{"id":25232,"date":"2012-01-04T12:30:57","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T18:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=25232"},"modified":"2012-01-04T09:58:57","modified_gmt":"2012-01-04T15:58:57","slug":"iowa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=25232","title":{"rendered":"Iowa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Disjointed random thoughts about Iowa:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Let The Donnybrook Roll<\/strong>: I think the results last night were about the best possible outcome for the GOP as a whole. \u00a0All the talk of the nomination being a predetermined conclusion is on hold, at least for now (and hopefully for quite some time); whether you&#8217;re a western libertarian-conservative, an evangelical or a pro-business, law-and-order conservative, you have a dog on the race. \u00a0More importantly, all those dogs matter; the longer the social-con and libertarian dogs run even with Romney, the more he has to concede to them &#8211; us &#8211; to eke out the nomination. \u00a0And at the same time, Santorum is going to have to figure out how to appeal to activists and voters in New Hampshire, Florida and Utah (not his natural constituencies) as well as South Carolina. \u00a0The winner? \u00a0All of us who want a conservative who&#8217;s primed to kick Obama&#8217;s ass in November.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Come Home, Michele: \u00a0<\/strong>You took your best shot. \u00a0And it was a very good shot &#8211; the first woman to get into the GOP caucuses, likely the first of many. \u00a0Maybe the first of several tries for you. \u00a0But it&#8217;s over now, and I think you know it (as this is written, rumors have it your next presser will be to bow out; we&#8217;ll see). \u00a0You need to come back to the Sixth District and win &#8211; I&#8217;m guessing 15 points this time &#8211; and use the mojo you&#8217;ve acquired over this campaign to move into leadership, and build that resume. \u00a0And, let&#8217;s not forget, work on that message discipline; as I&#8217;ve said, when you&#8217;re &#8220;on&#8221;, there&#8217;s scarcely a politician out there who can out-motivate you from the stump. On the other hand, there are times when you shoot yourself in the foot with a belt-fed M240G machine gun. \u00a0I&#8217;m not going to recount the times &#8211; the media and your various local obsessive stalkers will do that for us &#8211; but let&#8217;s call it a growth opportunity; the next time you get a communications director who knows what he or she is doing, take their counsel.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>Discuss.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Disjointed random thoughts about Iowa: Let The Donnybrook Roll: I think the results last night were about the best possible outcome for the GOP as a whole. \u00a0All the talk of the nomination being a predetermined conclusion is on hold, at least for now (and hopefully for quite some time); whether you&#8217;re a western libertarian-conservative, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,13],"tags":[184],"class_list":["post-25232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-republicans","tag-bachmann"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25233,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25232\/revisions\/25233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}