This year was my fourth caucus.  The first time was probably 16 or 20 years ago.  The second time was four years ago, and I got involved in serious party work as a result.  Two years ago I chaired our precinct caucus (after being heavily involved in the planning for the entire county), and had 5 people total attend from our precinct.  This year I assisted John Bloom (former Polk County Republican Chair, and whom I met four years ago at the caucus, and who also writes for The Conservative Reader).  I arrived at 5:30, and helped with setup (including a table for my wife who was representing the Iowa Energy Forum).  I worked with another volunteer manning the Registration table (where people who …

On the whole, politically involved Iowans take their First-In-The-Nation moniker seriously.  But even the most engaged activists have to join with the rest of the state in saying “Thank goodness that’s over!”.

And truly only because being first comes with a significant price.  Christmas/New Year’s with family just gets a little annoying with the phone calls (my dear wife kept score of how many calls we got from each campaign), and the constant, substantively negative, ads on the radio and television.  All of that on top of the fact that many Iowans actually don’t need all of the extra whoop-de-doo because they are already meeting candidates, researching them, talking to their neighbors, weighing their choices.  And many found the assessment particularly difficult, perhaps not deciding …

If a map of Iowa does not appear below, please click here.

Map and data provided courtesy of Google and the Republican Party of Iowa.…

We will have results of tonight’s caucus available here at The Conservative Reader as soon as the information is available from the Republican Party of Iowa.  We will have a Google map setup showing the results in near-real time as results are tabulated starting at 6:00 PM.  Be sure to attend your caucus, then check in with TCR for caucus results tonight and analysis on Wednesday.…

Caucus Locator Service

First of all, if you live in Iowa and don’t know for sure where your caucus site is located, you’ll want to click this link to find it.  If you still can’t figure it out (don’t be ashamed… it can be challenging) we want to help.  Please email us at caucus2012@theconservativereader.com.  Please include your name, email address and home address (I promise we will not keep this information for any reason).  We will reply as quickly as possible with your caucus location.

Candidates for President

If you haven’t yet taken a look at the candidates, there any number of resources available to do so.  I think it is a good idea, more than anything, to look at the candidates’ web …

It has been difficult to follow the Republican Presidential Campaign this year to the depth that I would like to, partly because of my own time constraints and partly because there is just so much happening all the time.  It seems like every week there is a new bomb-shell to analyze, a new complaint by one campaign about either another campaign or the press, stumbling by candidates on the debate stage or in an interview or just in general campaign failures such as the Virginia debacle.  And the mud contains so much manure that I’m glad I have iTunes to purchase much of my television programming from so I don’t even have to fast-forward past the political ads.  And don’t get me started about the …

Possibly the most common question I hear from friends and neighbors this year is, “Who do you like for President?”.  I rarely answer this question in a direct fashion because I am not interested in persuading someone to vote a certain way based on my own thinking.  I would prefer to see anyone who sincerely cares about their vote to gain an understanding of the candidates and their positions, and to vote based on how what they learn aligns with their personal convictions.

This may seem like an odd perspective in this day and age, especially with the current mega-rush by so many people to endorse a candidate.  For some, their endorsement has become almost a status symbol; if your endorsement makes the news, then …

As of this writing, debate continues in the US Senate on the compromise Debt Ceiling bill, but one bit of information from the House vote presents an interesting view on the state of the Moderate position: all 5 of Iowa’s congressmen voted against the bill, even though we have 3 Democrats and 2 Republicans representing us.  (Update: Yup, the Senate approved it and Obama signed it… long day already!)

The reasons for voting “No” are drawn clearly along party lines.  The Democrats from Iowa (Braley, Loebsack and Boswell) all stated that “shared sacrifice” was lacking from the bill, which is code for “we want to soak the rich”.  King and Latham, the Republicans, were focused on fiscal responsibility and a balanced budget.

Saying that the Left and Right …

Finally, someone has the answer to solving the debt crisis that has hit the Federal Government! And amazing as it may seem, earlier this week the junior senator from Iowa came up with the idea, a truly out-of-the-box solution. Forget Congress, the President can go ahead and raise the debt ceiling with an Executive Order.

And, according to Tom Harkin, it’s okay because the Constitution doesn’t prohibit the President from taking this action!

With just a week to figure out what to do, this is Harkin’s answer: punt.

What he said was that the President could sign an executive order raising the debt ceiling. He said you’d rather have Congress do it, but there’s nothing in the Constitution that prohibits the President from issuing …

Just when you thought it was safe to start using Facebook again, yet another “feature” rears its ugly head. For several months now Facebook has allowed members to join other members into groups without their permission… even if the two are not friends. I wasn’t aware of this until recently, when I was joined into a conservative political group, which was no big deal for me because I know the people in the group and find the content userful.  There were, however, a few people who did get irate about it.

Today I got joined into a group by someone I’ve never heard of, called “Draft Thad McCotter For President”.  Great.  I don’t know anything about this guy except that he came out of nowhere on …