-of like counting). I mean, I don’t want to listen to the reports from all 1,774 precincts.
We will be reporting the votes for Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Buddy Roemer, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, “No Preference,” and “Other.” “No Preference” votes include those who vote “present,” “no preference, “uncommitted,” or “none of the above.”
That’s the process…enjoy!
5:31: I got here a bit late, and there were three new attendees to chat with. CNN is on the teevee, but I might be totally antisocial and put headphones on to listen to NPRs coverage of the circus caucus.
5:40: I cannot really hear what is going on, but the whizbang graphic on CNN suggests that born-again evangelical Christians rate Santorum as number 2. That sounds about right.
6:07: It is a three way race between Paul, Romney and Santorum, so far. With something like 14,000 votes in…Huntsman has 106.
6:22: That is one hairy-ass microphone cover I see on CNN.
6:25: Santorum slides right by Romney to number 2!
7:04: Romney puts Santorum behind him!
7:05: ….and Santorum surges ahead of Romney!
7:06: I’m getting pretty excited about a last minute Huntsman surge!
7:08: With Santorum in the lead, one must ask: Don’t they have Google in Iowa?!?
7:12: It’s loud…I cannot hear the TV. People are talking to me. Santorum is all over the teevee. I don’t know how much longer I can hold out!
7:25: Promoted comment from Michael: “Romney 23%, Paul 23%, Santorum 23%. The Republicans are having themselves a three-way.”
7:30: Santorum may come out of this in the pole position!
7:38: Okay…so Michele Bachmann isn’t going to win this one. At least she has her Aimes Straw Poll victory to propel her into the lead. Go Michele!
7:40: Gingrich is going to win. I mean, just look at the numbers!
7:44: I heard on the news this evening that Gov. Gregoire has some sort of big announcement tomorrow related to gay marriage. Does this have anything to do with Santorum’s Iowa showing???
7:46: New update. Santorum is sandwiched in the narrow gap between Romney and Paul.
7:49: And, once again, and to Romney’s great shame…Santorum percolates to the top!!!
8:00: James Carville missed his calling in life. He should have been an evil villain in a Batman movie. The Snake™ (says N in Seattle and Rebecca, independently).
8:13: Wow…all night, Romney and Santorum have been swapping positions. Mitt’s on top the Rick’s on top, Mitt’s on top then Rick’s on top.
8:17: Newt speaks. “We are at the beginning of an extraordinarily important campaign.” Yes…there are books to sell!
8:29: Santorum squeaks ahead of Romney. Yeah…well, I cannot wait for next week’s New Hampshire primary, because I want to see Mitt Romney lick Santorum.
8:34: Michele Bachmann says thanks to the 5,891 people of her “home state” of Iowa that voted for her.
8:51: I just tweeted Dan Savage: “As Seattle’s Drinking Liberally organizer, I want to express our deep gratitude 2 u for making tonight so fucking enjoyable”
8:53: Now I just tweeted Dan Savage: “As the person liveblogging at HorsesAss, I want to thank you on everyone’s behalf for making tonight so fucking entertaining!”
8:55: Is that Rick Perry’s daughter standing behind him??? She has his eyes and Steve Tyler’s mouth. My GAWD! The Perry rumors are TRUE!!!!
9:08: My vision of a Santorum—Brownback ticket may yet be realized!
9:09: A decade and a half ago, I voted against Santorum. Even then, long before Dan Savage’s neologism, there was something really, really icky about the man and the candidate.
9:22: Santorum is on the teevee spreading his philosophy….
For the sake of the late night comedy writers we can only hope Santorum comes out on top of the Republicans.
Hoping against hope they nominate Bachmann. She’s so dumb she climbs trees while bitching about branch management.
@ 1
Well , Santorum seems to be surging from behind. Making a comeback as it were. I wonder if he’ll reach around to his opponents after this is finished.
Ron Paul, the likely winner of the Iowa caucus, is known for what piece of legislation in his 30+ year career as a legislator?
The 6:25 update should have read
“Santorum has reached around Romney “
Dr. NO is known for legislating no as in “unconstitutional”.
@5
ewuu….
Wonder if Randall Terry will get any votes on the Democratic side.
“•The caucus meetings begin with the pledge of allegiance.”
Pledge of allegiance to who? The GOP, Karl Rove, a candidate, or the county chairman?
“Wait…where is the part where they check for government-issued photo ids?”
That rule only applies to Democrats, minorities, elderly and poor people, and other subversives.
Romney 23%, Paul 23%, Santorum 23%. The Republicans are having themselves a three-way.
@8,
Allegiance to Grocer Norquist, you silly rabbit.
According to CNN, the breakdown of caucus-goers is 57% men, 43% women. If that’s a true reflection of Iowa’s population makeup, no wonder the place is so Republican. If you factor in the number of males who must have been killed by now in the fighting over the limited supply of females the original ratio must have been at least 2-to-1.
Is it possible Rick Sanitarium could win this thing?
@11 Now why didn’t I think of that? I should’ve known.
Go frothy go!
Where would all those rugged-individualist farmers be without their corn subsidies, crop supports, rural electrification, farm loans, and other socialist programs?
Probably at the Democrat caucus.
Rick Sanitarium takes the lead!
It’s the Santorum Surge, he’s on top and pounding away with about 150 vote lead.
So my question is, is the Santorum Surge an anti-Romney thing or are these really culture war voters that are big on Santorum?
@19,
Both.
Key take away from Frothy’s showing tonight is that Willard cannot break the 25% threshold.
According to CNN, Gingrich’s is way down in the polls cause he came too soon.
Sounds like the overall turnout is in the medium range.
@22, I was just looking for turnout numbers. Looks low to me as I do the summing.
Santorum’s on top by 390 votes, but will he have the stamina to last all night?
Ron Paul has overtaken Mittens for 2nd place by 1 vote — Paul 12,205, Romney 12,204.
My bad, Romney has 12,304, so is still in 2nd.
DK says ” So the Dems drew 240,000 last time. And the GOP looks like they’ll get about 110-115K. Hell of an enthusiasm gap.”
Mittens is up!
Santorum’s back on top. They’re swapping positions like teenagers in a sub-compact tonight.
Darryl @7:46 and Michael @28: CNN must be lagging behind with results because they still have Santorum on top (and Paul a distant 3rd).
Santorum, Perry, and Bachmann together took in 40% of the vote, I was really hoping that our culture war trio were going to get a smaller % than that.
Bachmann’s pathetic 5,514 votes out of 105,000+ votes should knock her out of the race.
@32, you’re assuming Dog doesn’t miraculously intervene and change the results.
Romney’s taken the lead, according to CNN.
geezus, teh rabbutt is on the edge of his seat….
guess you never heard of just waiting for the final tally, eh.
oh wait…maybe dean logan’s in Iowa now!
Did Ron Paul just say that Howard Taft, who died in 1930, didn’t want us to join NATO? I’m pretty sure that’s what he said, but with all his incoherent babbling it’s hard to tell.
@35 Who left the manhole cover open?
God, where are the candidates getting these hacks designing their posters? This is like a typographer’s guide to things not to do!
This outcome can’t be good for Mittster.
MSNBC points out that Ron Paul is winning almost half of the under-30 voters, who make up 15% of Iowa’s caucus-goers (compared to 11% four years ago). Paul also is getting a third of the first-time caucus-goers.
Santorum’s strength is coming from evangelicals.
And then there’s this: “31% say the quality that matters most to them is the ability to beat President Obama, and Romney gets 49% from that group … [but] Romney gets just 1% from the 26% who are looking for a true conservative, and … just 11% from those looking for a nominee with a strong moral character.”
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com.....lls-so-far
Roger Rabbit Commentary: So the story seems to be evangelicals (Santorum), young people (Paul), and throw-up-your-hands (Romney).
Santorum will not do as well in New Hampshire but will be at an advantage in South Carolina.
Oh wait, he’s Roman Catholic…
Michelle Bachman??
Frothy! Frothy! Frothy!
In other news (yes, there’s other news),
“Gov. Chris Gregoire is expected to announce her support for gay marriage at a news conference Wednesday morning, according to sources close to the discussions.”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c....._publ.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I’m not gay, but I’m liberal, and that means I believe the law should treat people equally. Churches against gay marriages don’t have to perform them; this isn’t about ecclesiastical practices, it’s about religion-neutral state policy.
Re 8:29: Is it over? CNN’s latest update shows 96% reporting; and with a race this close the last 4% might make a difference.
Any way you slice it, this can’t be good for Mittens.
LMAO!! Congrats to the HNMT. He’s tossing the dolly with a smile on the old pucker!
http://i72.photobucket.com/alb.....s_HaHa.jpg
@4
Well since he’s only passed one piece of legislation in his entire career (I have no idea what it was about) I’m assuming it’s that one.
According to CNN’s interactive Iowa map, Romney is winning Iowa’s cities (does Iowa have cities? I didn’t know Iowa had cities!) by comfortable margins.
The Romney and Paul counties are clustered in the eastern part of the state, where some of the voters have more than a 5th grade education. The cornpone counties are solid Santorum, but that’s not saying much, because most of those counties only have 200 or so sentient residents (not counting crows, snakes, or rabbits).
@48
The Capitol of Iowa, Iowa City, is a really nice place, is chocked full of liberals, is home to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is a an UNESCO City of Literature.
Dubuque’s, knocked down a couple of awards for revitalization and they’re going the liberal, eco-friendly route. Forbes likes the place and 60 Minutes did a pretty cool piece on Dubuque. I used to live there. It’s a nice town.
In ’08 the Democratic caucuses pulled in about double what the Republican’s did.
There’s meth in the west side of Iowa. Eastern Iowa, like Dubuque, has colleges, IBM, and high tech manufacturing plants.
Steve Benen over at Washington Monthly nails it :
In the immortal words of the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “All right, we’ll call it a draw.” Whichever one of these two manage to come out on top, the results are effectively the same: Romney spent well over $4 million in Iowa, only to discover (a) three-quarters of Republicans still don’t like him; and (b) he tied a guy who spent about one-eighth the amount of money and was polling in single digits as recently as a few weeks ago.
Tonight’s big winner is obvious: his name is Barack Obama.
So my question is, is the Santorum Surge an anti-Romney thing?…
If you go by the free republic crowd, they loath romney.
Darryl, you lived in PA?
@50
That sounds about right.
According to CNN, with 99% of precincts reporting, Santorum is now 5 votes ahead of Romney — 29,662 to 29,557.
The Romney-Santorum race in Iowa is kinda reminiscent of yesterday’s Rose Bowl game.
Just watched a bit of Newt Gingrich. What an insufferable ass..
Won’t count him out just yet, (remember McSame this time 4 years back) but if he doesn’t find a way to rise above what Citizen United Super Pac money is doing to him, he’s looking about as irrelevant as Michelle Bachmann.
MikeBoyScout,
“Darryl, you lived in PA?”
I did…Lived in State College from 1990 to 1999 doing grad school and a post-doctoral fellowship.
Final tally:
Romney – 30,015
Santorum – 30,007
Great live blogging by Darryl, I really enjoyed all the gay inuendos – deserving of the Family Values Holier than Thou We Scam Party.
Possible future President Rick Scrotum almost got head.
Get some counseling gleeman….
Did I hear right that the total votes in the Iowa Republican Caucus were about 120,000????
We spent the last year listening to some seven Republican campaings cris-crossing the state, and network pundits all telling us how important Iowa is in choosing the next President????
The Romney campaing alone spent millions in Iowa just to pull off a tie, and I can’t even guess the total amount spent between all the campaigns and the TV, radio, and print media, not to mention pollsters.
Let’s face it – we’ve been duped by the people of Dubuque. This is all a scam by some savy Iowa con-artists who sat around the local diner one day, and said to themselves – “Well, we don’t have much of a tourist industry, even in summer. What can we do to make people from out-of-state come to Iowa in the middle of the dang winter to spend an ungodly amount of money here?”
Just out of curiosity: Those eight votes which allow Romney to claim the “front runner” mantel – did the come from his own family? After all, Iowa has “same day” voter registration, and nobody checks ID’s at the door!
@63 Funny how Republicans don’t photo-ID their voters, ain’t it? Next time some GOP loudmouth tries to tell you we need photo-ID laws to protect us from “voting fraud,” ask him why Iowa Republicans don’t require voters to flash photo IDs to get into their presidential nominating caucuses.
I wonder how many 13-year-olds voted in Iowa last night?
Makes you wonder if, years ago, Ron Paul made babies sign pledges to vote for him before he’d deliver them.
@20
What is the obession with calling Romney Willard? I know that it is his real name, but many people go by different names than their real name. Like Bud Seligs’ real firt name is Allen, but no one calls him Allen. So what is calling Romney Willard trying to prove?