“As a Republican House member from Iowa, (Nussle) was part of the Gingrich transition team that ushered in the Contract with America” in 1994, writes Mike Allen at Politico. “Nussle has to lay low for now because he’s working on the transition. Attribute all this to Nussle sources.”

“Mr. Nussle is also very close to Rudy Giuliani, who hasn’t lost his appetite for national office,” writes Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic. Nussle headed Giuliani’s Iowa campaign after losing the 2006 governor’s race to Chet Culver, until taking the Budget job.

Ambinder is pessimistic about Nussle’s chances: “If Newt runs, he’s the odds-on-favorite to win.”

“Take a political convention and mix it with a tailgate party,” said Johnson County GOP activist Todd Versteegh of Saturday’s Iowa Republican straw poll at Iowa State’s Hilton Coliseum in Ames. “If you’re a political junkie, this is a prime event.”

It may also be the last chance to see some of the Republican presidential candidates. Since its inception in 1979, the straw poll has grown from a low-key fund-raiser to the de facto first round of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses.

The day will see more losers than winners. What’s officially at stake for the candidates is no more than bragging rights. But the lack of something to brag about may be fatal. Lamar Alexander, Elizabeth Dole and Dan Quayle all dropped out after poor showings in 1999, while Pat Buchanan left the Republican Party to take over the remnants of Ross Perot’s Reform Party. In contrast, only one candidate — Orrin Hatch — dropped out after the actual caucuses.

“After next Saturday, between three to four of the candidates are going to drop out,” said Versteegh. “If you don’t want to see somebody potentially drop out, go support them.”The Iowa GOP itself may be one of the losers. The straw poll remains first and foremost a fund-raiser for the Iowa Republican Party. Republican Party of Iowa (RPI) Executive Director Chuck Laudner told Campaigns and Elections that the 1999 event took in $1 million. You have to show two things to vote in the straw poll: an Iowa ID and a ticket. Tickets are $35, up from $25 eight years ago. While some are sold to the public, the vast majority are purchased by the presidential campaigns and distributed to supporters, who are bused in for the event. The straw poll has become, in effect, a command performance for the GOP contenders and their wallets.

But the party’s hopes for 2007 took a hit early on when two top-tier contenders — former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Sen. John McCain of Arizona — said no thanks to the game of buying tickets and bringing buses, bands and barbecue. This essentially conceded the win to contender Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts.

Romney is still playing for the win, but was able to scale back his efforts, which pinches the state party’s pocketbook at a time when it needs help. Last year was a tough one for Iowa Republicans, who lost two congressional seats, both houses of the Legislature, and failed to retake the governorship.

Still, the hype is in the air, and the state party is estimating a turnout of up to 40,000 people. The Hilton Coliseum venue holds only about 12,000 people, so supporters of the different candidates will be shuffled in and out between the speeches. To hear everyone speak, you need a premium “red ticket,” or a seat in front of one of the many TVs that’ll be outside the hall in the candidate tents, along with food and live entertainment.

Rumors have been floating that smaller campaigns have quietly told their supporters to take advantages of Romney’s largesse, ride his buses, and then vote for someone else. “We’ve heard those rumors, too,” said Romney spokeswoman Sarah Pompei, “but we’re focusing on having the strongest organization on the ground in Ames.” Joe Seehusen of the Ron Paul campaign said hitching a ride with another campaign is “not something we’re encouraging. We have many enthusiastic supporters who are doing a variety of things, but the campaign is not encouraging or endorsing that.”

For the first time, issue groups will join the candidates in the tent and ticket presence. Fair Tax is promoting a flat national sales tax as a replacement for the entire tax code and is trying to get commitments from the campaigns. Along with candidates, Fair Tax is touring the state by bus. “Huckabee was with us in Hampton,” said Versteegh, who works for the organization, “and Duncan Hunter was with us on a couple stops. Tancredo’s been talking about it in some detail.” The only candidate who has offered a flat-out no is Giuliani.

Fair Tax is positioning itself as a home for undecided voters and as a potential power broker. The group is offering bus rides to people who “don’t want to commit to a candidate or don’t know,” said Versteegh.

Handicapping the Horses

Ostensibly, the straw poll “matters” as a test of organizational skill.  It bears little resemblance to a real election, given the need to buy a ballot and having only one polling place in the state.  But it bears a superficial enough resemblance to the organizational skills needed on caucus night that it is seen as, in the words of Pompei, “a dress rehearsal.”  It’s a classic horse-race event in the self-amplifying media echo chamber: It matters because someone says it matters, and so on, and so on.

Horse races are fun and exciting, so let’s place our bets.

The candidates break into three tiers: Romney and the phantoms, the do-or-die second tier, and the candidates who’ll be unaffected by the outcome.

Back when college football factored margin of victory into its rankings, next-door rival Nebraska used to run up the score against Iowa State to margins like 77-13. But when point totals were taken out of the mix, the Cornhuskers started playing the second-, third- and fourth-string players earlier in the game.

That’s sort of what’s happened with the Romney campaign. “Mr. Romney’s pretty much bought the election,” said Roy Tyler of the Duncan Hunter campaign. With Romney leading in Iowa polls, and with his chief rivals out of town on Saturday, he doesn’t have to bring his A game. “A win is a win,” said Romney’s spokeswoman, avoiding any numbers when asked.  Pompei also declined to say just how many Romney buses would be arriving, though Johnson County supporters mentioned at least three from the Iowa City-Coralville area alone at a Monday central committee meeting.

Pompei was quick to note, however, that the phantom candidates are still on the ballot. “Rudy Giuliani’s been around the state campaigning like he’s in the straw poll, and buying radio ads,” she said. John McCain has also been in the state recently, but has had a low profile as the week progresses, perhaps waiting for the field to thin before coming back. Bob Anderson of rural Swisher hosted a McCain event at his home Sunday, and said he “will be back extensively during September.”  For now, McCain is in New Hampshire — where most Democratic candidates are spending the week.

Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions group will have a big presence in Ames, conducting workshops before and after the candidates speak. The organization is planning a “major announcement” Sept. 27, among much speculation that this may involve a Gingrich candidacy.

The former speaker of the House of Representatives is not on the ballot, and no write-ins are allowed. The Iowa Republicans have, however, called out another undeclared candidate coyly hovering on the edge of the race, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, and placed him on the ballot. This sets up a phantom contest played out entirely in the spin zone. A poor Fred Thompson showing may spur Gingrich on, but if the Tennessean does well Gingrich may defer.

Ames is do or die for three candidates: Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, and Tommy Thompson.  The key rivalry here is Brownback vs. Huckabee. Both are appealing for the same social conservative niche, and there simply isn’t room for both of them to survive beyond Saturday. Sparks have been flying between the two camps for weeks.

Brownback has been more blatant in wooing  social conservatives, campaigning with Terri Schaivo’s brother and with “Jane Roe,” the Roe v. Wade plaintiff who has since converted to the anti-choice cause. Huckabee has presented a more-rounded campaign, emphasizing Fair Tax at many stops. Huckabee has been quoted as saying that a finish below fourth place would likely drive him from the race, and some national party leaders have tried to steer the former Arkansas governor toward a 2008 challenge to Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor. But Huckabee supporter Royce Phillips of Tiffin is confident: “We’re going to do well Saturday.”

Tommy Thompson — adding to the confusion of a big field, there’s two Toms and two Thompsons — has been a constant presence in Iowa for months. The former governor of next-door Wisconsin has been Winnebago-ing his way through nearly every Iowa county and boldly predicting a strong showing. His survival could depend most on his showing against absent contenders Giuliani, McCain and Fred Thompson. Iowa City supporter John Dane reports that he’s driving himself up to Ames to back Tommy Thompson.

Some candidates are unlikely to see their fate affected by Ames. Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo has already talked of refocusing his campaign toward primary challenges of Republican congressional incumbents whom he considers weak on illegal immigration. Still, Tancredo is joining most of the rest of the field in campaigning across Iowa this week.

Libertarian-Republican Ron Paul of Texas faces a test of whether he can translate his internet support into bodies on the ground in one place at one time. “Our internet efforts have had a positive fund-raising impact,” said spokesman Joe Seehusen. “That’s allowed us to embrace more traditional efforts in Iowa like direct mail and radio ads.” Paul has campaigned little in Iowa other than a high-profile rally in late June after he was excluded from a candidate forum. Yet this week he is making his first multi-day foray across Iowa.

Iowa blogger Noneed4theneed predicts a poor Paul showing:

The number of days Rep. Paul has campaigned dwarfs in comparison to every Republican candidate. To do well in Iowa you need to shake hands, lots of hands. Iowans don’t decide on who to support by what they hear on TV and fewer rely on the Internet, which is Paul’s strength. The strength of Internet support in Iowa is especially weak in rural areas, which are largely Republican. Iowans that live in rural counties value the opinions of their local paper and their neighbors, and many of these people have never visited a blog.

“We don’t expect to compete with other groups in terms of lavishness” in Ames, said Seehusen. “Dr. Paul, and his message of liberty and freedom, is the main event.” With his support largely indigestible by any other Republican candidate, the question for Paul after Ames may be whether he follows the Pat Buchanan precedent of leaving the party.

The Duncan Hunter campaign is staking little on the Ames outcome. Amid open speculation that he’s positioning himself for secretary of Defense in a Republican administration, the San Diego congressman may win the Orrin Hatch prize: in 1999 Hatch finished last but moved forward undeterred. “We have no big expectations, we’re just going to work hard and hope for the best,” said spokesman Roy Tyler of the Hunter campaign in a Wednesday interview. “The congressman’s 15 minutes of fame will be well spent.” The Hunter website has a “Buy A Ticket” link, suggesting that the lavishness may be lacking.

Every Republican cycle seems to include an obscure businessman who pledges businesslike government. This time it’s John Cox of Chicago. Cox has not been included in debates, and most national websites list him among the fringe candidates, but the Iowa GOP has always listed him with the “serious” candidates and is including him on the ballot.  Cox’s inclusion “was a decision between the Republican Party of Iowa and the state central committee, said Iowa Republican Party spokeswoman Mary Tiffany.  “He’s spent a lot of time here and come to a lot of party events.”  Cox cites his own conception, which was the result of rape, as the rationale for his absolute anti-abortion stance. Actively campaigning across Iowa, Cox has seemed far more serious than businessman candidate Morrie Taylor in 1996, who once famously won a tavern “straw” (as in drink stirrer) poll by buying a round for the house.

Not on the ballot is Alan Keyes. A surprisingly strong contender in 1996 and 2000, Keyes lost what credibility he had in a 2004 U.S. Senate race, moving from Maryland to Illinois to run and then losing 3-to-1 to some guy named Obama.  Nevertheless, Keyes will be in Ames plugging a Draft Keyes group — which he appears to have started himself.

In anticipation of a presidential run, a group of potentially supportive Republican congressmen recently questioned him about his private life.

“I was single for a long time and yep I chased a lot of women,” Thompson told them with a grin. “And a lot of women chased me. And those who chased me tended to catch me.”

One of these women was the country singer Lorrie Morgan. Another was Margaret Carlson, a columnist for Bloomberg News, who recently gushed, “He’s handsome, he’s charming, he sounds like a president.”

Will Thompson’s past playboy antics be a problem for social conservatives in Iowa? Perhaps.

I read the above quote to Steve Scheffler, president of the Iowa Christian Alliance, and he said conservatives will likely be more focused on how candidates are “leading their life now,” though they will “definitely care” about a candidate’s history.

Tamara Scott, director of the Iowa chapter of Concerned Women of America, declined to comment on the specific quotation from Thompson but told me “history does play a part” in evaluating a candidate.

Discussions of Thompson’s love life usually include Jeri Kehn, his second wife, whom he married in 2002. Kehn is 40 years old, 24 years younger than Thompson, and has been called a “trophy wife” by some. Conservative radio personality Joe Scarborough was recently criticized, the Times reports, “for wondering on air whether Thompson’s wife ‘works the pole’, although he later claimed that he was referring jokingly to the pole fitness craze rather than to stripping.”

Douglas Burns of Iowa Independent recently mulled whether social conservatives would be turned off by the large age difference between Thompson and Kehn: “Call me old-fashioned but there is something unseemly, creepy, out of balance in the universe, with the canyon-sized age disparity in Thompson’s second marriage,” he wrote. He also noted that “Socially conservative Republicans like their families to look a certain way, their wives to be just so,” and that the Thompson-Kehn romance doesn’t fit the bill.

Scheffler said that he didn’t think the age gap would be a problem for conservatives, and Scott said she didn’t know enough about the situation to comment. Neither has been approached by Thompson as he considers entering the race for the Republican nomination.

Thompson, of course, wouldn’t be the only Republican candidate with a rocky marital history. As Steve Benen wrote in the Washington Monthly last year, the GOP front-runners “form the most maritally challenged crop of presidential hopefuls in American political history … Sen. John McCain (affair, divorce), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (affair, divorce, affair, divorce), and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (divorce, affair, nasty divorce).”

Perhaps Thompson would fit right in.

I’ve always begrudgingly respected Gingrich as a brilliant tactician with a flawed ideology.  He’s unquestionably the second-most important figure in modern American conservatism, behind only Ronald Reagan.  But unlike the warm, sunny Reagan, Gingrich has a cool and aloof manner in person.  It’s all about the ideas for Newt.  Intellectually, he could run rings around George W. Bush.  If you buy into his basic premise — the free market solves all — he could be seen as very persuasive.But, as libertarian Republican candidate Ron Paul becomes the internet fad of the month, a political version of the lolcats or the O RLY? owl or All Your Base Are Belong To Us, it’s important to remember that the free market does not solve everything. 

Unfettered capitalism gave us sweatshops and robber barons.  Only the reforms of the Progressive era in the 1900s and 1910s, a period Gingrich cited as a turning point, returned us to a more level playing field with progressive taxation, worker’s compensation, popular election of senators and more.  The pendulum swung back in the 1920s, and the ideological rigidity of Coolidge and Hoover deepened the Great Depression.  Again, government under Roosevelt and Truman restored some fairness.

The result of the Reagan-Gingrich-Cheney era has been the increased concentration of wealth, the inversion of progressive taxation, and the shredding of the safety net.  Perhaps Gingrich sees this as a mere adjustment in markets, a simple disagreement in the political who-gets-what of our economy.

But there’s also been a spiritual change in the character of America.  Gingrich singled out Wal-Mart and McDonalds as innovative companies with new ideas.  Which is fine, if all that you’re valuing is the bottom line.  But uniqueness, diversity, local color and flavor have increasingly been crushed by the malling and chaining of America.  Starbucks coffee shops have become symbols of this dynamic, a focus for protests in hip cities and abroad that often have little to do with coffee.  There’s even a word for it – “Generica,” signifying those endless edge-of-town highway strips of franchises and access roads with no organic indicators of where you are.

As an Iowa Citian I treasure my local one-of-a-kind businesses.  I’ve written here of the Record Collector and the Hamburg Inn.  The corner market may be an anachronism, but no one can deny that John’s Grocery is one of the special things about my town.  Who needs a Waldenbooks or a Barnes and Noble when there’s Prairie Lights nearby?  Why would anyone order from Dominos with Pagliai’s in town?

I sense that my stance is atypical.  But Newt Gingrich’s vision of America misses much of what makes America special.

1:30.  Just back from a short press conference.  Highlights.

Iraq.  "If you do what the liberals want you'll have chaos and massive death, and send a message that America can't be counted on."  He would triple the Iraqi forces and get the U.S. out of cities and not use Americans for policing.  Holly Berkowitz starts to argue about the illegality of the war while Newt repeats, "that's not true, that's not true."  "All the intelligence agencies in the world believed Saddam was dangerous."  After three or so minutes a radio reporter says "this isn't a debate, Holly," and the questioning moves on.

"How does your party win Congress back?" I ask.  "Our job is to offer better solutions, not focus on attacking Hillary or Obama."

Immigration: "I would hope the president would let it go.  We don't need a comprehensive bill.  We need to keep the promise of 1986 and control the border."

My bottom line: Not running, using the forum of Caucus Land to get attention for his self-appointed elder statesman role.  But we haven't seen the last of Newt. Stop back later for pics.1:15 Health care: "Doctors are interested in billing for care, but not in seeing that I'm getting better."  How to make accountable?   Newt: healthtransformation.net.  Shift incentives away from acute care and toward total care.  "Stopping at the gas station before you hit E is more practical than getting towed.  But our health system pays for the towing and not the refill."

Staffer: "We're gonna miss our plane."

1:12 How do you solve apathy?   Newt: Don't worry about the apathetic: that's the norm for 90% of people.  Make activism fun and interesting and personal.

How are elected officials responding to you?  Newt: Younger Republicans responding; since Contract we've offered few real solutions, there's a hunger.  Questions winding down, this is the longest Q&A session I've seen all year. "We're starting with the premise that you're smarter than the media" gets applause.

1:08 Teacher Hani Elkadi asks about youth drug use.  Newt: "My answer is radical.  Adolescence is a failed idea. That's why I can't ever run for president, I say stuff like that."  In the 18th century, you were a child, and then you were an adult.  Adolescence was invented in 19th century.  Education bureaucratic and boring, and doesn't let people exploit their talents.  Adolescents not allowed to be responsible.  "Why do you at 13 follow someone who's 15 instead of a 45-year-old mentor?  No one in their immediate peer group has a clue."  Meth is a symptom of a boring social structure.  Being productive and making real mistakes because a real adult talks to you… that's where we should be.

1:02 Isn't the problem that people don't demand solutions? Newt: "Only government has a monopoly."  We're working toward a historic wave of change, like progressives, New Deal, and Reagan.

How to fix Social Security?  Newt: "We need to give young people the power of compound interest.  The group that matters most is under 40.  We need to guarantee the older people that they'll have what they have now, and give their grandchildren the power of compound interest.  We need to finance it over 30 years" like a 30-year mortgage.  Questioner: How do we guarantee other than just rhetoric?  Newt: Individual accounts for the older.  Under 40: "Don't put the money in the government.  In 1935, you couldn't manage money like we do now."

12:57 Long term solutions vs. short term "shelf life" of politicians.  Newt: "We did it.  But we didn't have a second wave of ideas.  Only 10 or 15 people understood the purpose of the Contract with America.  We elevated a whole generation of chairmen who didn't understand."

12:55 Detroit public schools have a 21% grad rate.  "At first I thought this was a crisis.  But I realized that I misunderstood the purpose.  The purpose of the Detroit school system is to pay the people who are already there."  Laughs.  "Let's start this conversation over again.  What is the purpose of a school system?"

12:52 Bipartisanship and solutions, "it seems like a real frustration now."  Newt: "Congress has lowest approval rating in history.  This means some of their mothers don't approve of them."

12:49 Fusion?  "I would like to see basic fusion research.  We have been 30 years away from fusion for 70 years.  It's still at a pre-engineering phase of real science."

12:45   Long question ends 2ith "Should we reward public employees for having good ideas?"  Newt says it's good, put it on the wiki.

Global warming and emissions cap: "I'm for incentives on emissions, I'm very cautious on a mandatory cap."  It's corrupted in Europe. "I'm not for regulation, litigation and tax increases.  I'm for incentives."  The left says worry about carbon.  "If Jane Fonda and The China Syndrome had not scared Americans, and we'd followed France's strategy of nuclear power, we'd be 15% better in the Kyoto plan."

12:41 Campaign finance and gov't transparency.  Newt's all for, also says every appropriations bill should be on line 48 hours before vote. Says the blogging world will get involved and pressure.  Notes that immigration bill killed because "the Senate switchboard actually stopped."  Applause.  Urges Bush to drop it till border secured.

12:40 Todd Versteegh asks the Fair Tax question.  Newt : "a lot to be said for it, depends how you define it.  I would never be for a consumption tax without repealing constitutional amendment for an income tax" because otherwise "they'll tax you both ways and we can't have that" applause.

12:37 How about your polling process?  Newt: just a standard professional poll, I think it was 800 sample.

Holly Berkowitz of Iowa City: "I fear it's based on an assumption that private property trumps all, and doesn't look at productivity."  Gingrich says there can be a green conservatism: caring for nature, with free markets.

12:33 Q & A.  Marriage tax penalty.  Why no repeal? "I suspect because of cost."  Questioner is angry: "You spend millions to promote marriage and then you tax it.  The tax code promotes having children and penalizes getting married."  Newt says it's a good question.

Automatic citizenship for babies of illegals.  "That’s a good example of what's wrong in D.C.  Nothing in the 14th Amendment has anything to do with people born outside the law.  It's a modern left wing interpretation."  We need absolute control of the border, and not "accept any of this baloney.  Biggest applause yet.  Questioner: "There were planeloads of pregnant women from around the world, the LA social workers would take care of them, and then they'd bring their whole families in."

12:31 In a science and technology-based market entrepreneurs ought to provide more options at a better price and higher quality and convenience.  (appl.) That's our core model. We need a fundamental shift from the obsolete bureaucracy model.  "People are so hungry for a positive vision of a workable future.&quo
t;

12:27 July 23 online forum focusing on moving gov’t to "world that works."  Says he'll be at state fair and in Ames for straw poll… "We’ll hold eight workshops, and we'll announce the topics in July.  One will be on curing Alzheimer's… one will probably be on the fair tax or flat tax."

September 27 and 29 is "the big, key workshop."

"If we can build a powerful presentation and get people all around America engaged, reporters will have to cover it and learn about it and cover things differently."  We're sharing our polling data with all campaigns in both parties, and inviting them to the forum on 9/29.  "We think it ought to be Americans talking as Americans, and not as liberals and conservatives."

12:18 Our work based on three principles.  1) We have been successful over 400 years due to key values like work ethic, private property.

2) "There’s a world that works and a world that fails."  World that works is markets and investment and capital, like "the miracle of camera phones.  50 years ago you couldn't have explained any of this."  The world that fails has no consequences.  We tolerate the failures in the world that fails that we would never accept in the world that works.  UPS tracks millions of packages while they move, but gov’t can't find illegal immigrants sitting still.  Proposes sending a package to every illegal immigrant to much mirth.  "How can you have this gap of capability?"  Need to migrate gov’t to the world that works. "That's the key to competing with China and India."

3) Recognize that the world is dangerous, our enemies would destroy us, and we have an absolute obligation to defend (big applause).

Leads into a discussion of technology and wikis that I'm not sure how ties into defense.  But he ties it into finding solutions to many issues.   

12:13 I kept telling GOP "we’ve been presiding over a mess"  – big city schools, immigration, international trade.  "We have a lot of appeal to people who don't want America to be on wrong track."

 "Then we asked people how effective is government."  Laughs.  7 percent "and we're checking to see if those are gov’t employees".

"People want to be united in red, white and blue — not divided.  There's a pretty big base for what we want to accomplish."  He's walking up and down the center aisle, glancing at notes.    Notes that people have a strong belief in science.

12:09 His organization's survey: 92-5 people want focus on long-term solutions.  Not what you usually get from govt.  85-10 people believe we have to defend America (he acknowledges that's an easy question.) 75-16 want to "defeat enemies."  Iraq problems are a "performance issue"

Strengthen and revitalize America's core values?  80-9 say yes.  He picks on University towns that question if we even have core values, which gets chuckles.

He sums his numbers and says there's a vast majority supporting.  "No red, no blue — we're really a red, white and blue country."  Overwhelming majority for our values.

12:07 The Speaker is speaking.  Sound is a little muffled.  Newt notes this.  People are tired of red vs. blue and negativity. Want positives and solutions.

He ditches the mike.

American Solutions organization is his outfit, americansolutions.com

Gingrich signs his book for Cyndi Michel.

12:05.  Cyndi Michel says she likes "two or three candidates," doesn't name them.  "I'm so undecided, isn't that terrible."  I reassure her that it's pretty early yet.

11:56.  Gingrich worked his way through the handshake line and is close to ready to speak.  People waiting in line had little better to do than talk to me.

Former Johnson County GOP chair Cathy Grawe would be glad to back Newt for president: "I don't think he's electable but I love him to death."  Of the candidates running, she likes Tom Tancredo.  "He's good on immigration and a solid conservative."

Royce Phillips of Tiffin likes Mike Huckabee.  "He's saying what I like to hear. A lot of people on the secular side don't understand that Christian conservatives are not monolithic, and we have a deeper philosophical process than we're given credit for.  Governor Huckabee verbalizes that well."  John Nolan also like Huckabee — though not as much as Newt.  But he expects the next president will be — Al Gore.  "He's already won the popular vote once, except for that terrible Supreme Court decision."   Nolan says Turkey, with its secular history and former role as the Ottoman Empire, should play a big role in Middle East peace.  "We should encourage the Turks to move in as we move out.  They're the toughest SOBs in the world."

Another former Johnson County GOP chair, Todd Versteegh, says it's hard to say whether Gingrich will run.  "He'll have a large presence at the straw poll, he'll certainly make a name for himself."  Versteegh is working for Fair Tax; they're not endorsing.

11:33 and hello from the Quality Inn in Iowa City.  We locals still call it the Highlander.  A line of local GOP activists is forming in the lobby for a greet and photo op with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who's in Iowa "promoting his book."  C'mon, it’s IOWA.