Political Memo: Ridiculous Push votes as Iowa campaign Wraps

Mitt Romney signed the supporters of Davenport, Iowa Mississippi campaign pins Valley at amusement parks. More photos?

DES MOINES — Mitt Romney has grown to rely on his Iowa prospects that Monday evening, he will be all submissive pretense and proclaimed, "We going to win this thing." At the same time, Rick Santorum claimed that the profit of his momentum runs within its own whiff.

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Both may be correct.

Iowa caucuses curious political ritual, which opens yet another race of the House of representatives on Tuesday, is the second part completes the profits of the knack turns to you. And they are the only one likely to produce losers — or to deal with surprises — they are the winner of the Conference of interpreter coronate.

To the attention of all of the Republican field in the frenzied burst, paid to the "Innocence" on the last day of campaigning seemed as if political Washington — of weight and the creation of the media here on Monday — the race only now, landed.

They recited as gospel, Mr. Romney and Mr. Santorum by Representative Ron Paul of Texas and at the top of the pack. If these statements are true, for each of the three rush submit New Hampshire go to the contest, as the profit.

Iowa caucuses results set up competition in the ring after the yearlong prelude, which has been off the charts for the influenza viruses.

Remember Sarah Palin bus travel when prompted to indicate with certainty that he runs the television pundit class?

Who's who, five months ago, is to predict the Herman Cain was going to hold the lead to a vote before evaporating? Newt Gingrich was on the up, down and then up again; now he is down again.

And Rick Santorum? Two weeks ago, he tried to get the reluctant insurance company for a group of employees in the middle of the city of Des Moines office building stick with him, when he spoke during a lunch break. He was in the room had a sweater vest, which is the only heat came to define him. Monday's events were so entangled in the overcrowded during the campaign Stop save supporter.

His campaign said it was now looking more than Iowa to strengthen support and given Mr. Romney, is a long time sought to fill the party the evangelical base, the position of the viable alternative to the conservative.

Four years ago, Mr. Paul was political Punch-line. What would be a rapid withdrawal of Afghanistan and the Republican Guard the Pentagon cuts? Appears to be the type who will take part in the Iowa caucuses, polls, which have shown that Mr. Paul or near the top in this field.

So one must be a fool to go too much out of the part to predict with certainty what will happen on Tuesday, and any outside — or expected does not have consequences is wrong. (Imagine that). Is still limited, a number of k??nteit?, which specifies whether the Republicans go to internal differences between the previous and tuoteuttamisesta President Obama soon.

Here is a look at some of the possibilities of Tuesday evening, as Republicans gathered at caucuses, 1,774 airport services wherever the President as a candidate in Iowa voters declared their primary meetings.

Iowa at the end of the Second Chance

Iowa was Mitt Romney gamble. And even if it does not pay the Conference interpreter in, his advisors already crowing that they were in better shape than they were once the item is expected to be in the nominating contest. There are two chief reasons: Mr. Gingrich and .gov Rick Perry in Texas, whose candidates are substantially was wounded.

It's not as if still Mr. Romney horizon does not have the warning signs — many conservatives see him hold my nose-front-runner — but her organization has always built stumbles along the way-cushion. As he was in the final days of the campaign crisscrossing Iowa in standby brigades, to extract the response forms were in Florida, absentee to his supporters highlight the Organization's depth and design of the mailboxes in any of his rivals is not able to match.

"We going to win this thing," Mr. Romney told the overflowing crowd Monday night during one of his stops dawn dusk day Iowa campaigning.

If he wins the caucuses in a firm, his immediate challenge is to avoid overconfidence. New Hampshire, voters all over the past year elevating [1] and the results of the Iowa-punishing lessons in the transition. But Mr. Romney lead is New Hampshire, so important to him, voting, that his rivals to be able to defeat him in the primary, the next Tuesday, only if they consolidate their support of the long string.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Patch: 2 January 2012

Earlier versions of this article incorrectly in Polk City, Iowa, the name of the Reising Sun-Cafe.

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The TV Watch: Campaign Ads Flood Iowa TV Stations

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In the last days and hours before the Iowa caucus, campaign ads are flooding local television, adding a riot of green fields, church spires and bustling factories to more prosaic spots for Activia, mattress clearance sales and New Year’s tips from Dr. Patricia Tice, owner of Etiquette Iowa. (Customers should say “thank you” to sales clerks as well as the customary “have a nice day.”)

The campaign commercials are clustered around local newscasts and Sunday talk shows, but also pop up in the middle of “Dr. Phil,” “Wheel of Fortune” and “The Tonight Show.”

The messages about family ties and unfettered free markets are all but impossible to ignore. More intensely now than ever before, political ads are driving the polls and shaping the dizzying race. Many are positive, many are negative, and some are so artfully opaque that they are more like brainteasers than political pitches.

Determined caucus voters may take the time to scrutinize the small-print disclaimer or search the Internet for the provenance of ads placed by organizations with generically patriotic names like The Red, White and Blue Fund and Make Us Great Again. Other viewers must piece together clues and fill in the blanks like contestants on “Wheel of Fortune.” At least in that endeavor, the constant repetition is a help.

One of the more frequent, unfriendly ads, “Whoops,” features Mr. Gingrich in a clip montage saying he made a mistake, with a women’s voice asking mockingly, “Haven’t we had enough mistakes?”

The ad could be on behalf of any of Mr. Gingrich’s rivals, and the name of the “super PAC” that paid for it, Restore Our Future, doesn’t give many clues: Plenty of candidates promise to “restore” family values.

On a third or fourth viewing, however, even amateurs might notice that among the many Gingrich mistakes is “attacking Mitt Romney.” So, Restore Our Future is mostly dedicated to restoring Mr. Romney’s future.

And, perhaps unwittingly, that of Mr. Santorum’s. The former Pennsylvania senator is benefiting from the attacks ads sinking Mr. Gingrich.

Mr. Santorum didn’t have money for many ads, but his last-minute surge won him free publicity: his latest ad, a peppy, triumphalist montage of the candidate with his large family, is all over the Internet and was shown, in excerpt, when he appeared Sunday on “Meet The Press.”

Some political ads aren’t about politics. A series of commercials shown on Friday in Des Moines vaguely promoted positive thinking with a medley of pleasant images — yoga at sunset, sailboats, grandchildren, birthday cakes, college graduation — that could just as easily promote an insurance company or Paxil.

These ads were placed by the Foundation for a Better Life, an organization originally financed by the billionaire conservative Philip F. Anschutz, which promotes inspirational messages in the media.

The Romney campaign said that the Better Life ads are unconnected to the candidate. And yet, the foundation’s message is so oblique and rosy that with a few more flags and a more muscular soundtrack, it could pass for a Romney ad. One of his recent spots, a pastoral poem of green fields, farmers, cows, high school science fairs and words like “can-do,” could lead some to believe the candidate is a Midwestern farmer, not a Harvard-educated business executive and former Massachusetts governor.

There aren’t many anti-Romney ads, at least not as many as one might expect. But an entertaining spot is a double-blast attack on Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich, portraying them as establishment insiders. It’s framed as a 1930s-style black-and-white newsreel. As newspaper headlines swirl accusingly, a narrator denounces their misdeeds — “Romneycare” and “Freddie Mac” — in the rapid, breathless tone once used to describe Rommel’s sweep through North Africa.

It’s old-fashioned and a little corny; so, it seems to smack of a pitch by Representative Paul. Instead, it is paid for by Make Us Great Again, a super PAC that favors another Texan, Governor Perry.

Perhaps, more than most candidates, Mr. Gingrich’s ads have been on a meandering, sometimes turbulent, course, much like his topsy-turvy campaign. His early ads in Iowa were dreamscapes of an idealized back-porch America that echoed Ronald Reagan’s “It’s morning again in America” spots of 1984. But lately, Mr. Gingrich has been the target of so many attack ads that a pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, is running negative ads against the negative ads. (An indignant narrator urges voters to ignore the “falsehoods” spread by “the liberal Republican establishment.”)

The Gingrich campaign is so eager to show the candidate in a favorable light that it has even reissued ads he made with his wife, Callista, in 2009 to promote a documentary on Ronald Reagan.

And desperation must have inspired the latest ad in support of Mr. Gingrich, a 30-minute infomercial sponsored by Newsmax, the conservative magazine and Web site. Even to the untutored eye, the half-hour pitch is gloomy and looks hastily made. The lighting is unflattering and the sound is imperfectly synched. Mr. Gingrich speaks with ease and confidence, but with the sound turned off, some images look like material for his rivals: old photographs of Mr. Gingrich in long sideburns and glasses, black-and-white shots of the former House speaker glad-handing on the steps of the Capitol, and even looking chummy with Democratic insiders.

Mr. Gingrich talks up his own proposals, but spends almost as much time defending himself from his rivals’ charges, particularly the income he received from Freddie Mac.

He also complains that negative ads choked his ascent. But he ends his stretch in Iowa with a Newsmax ad that is anything but positive or cheerful.

Mr. Santorum, on the other hand, has hijacked the Gingrich helium. He can still look grim and a bit truculent in interviews, but in his eve-of-election ad, with his family at his side, he looks radiant.

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Obama to Target Congress in 2012 Re-election Campaign

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Mr. Obama’s election-year strategy is an attempt to capitalize on his recent victory on a short-term extension of the payroll tax cut and on his rising poll numbers. As the stage is set for November, he intends to hammer the theme of economic justice for ordinary Americans rather than continue his legislative battles with Congressional Republicans, said Joshua R. Earnest, the president’s deputy press secretary, previewing the White House’s strategy.

“In terms of the president’s relationship with Congress in 2012,” Mr. Earnest said at a briefing, “the president is no longer tied to Washington, D.C.” Winning a full-year extension of the cut in payroll taxes is the last “must-do” piece of legislation for the White House, he said.

However the White House chooses to frame Mr. Obama’s strategy, it amounts to a wholesale makeover of the young senator who won the presidency in 2008 by promising to change the culture of Washington, rise above the partisan fray and seek compromises.

After three years in office, Mr. Obama is gambling on a go-it-alone approach. In the coming weeks, he will further showcase measures he is taking on his own to revive the economy, Mr. Earnest said, declining to give details.

Mr. Obama has used his executive authority in recent weeks to promote the hiring of returning veterans and help students pay back their college loans. Underscoring the jobs theme, Mr. Obama plans to return to the road, starting with a trip to Cleveland on Wednesday to speak about the economy.

The White House laid out the election-year strategy last week here in Hawaii, where Mr. Obama is vacationing, just as attention turns to the Republican caucuses in Iowa on Tuesday.

The White House has been refining the message since July, when Mr. Obama’s attempts to forge a “grand bargain” with the House Republicans on fiscal policy collapsed and he reverted to a populist, anti-Congress strategy. But it did not gain traction until the last few weeks, when polls began showing that nearly half of Americans approved of the job he was doing, up from percentages in the low 40s during most of the year. House Republicans inadvertently helped him just before they recessed for the holidays when they initially refused to extend the payroll tax cut.

Mr. Earnest said the strategy had successfully planted “the image of a gridlocked, dysfunctional Congress and a president who is leaving no stone unturned to try to find solutions to the difficult financial challenges and economic challenges facing the country.”

Mr. Obama began emphasizing his new strategy in early December with a fiery speech in Osawatomie, Kan., where he said that “breathtaking greed” had contributed to the country’s economic troubles and that this was a “make-or-break moment for the middle class.”

In his weekly address on Saturday, Mr. Obama praised Congress for passing the two-month tax cut extension, but made it clear that the lawmakers had acted only under intense public pressure. He also repeated his vow to fight for middle-class Americans.

“As president, I promise to do everything I can to make America a place where hard work and responsibility are rewarded — one where everyone has a fair shot and everyone does their fair share,” he said.

Mr. Obama’s confrontational approach carries risks, since the imprimatur of Congress is still required for important national business. But the budget deal that resolved the standoff over raising the debt ceiling last summer removed a major weapon Republicans had to push the president.

On Friday, for example, Mr. Obama agreed to delay a request to Congress for $1.2 trillion in additional borrowing authority. That will allow lawmakers to come back to Washington to voice their opposition to more red ink. But even if they vote to block the measure, Mr. Obama can veto it, knowing that the Democratic-controlled Senate will not override him.

The president’s antagonism toward Congress evokes that of President Harry S. Truman, whose come-from-behind campaign in 1948 focused on a “do-nothing Congress.” But Republican analysts have pointed out that the national unemployment rate in November 1948 was 3.8 percent — not 8.6 percent, as it is now — and that the American economy was on the upswing.

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Practical Traveler: Insider Travel Tips From Campaign Reporters

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I knew a campaign assignment would mean spending hours in overlighted terminals, waiting for flights. What I did not know was how much time and energy I would spend figuring out the logistics of travel — everything from how to get from Iowa to New Hampshire as quickly as possible the morning after the caucuses, to how to snag a hotel reservation on Mackinac Island, Mich., during a Republican conference when nearly every room had been taken by political operatives.

For a campaign reporter, knowing how to travel efficiently can mean the difference between getting to a debate on time and spending the night in an airport terminal. (But should that happen, allow me to recommend the Westin in the Detroit airport.)

Below, a few tips that our political team has picked up over the years.

Limit Yourself to a Carry-On

Jeff Zeleny, a national political correspondent, puts it bluntly: “Never check a bag — ever. If your trip is two days or two weeks, never pack more clothes than you can fit in your carry-on luggage.”

Those are good words to live by. Checking a bag means you have to arrive at the airport earlier; it also adds to your trip on the back end, since you have to wait for your suitcase to emerge on the conveyor belt. And then there is the risk of lost luggage.

But traveling light also means packing wisely. Jim Rutenberg, a national political correspondent, and I both like to roll our clothes into long, tight cylinders, because it allows you to cram more outfits into a small bag.

“I don’t get too worried about wrinkles,” Mr. Rutenberg said. “Sort it out at the hotels, almost all of which have ironing boards and irons.”

As for shirts, Mr. Zeleny advised: “Folded shirts are a good idea for road warriors, but if you hang shirts, keep them in a plastic bag from the dry cleaners to keep wrinkles to a minimum.” (Mr. Romney’s staff members — along with Richard A. Oppel Jr., a political reporter who is covering Gov. Rick Perry of Texas — all swear by Brooks Brothers wrinkle-free shirts.)

Trip Gabriel, who is currently covering Newt Gingrich, has found a way to ensure that he never has to check a bag. “Use a soft bag or even a duffel because you won’t be forced to gate-check it,” he said. “They let me carry my soft-sided bag onto even the smallest planes, because it can be squeezed into the overhead bin.”

“Waiting for gate-checked bags,” Mr. Gabriel added, “is el drag-o.”

Have a Packing Strategy

I used to pack aspirationally — a professional outfit in case I landed an interview with Mr. Romney; a dress for an impromptu night out; gym clothes for that workout I hoped to squeeze in. Now, I pack realistically, bringing only weather-appropriate clothes I think I will actually wear. (This usually means jeans, boots and a blazer.)

One place to save on space is shoes. Pack only one pair — two at the most, if you’re a runner and need sneakers. If you have to bring snow boots (think preprimary Iowa and New Hampshire), keep in mind that you will most likely have to wear them on the plane, since they will take up too much space in your carry-on. I recently bought a pair of Uggs; they make me look like a storm trooper, but they’re fuzzy and warm and slip off easily for security checks.

“To make room for running shoes, stick with brown or black shoes — not both,” Mr. Zeleny said.

Which brings us to color schemes. If your trip is longer than a few days, your clothes may have to do double — or triple — duty, so choose a color scheme and stick with it. Pick a basic color for your shoes and essentials so you’ll have more flexibility to mix and match, not to mention layer.

Sign Up for Rewards

Loyalty programs are the name of the game. Sign up for every program possible — airlines, rental cars, hotels. Especially with airlines, try to stick with one or two to earn premium status.

I’ve landed large suites, eaten free breakfasts and been able to cancel reservations at the last minute, all because I have loyalty status with various hotel chains. (But, as Mr. Rutenberg pointed out, “I also prefer boutique hotels, which offer a little plusher accommodations for less money.”)

Rental car rewards programs, in addition to helping you get car upgrades, can also help expedite your travel.

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