How appropriate! The Iowa Republican Party is among those finding a way to celebrate the centennial of the sinking of the Titanic. Yes, the Grand Old Party is hard at work — re-arranging the deck chairs of the Iowa caucus. A committee and three sub-committees want to fashion a guarantee — not that the caucus [...]

To paraphrase Thomas Hobbes, the Republican presidential nominating contest is nasty, brutish and long. Not to mention costly. The contenders are exhausting themselves, their bank accounts and the public’s patience. Low voter turnouts are evidence of how fed up the public is with the endless campaigning and tasteless attacking. And that’s just from one party. [...]

DES MOINES – Given much of the presidential campaign news coverage, it is fair to wonder if most journalists are more like vampires than watchdogs, considering how the press and the vampires both shrink at the sign of the cross. That notion has been troubling me for more than two years now in the build [...]

In the wake of the Florida primary, it may be timely to return to Iowa to provide context for the rancor and discord still besetting the Republican Party. In assaying the wreckage of the 2012 Iowa GOP caucus, you can conclude the obvious — that it was a fiasco. You also might wonder if that [...]

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 [...]

Mark Shields and David Brooks agreed the other evening on the PBS Newshour that the country was indebted to well-educated Iowans for their splendid show of citizenship in conscientiously attending campaign events and subjecting candidates to informed questioning. Shields and Brooks didn’t happen to wonder where these wonderful, public spirited, Iowans are when the caucuses [...]

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 [...]

Another debate, another round of Obama bashing. The audience barely had settled in their seats Dec. 10 when Newt Gingrich excoriated Obama for a jobs plan consisting of “higher taxes, more regulation, no American energy, and attack(ing) people who create jobs with class warfare.” I counted at least 25 separate assaults on Obama or his [...]

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 [...]