Race to the Top bill approved by state Senate. Conservatives around the country officially freaking out.

The Republican Party of Iowa has a new executive director who is already being targeted by anonymous conservative bloggers.

Could Bob Vander Plaats really pull off an upset?

Lawmakers may consider changing state seal to remove “plow in the rear.”

“The Newspaper Iowa Depends Upon” turns focus to Senate dress code.

The poll, conducted by Research 2000 for DailyKos, carries a margin of error of two percentage points for the general survey question, “Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?”

Overall, 77 percent of Americans said ‘yes,’ 11 percent said ‘no,’ and 12 percent weren’t sure.

But digging deeper into the numbers, more trends seem to emerge. In the midwest, 90 percent of respondents answered ‘yes’ and only six percent said ‘no.’ (I should caution that the margin of error tends to increase when you start looking at smaller groups within the larger sample of the survey.)

The bulk of the birthers seem to live in southern states, where fewer than half — 47 percent — said they believed Obama was born in the United States. 23 percent said he wasn’t born in the country, while 30 percent said they weren’t sure.

The partisan breakdown of the survey shows an even bigger gap than the regional one. Among self-reported Democrats, 93 percent said Obama was natural-born, while only four percent said he wasn’t. Among self-reported Republicans, however, only 42 percent said ‘yes,’ while a staggering 28 percent said ‘no’ and 30 percent were unsure.

Barack Obama loves Iowa back. The Jan. 3 caucus winner is in Des Moines tonight to mark what he’s not quite calling a clinch of the Democratic presidential nomination.

The Obama near-win bodes well for Iowa keeping its first in the nation status. But on the Republican side, John McCain’s nomination makes the situation a little cloudier.John McCain’s relationship with Iowa has been testy. He skipped the state in his 2000 run, with a few jabs at the caucuses and ethanol on the side. In 2008, he made a partial effort but concentrated on New Hampshire and other early states.

A year and a half ago, I wrote a history of which caucuses mattered the most to the nomination contest. In 2004, Iowa was the whole ball game. Winner John Kerry was the nominee, second place finisher John Edwards was the running mate, and, in the most infamous moment in caucus history, Howard Dean yelled. (Can anyone, ever again, hear a candidate say a list of states without thinking, “YEEEAH!“?)

2008 doesn’t rank quite as high in ultimate importance to Obama’s win, but it was an extremely important event in the process. This race was always going to come down to Hillary vs. Not Hillary. Iowa chose Obama, over Edwards and the carefully considered second tier, to be Not Hillary. We also proved Obama could win one of the whitest states in America, which helped unleash the overwhelming support he has received from African Americans. Lest we forget, many black voters were on the fence before Iowa; votes and polls weren’t reflecting the 90-plus percent support he’s now winning.

We also derailed the vaunted Clinton Machine, though some of the failings that led to her third place in Iowa were of her own misread of the caucus process.

Iowa, though, was ultimately insignificant to John McCain’s nomination. So we picked Mike Huckabee over fellow also-ran Mitt Romney. Big deal. That’s like the Iowa Democrats choosing Dick Gephardt over Paul Simon in 1988; interesting, but not decisive. We were just one more early state in the muddled mess that was the Republican contest in January 2008. The really important events were New Hampshire, where McCain re-ignited his campaign, and Florida, where he consigned Rudy Giuliani and his “skip the first five states” strategy to oblivion.

So what do the Obama and McCain nominations mean for Iowa’s future?

It seems like a paradox, but the party that loses the White House really has more to do with Iowa going first. An Obama win would presumably mean a smooth renomination and a Republican battle. But Republican party rules say the nomination calendar can only be set by the national convention. That means they set the schedule before they know if they’ve won or lost. A party committee has already given preliminary approval to a plan that protects Iowa and New Hampshire’s early role, then puts small states first and big states last.

But what if states break that plan? The GOP has been less obsessed with rules than the Democrats, who have spent months navel-gazing about what to do with calendar cheaters Florida and Michigan. The Republicans just said, that’ll cost you half your delegates, the states and candidates said that’s fine, and everyone proceeded.

If McCain wins, and the Democrats are looking at an open nomination, Iowa may be in trouble. Hillary Clinton, who came so close this year, will be an obvious front runner, and she’s been making it clear that she’s no fan of caucuses since at least two days before Iowa. At a New Years Day Iowa City stop, Clinton emphasized that people like shift workers and troops could not participate in the caucuses.

In that case, what may save Iowa is the state’s tradition of bipartisan cooperation on the caucus date. The parties briefly flirted with separate dates this cycle, but once the Republicans settled on Jan. 3, the Democrats soon followed suit.

But even with an Obama win, Iowa may be in jeopardy. At MyDD, Jerome Armstrong writes that nomination reform (i.e. Screw Iowa) may be on the agenda as the Clinton and Obama campaigns negotiate the price of peace. “Clinton, I’m betting, has more interest in using her capital to reform the nomination process” than in a vice presidential nomination, Armstrong writes.

Ottumwa doctor Mariannette Miller-Meeks “absolutely” believes she can break that jinx with hard work, as she seeks the Republican nomination for Congress in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District.Republican U.S. House primaries have been rare in southeast Iowa. Long-time incumbent Jim Leach never had a primary challenge in 17 election cycles from 1974 to 2006. The core of the current 2nd District, from Iowa City over to Muscatine and south to Des Moines and Lee Counties, last saw a Republican U.S. House primary in 1970.

But in one of the biggest upsets in the nation, Leach lost to Mt. Vernon Democrat Dave Loebsack in 2006, and for the first time in a third of a century Republicans are seeking a new candidate. Three have lined up for the right to take on Loebsack: Miller-Meeks, Cedar Rapids businessman Peter Teahen, and Hillsboro minister and conservative activist

Miller-Meeks surprised many observers by raising more money than Teahen in the first quarter of the year. Some of that money has gone into a TV buy in the district.

“If you’re raising money, especially when there’s a primary where it’s more difficult to raise money, it indicates that your message and your issues resonate with people,” she told Iowa Independent. On the stump, she points out to activists that she’s been raising money from across the district, while Teahen’s fundraising has been concentrated in his own Linn County.

“You go out and meet every voter, you talk to every voter you can, you try to get your message across,” she said. You try to let people see that you represent them, not yourself. And let them understand that you’re the candidate that can build that bridge that heals division and distrust. If you can’t do that, you can’t win.”

Miller-Meeks is following in the footsteps of another female doctor who ran in the 2nd District, but on the Democratic side — Julie Thomas in 2002. Thomas lost to Leach, but her name has come up often on the campaign trail. Teahen contributed to the Thomas campaign in 2002, and both Miller-Meeks and Harder have raised the donation as an issue. “I think it resonates with the Republican primary voters,” Miller-Meeks told Iowa Independent. “It goes to authenticity.”

During his 15 terms, Leach de-emphasized his republican label and touted his “independence.” Perhaps in keeping with that tradition, the Republican label isn’t prominent in the Miller-Meeks campaign. It’s mentioned once in the TV spot, but one has to dig down a layer in the web site to see the R Word. Still, Miller-Meeks says her conservative credentials are solid. “If you look at my budget, and how I spent money in my campaign, I think it indicates that I’m a fiscal conservative,” she said.

Campaign manager Todd Versteegh with Miller-Meeks

Miller-Meeks leads with her medical experience. She’s the immediate past president of the Iowa Medical Association, and her web site proclaims her as “The Prescription for Leadership in Congress.” Her supporters were highly visible at the congressional district convention in easy to spot medical lab coats. She sums up her health care plan as “consumer guided and purchased health insurance through a national risk pool with multiple insurance players,” while attacking single-payer systems, saying they “ration care and limit innovation and technology

“I have a background to back up my issues,” Miller-Meeks told Iowa Independent. She spent 24 years in the U.S. Army, completing her medical education through that period.  “I have a military background, I have a nurse background, I have an educator background, I have a physician background,” she said. “So when I speak about health care, I know that issue.”

Five of the Democratic candidates took the stage in the fairground barn, including (in order of appearance) Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Sens. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Hillary Clinton of New York. Academy Award winning actor Forest Whitaker spoke on behalf of Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, and Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden spoke on behalf of his father, Sen. Joe Biden of Deleware, who was in New Hampshire delivering the keynote address at the Coos County Democrats Harry S. Truman Dinner.