[Commentary] The Duncan Hunter folks had to feel something like the kid at the science fair who has the lame exhibit in the corner, next to the door that leads to a septic tank or perhaps a closet full of wrestling shorts the team manager has neglected.

But the Hunter people weren’t taking lightly any dismissive comments from national media types at Saturday’s Iowa Straw Poll.

When a TV reporter approached Hunter’s national communications director as he was barbecuing corn on the cob, and asked the staffer about the relatively “small” size of the Hunter shindig north of Hilton Coliseum, Roy Tyler had a ready answer.

“What do you mean small?” Tyler shot back. “We have Elvis Presley and the only homemade ice cream.”

They did have an Elvis impersonator, although Tyler made an impassioned case to Iowa Independent that the Great Fried Peanut Butter Sandwich-Eating One had in fact returned from that B Movie in the sky to promote Hunter’s run at history.

And that’s not all.

Hunter was giving away a gun, apparently through a raffle of some sort. Most of the Republicans in attendance sounded like they had at least one gun already (judging by the applause for the standard National Rifle Association lines) but perhaps wouldn’t mind having another, you know, what with the crime rate in places like What Cheer, Iowa, being so Boyz In The Hood.

Tyler, a Texan, insisted the gun (he told me the model but I couldn’t write the numbers fast enough) was manufactured completely within the United States and that Team Hunter would background-check anyone with the winning ticket. There were, after all, Ron Paul
  supporters to be wary of – or so said straw poll host Laura Ingraham (the conservative commentator) who flatly observed that the “inmates have left the asylum” as the Paul supporters swooned and screeched for their man to take the stage a few hours later.