DES MOINES – A friend in California asked about the ballyhooed Iowa Republican caucuses: “What do Democrats do on Tuesday?” A reasonable question. My answer: At my precinct more than 300 Democrats showed up for voting in the 2008 caucuses. In 2010 as I remember it, about a dozen were there, including several kids getting [...]

Two names come to mind when one considers who will win and who will lose in the Iowa GOP caucuses Tuesday, Jan. 3. That’s when Republican party faithful will gather at 1,744 precincts across the state, ending the three or four years of political maneuvering that lead to the kickoff of the 2012 presidential campaign. [...]

As night follows day, Iowa’s precinct caucuses bring in their wake a raft of features about hard-working productive Iowa and its salt-of-the-earth citizens who welcome candidates into their homes with perceptive questions and thoughtful comments about affairs of the day. Perhaps as an antidote to such pap, University of Iowa journalism professor Stephen Bloom recently [...]

“The House Republican leader on Sunday flatly rejected a short-term, bipartisan Senate measure to extend a payroll tax break and unemployment insurance, setting the stage for a bitter year-end collision and the potential loss of benefits for millions of Americans. “In an interview on ’Meet the Press on NBC, John A. Boehner, the House speaker…..” [...]

(Myra MacPherson profiled Newt Gingrich for the Washington Post’s Style section in 1989.) Reporters, listen up: Stop calling Newt Gingrich a “scholar.” In fact, spend some time learning about his real history. Yes, Gingrich calls himself a “historian,” but there was a time when reporters went to the clips to check things like that. Now, [...]

Des Moines — If the endless intonations of “God Bless America” at political rallies and in political speeches have any payoff at all, a blizzard will sweep Iowa on Jan. 3, rendering the Iowa GOP presidential caucus meaningless as their Creator keeps thousands of right-wing evangelicals homebound and, at long last, voiceless. That sentiment echoes [...]

The New Hampshire Union Leader’s Nov. 27 endorsement editorial, “For President, Newt Gingrich,” drew a lot of attention. Having written and edited many endorsement editorials over the years, my take on the Union Leader’s effort may be somewhat different. For starters, it ran on the front page and was not the usual anonymous voice of [...]

What took so long? Why, many months into the presidential campaign, with Newt Gingrich at or near the top in the preference polls, did the press not raise questions sooner about his character flaws and money-grubbing ways? Connie Bruck and the New Yorker waved warning flags about Gingrich many years ago, on Oct. 9, 1996, [...]

Where is the like of Hubert Humphrey when the Republicans so desperately need him — particularly when it comes to the Iowa GOP caucuses? The late Democratic U.S. senator and vice president (1911-1978) came to mind because of the continuing failure of just about any Iowa Republican, save one or two maybe, to speak up [...]

Republican presidential candidates are flooding into Iowa attempting to reach and influence the tiny sliver of GOP voters who actually will express a candidate preference at the much-hyped Jan. 3 “first-in-the- nation” Iowa caucuses. If past experience is a guide, the press will go ga-ga over the event, but most Iowa Republicans will have nothing [...]