The Conservative Reader

Art Smith August 9th, 2008

On the Republican side, the increase in McCain’s position in the polls, slow as it is in coming, is a reflection of the unity that is starting to build within the Republican Party.  I think what you’re really seeing is that as the various state conventions come to a close, and people have finished jockeying for position to attend the Republican National Convention, that the dust is settling, people are getting into position for victory and are finally realizing the inevitable: John McCain is going to be the Republican Candidate… there’s little that could change that now.  People are seeing more and more clearly the need to get past the differences and work toward victory in November, both in the Oval Office and in Congress.  The more that people get to know Obama, the less they like him.  If they pay attention.  As we all pay more attention to facts, to action, to words, and less on form, appeal, music, timing we see more of the truth.  Feelings cloud the truth… watch out for emotional invitations with no substance.

And, the past few weeks of drama in Congress probably haven’t hurt much either.

On the Democratic side, we have a party that is apparently intent on losing in November.  And I have no problem with that.

First of all, the Democratically controlled Congress has made what will probably a massive blunder by thumbing their collective noses at the American People.  Going on vacation in August without a vote on Energy Policy is causing most of the country to retaliate with support of the Republican Protest in Washington.  Iowans in particular are unhappy because this recess occurred without satisfactory action Flood Relief.  It’s unconscionable for Pelosi and Reid to ignore the real present needs of the country, even though they got their own personal agendas adressed (the housing bill).

Then secondly the continuing saga of Hillary’s desire to be President.  This week she stated that she would still seek to have her name put in nomination at the Democratic National Convention in order to appease those who had supported her and build party unity.  I don’t know what’s wrong with Clinton.  It’s a perfect storm for the Republicans: “See how self-serving Democrats are?”, “Democrats are STILL fighting over their candidate!”.  And I can just see it now… “I had no idea I would end up as the Candidate!”

In Iowa, it was somewhat revealing that the Democratic State Convention lasted well into the early hours of the next day due to the perilous extent of differences and in-fighting, while Republicans, who had their differences on the table, completed business before the afternoon expired.

The bottom line is, Democrats do NOT have it together as a party.  Republicans are not perfect either, but evidently recognize the importance of unity in achieving success.

At least this year.

Hat Tips to: John Deeth, ABC Online, and Don Frederick at the LA Times Blog.

Tags: 2008 Congressional Election, 2008 Presidential Election, Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention, Democratic Party, Democratic State Convention, Energy Policy, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Iowa Democrats, Iowa Republicans, John McCain, Nancy Pelosi, Republican National Convention, Republican Party, Republican Protest, Republican State Convention, Unity, US Congress

• 2008 Congressional Election , 2008 Presidential Election , Barack Obama , Democratic Party , Floods of 2008 , Harry Reid , Iowa , Iowa Politics , John McCain , Nancy Pelosi , Republican Party , US Congress
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Art Smith August 7th, 2008

Today was the first day of the Iowa State Fair.  I had intended to participate in the early morning event (but slept in instead) to break the record for the most corn-dogs eaten by the most people at the same time in the same place.  Sounds like it was a rip-roaring success, with over 15,000 people showing up, only 10,000 of which were able to enter the Grand Stand, and I’m not sure, but I think only about 8,400 corn-dogs were available.  We listened to the actual “Chomp!” on the radio, and it sounded like a lot of fun!

All 15,000 or so were admiteed to the fair for free.  By late this afternoon, I was still meeting people who had been there since the beginning of the day.  I spoke to a co-worker who had actually gotten a corn dog, who said when they handed it to her it was hot, but by the time they actually were ready to eat them, they had gotten kind of cold.

I arrived at the fair grounds to find the parking lots full, and parked instead on someone’s lawn for a dollar less than the fair grounds lot… and when I left it was much easier to get out as well!  I told the young lady collecting money for the parking that I would have gladly paid $20.  :)

So, I worked at the Republican Party of Iowa booth at the Varied Industries Building.  It was a great pleasure to meet some many people from around Iowa!  And a number of people shared some very strong opinions about the Presidential Election… although I had a couple of people who were still not willing to vote for McCain (nor Obama, by the way) most were extremely enthusiastic about getting McCain this fall.

It was a real pleasure to meet incoming Republican National Committee Woman Kim Lehman’s father, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey’s parents, and US House District 3 Representative Steve King’s sister-in-law.  I had a nice chat with US House District 3 Republican candidate Kim Schmett’s wife Connie (who is also his campaign manager) and US House District 2 Republican candidate Dr. Marrianette Miller-Meeks.

I also got a chance to meet and thank several members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.  I spent some time with Lee (whose last name I missed) who served in Viet Nam as a Navy Seal, and is a big-time barbeque master (he has 3 big smokers!).  It was neat to hear him share about some of the people he has met, served with, and the work that the VFW is doing.  If you see any of these folks, you be sure and thank them too!

It’s really great to see so many people who are passionate about the state of our nation and want desparately to see the right kind of leadership in Washington!

Tomorrow, John McCain will be speaking at the Des Moines Register Soap Box at 10:30 AM.  We plan to be there to see what he has to say.

Lastly, I had to try the all-new Pineapple-on-a-stick!  A pineapple spear with a stick through it, deep-fat-fried in funnel-cake batter, and covered with a little liquid sugar.  It sounds like it might be too rich, but I thought it was awesome!

Tags: barbeque, Bill Northey, Bill Northy, Connie Schmett, Corn-dog record breaker, Des Moines Register Soap Box, Dr. Marrianete Miller-Meeks, Iowa State Fair, John McCain, Kim Lehman, Kim Schmett, Pineapple-on-a-stick, Steve King, Veterans of Foreign Wars, VFW

• 2008 Congressional Election , 2008 Presidential Election , Iowa , Iowa Politics , Iowa State Fair , John McCain , Military , Uncategorized
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Art Smith August 5th, 2008

As mentioned here last week, Polk County District Court Judge Douglas Staskal made his ruling on the request to temporarily block Iowa’s new smoking ban on Monday.  The ruling left the door open for bar owners to to proceed with the case.  According to a story on the Des Moines Register web site:

Staskal found it “safe to conclude that the plaintiffs have at least a reasonable chance of succeeding on these claims because, on first impression, the exemptions appear to make the statute as a whole substantially under inclusive in relation to its stated purpose.”

Basically, the bar owners did not provide enough evidence that the law was causing irreperable harm:

Staskal’s 10-page ruling says complaints of lost business due to the smoking ban amount to claims of “financial damage that can be remedied by the payment of the money” once the lawsuit is over. Bar owners failed to present evidence of a wider link between their cash registers and the smoking ban, the judge said.

I’m not really surprised that this request was rejected.  The coalition involved in the case is regional instead of statewide, and reflects a limited number of interests.  This might not bode well for them during the actaul court case, Staskal’s comments notwithstanding.  What is needed here is a broader plaintiff group with a stronger constitutional focus in light of the fact that there are many people negatively impacted by this.  Including employees and customers in many businesses and in private homes (check the part of the law that covers day care, you’ll see). 

The law is bad.  It’s got good intentions, but it’s just bad.  This sounds like a trivial encroachment, but but it’s the small changes in our rights that can become major impediments to our freedoms.  We should not put up with it.

We certainly can find a solution to maintain healthy environments where necessary without stamping on our rights.   And we get to elect our state legislators this year.

“Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain” - that’s the Iowa State Motto. 

Do we mean it?

Tags: Constitution, Day Care, Des Moines Register, Iowa Smoking Ban, Iowa State Motto, Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain, Polk County District Court Judge Douglas Staskal

• 2008 Local Elections , Health , Iowa General Assembly , Iowa Politics , Rights , Smoking
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Art Smith August 1st, 2008

Bar owners got their first shot in court to get a stay ordered on the 2008 Iowa Smoking Ban.  Some bar owners say they are losing business, some preparing to shut down for good.  Although one admitted that gasoline prices and other economic issues may be impacting business as well, there should be no doubt that some patrons who enjoy smoking and drinking with their pals probably figure they can spend less buying their own six-pack and drink at home where they can at least smoke (as long they they don’t have a daycare business operating out of the home).

George Eichhorn, fresh off of a Republican primary loss for the honor of running against Democrat Tom Harkin, is representing the group members of the Iowa Bar Owners Coalition.

State officials are trying to stand on studies in other states that demonstrate that the impact on restaurants and bars is actually steady to positive.  I have yet to see these studies, but regardless, it does not change the fact that the new law is bad in several ways.  Taking away the rights of property owners is just wrong.

Polk County District Judge Douglas Staskal plans to have a decision on the stay early next week.  It would be an interesting situation if the law was struck down until the Iowa General Assembly can meet again… would they try to hold a special session over this.

Not likely.

On a technical note, it’s interesting that at least two of the local TV news stations posted this story by using a short 3 paragraph piece from the AP.   This story deserved better, in my opinion.  I’m glad the Cedar Rapids Gazette took the trouble to have one of their reporters cover the story.  Granted, the coalition is mostly made up of bar owners from eastern Iowa, still, this was a critical state level story.

Tags: 2008 Iowa Smoking Ban, Bars, Cedar Rapids Gazette, Economy, Gasoline Prices, George Eichhorn, Iowa Bar Owners Coalition, Iowa General Assembly, Polk County District Judge Douglas Staskal

• 2008 Local Elections , Economy , Iowa General Assembly , Iowa Politics , Smoking
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Art Smith July 22nd, 2008

Tonight I attended my first Polk County (Iowa) Republican Central Committee meeting. I have never been at this level of politics (okay, 2008 continues to be a year of firsts for me in local politics), and it was more interesting than I expected.

I won’t get into a lot of details about the meeting, except that it was half speeches (which was good, actually) and half business. Fund-raising is definitely a high priority for the party, along with voter turnout.

I was impressed with the variety of people there, various ages, ethnicities, and walks of life. We definitely have a party with a cross-section of the community that takes the time to participate.

Just to clarify, the Central Committee is made up of as many as 2 people from each precinct in the county (I am one of two from my precinct). We could have over 300 people in the room if every precinct were fully represented… I would estimate we had about 80 people or so there.

My other precinct representative is the chairman of the Organization Committee, which is responsible for building up the Central Committee membership and overseeing the absentee-ballot availability effort.

I got a chance to speak briefly with Jonathon Narcisse, an outspoken member of the Des Moines School Board. I appreciate the fact he is focused on understanding and resolving the issues we have with poor graduation rates in Des Moines. In the few minutes that I spoke with him, I could tell he is very well knowledgeable about education issues and the needs of students and parents.

I also made contact with Kim Schmett, who is running against Leonard Boswell for US House Iowa District 3.
I’m hoping we can get an interview setup soon. If you have questions for Kim Schmett, please leave comments on this post or email me.

A few Iowa General Assembly candidates were on hand, including Larry Disney, Chris Sanger, Chris Hagenow, and Erik Helland.  So far, Erik is unopposed (evidently, there’s 2 weeks left to close that up).  All four gave a very brief speech, mostly encouraging the efforts to get the vote out.

So, a question I hope some might ask is, how to do you get on a Central Committee or somehow involved to help your local organization? Simple answer: contact your county party office and tell them you are interesting in participating. Different groups will work different ways, but starting with the phone call is pretty much all it takes.

Tonight was a great experience, and the work of the next few months volunteering to impact the community directly in bringing out the vote will be very interesting.

Tags: Central Committee, Chris Hagenow, Chris Sanger, Des Moines School Board, Erik Helland, Grassroots, Iowa, Iowa General Assembly, Jonathon Narcisse, Kim Schmett, Larry Disney, Organization Committee, Polk County, Republican

• 2008 Congressional Election , 2008 Local Elections , 2008 Presidential Election , Grassroots , Iowa , Iowa Politics , Republican Party , Uncategorized
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Art Smith July 20th, 2008

When I attended the Iowa State Republican Convention, one thing that I found odd was the district level meetings that were held on Friday night to select district delegates and alternates to the National Convention, electors to go to Washington if our candidate for President wins in Iowa, and representatives to the State Nominating Committee (who select the slate of additional at-large delegates and alternates to the National Convention).  What I could not understand was, why we didn’t do this in April when we had the actual District Convention.

Although I still don’t have the answer to why it works this way, Ted Sporer published some recommendations to reform our process, which included centralizing the planning for the State Convention (that is, have the State Central Committee own the planning), and move the Friday night District Level activities to the April District Conventions.

This all makes sense to me.  It’s interesting how many people really didn’t know what Friday night was about (I almost didn’t attend myself because I didn’t really understand the process).  For me, it would have been more sensible to do this work in April.  Nothing happened between April and June that should have had an influence on electing these roles, and it would have given the Nominating Committee more time to work (they were up pretty late Friday night working on the slate).

Ted’s contention, which I think is right on, is that if this work is moved to April, we have a higher likelihood of participation.  Participation is key to the whole process, and anything we can do to motivate people to come to these conventions, the better.

This will be a good topic to address next year.  Right now, we have a number of candidates to get elected.

Tags: Current Events, delegates, District Convention, Iowa, National Convention, Nominating Committee, Republican Party, State Central Committee, State Convention, Ted Sporer

• 2008 Congressional Election , 2008 Iowa Republican Party Convention , 2008 Presidential Election , Iowa , Iowa Caucus , Iowa Politics , Republican Party
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Art Smith July 14th, 2008

Well, I am amazed at how people who are supposed to have a common mission, a common cause, can find themselves so divided.  Of course, we’ve had over 232 years of that.

What’s really surprising to me is that the Iowa Republican State Convention actually had very little real conflict.  There was some, but we managed to work through it.  I’m sorry about those that had bad experiences this year.

I agree whole heartedly with commoniowan at Iowa Defense Alliance: stop the attacks within the party.  Let’s all behave with the kindness, integrity and graciousness of Sandy Greiner (State Representative) and start talking about the issues, the candidates, knocking on doors, etc, and get Republicans elected!

Tags: 2008 Iowa Repulican State Convention, commoniowan, Iowa Defense Alliance, Republican Party of Iowa, RPI, Sandy Greiner

• 2008 Congressional Election , 2008 Iowa Republican Party Convention , 2008 Local Elections , 2008 Presidential Election , Iowa , Iowa Caucus , Iowa Politics , Republican Party
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Art Smith July 14th, 2008

The waters have receded in Iowa for now, and although the task is still long and hard ahead of so many Iowans, we’ve moved the links related to the flood off of the sidebar and onto a separate page.  If you select the “Other Resources” page above, one of the choices on that page will be “Floods of 2008″.  Or use this link.

We continue to pray for and support those who were impacted by the flood.  As the Iowa General Assembly comes together either later this year or during the regular 2009 session, we will cover the major decisions that face them and the impacts these decisions will have on the state of Iowa.

Tags: Floods of 2008, Iowa, Iowa General Assembly, Recovery

• Floods of 2008 , Iowa , Iowa General Assembly , Iowa Politics , Weather
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Art Smith July 13th, 2008

The afternoon of the convention went fairly smoothly. As I mentioned yesterday, we heard the results of the National Committee Man and Woman.

I appreciate the way that Stew Iverson kept things moving by inserting speeches at places where there were dead spots because of voting and such.

We heard the report of the Nominating Committee. As mentioned yesterday, names can be substituted by amending the report. And of course, someone made a motion to amend the report. It took over 30 minutes, but the amendment was approved and a name was substituted for another. 22 at-large delegates plus 22 alternates to attend the National Convention, and two more electors for the Presidential Election if McCain takes Iowa.

Kim Schmett spoke in the afternoon. He did a good job of expressing appreciate and concern for Boswell and asked us to have a moment of silence as Leonerd had surgery this week connected to cancer surgery he’d had a few years ago. Kim showed an ad he is airing that pokes fun at Boswell’s lack of desire to debate and hits some key issues.

Chris Reed also spoke during the afternoon. He’s running against Tom Harkin. His speech seemed a little bit tepid to me for a Senate race, not so much in content as in his stage presence (or maybe I was just tired from lunch). Hopefully he can ratchet his presentation up a bit… he’s got a tough job ahead of him.

Then we got the really great news. The Platform Committee had been handed over 60 amendments during the morning. With the time required to debate each item, we were likely to be there until 8:00 or later. I was extremely impressed by the Platform Committee Chairman who suggested that we might only consider about a dozen (he had the specific list) of the amendments which the committee (after reviewing all of them over lunch) considered to relevant. I spoke with one of the members of the committee who told me that the ones we would not be considering were mostly redundant, meaning the people presenting them had not really read or understood the platform. So, a motion to do this was made from the floor, and discussion lasted a little while, and we voted in favor of this approach (thank goodness!).

The amendments we considered mostly made a lot of sense to me, and I believe only one or two were rejected by the convention. A couple required voting by division, but incredibly we got through this process in less than a couple of hours with little (if any) contention.

The Young Delegates brought two very insightful amendments at the end of this process, one seeking elimination of the capital gains tax, and the other seeking to keep government out of controlling legal internet content and commerce. Excellent work on their part, and both amendments were approved by the convention.

I believe we have a great platform. I appreciate the hard work of all of the committees, but I especially appreciate the work done by the Platform Committee because they built a document that essential speaks to what Iowa Republicans believe and want to see from their government and especially Republican politicians.

We adjourned around 5:30 PM (according to John Deeth, the PM is needed for those that might think we worked a lot later and longer, like another party we know).

For my first state convention, this was an excellent experience. There were a number of people like me who were new to this process, and it certainly made some of the process interesting, but it was not unlike other organizational conventions that I’ve attended in the past (mostly church related) where people are there because they feel very strongly about what the convention is doing… otherwise they would not be there. When so many people get together with strong feelings and differing opinions on some items, it can be contentious. I think the party leadership was successful in maintaining order and unity.

Me personally, this is not the end. I will be following the events of the national party, and am already volunteering to help get people out to vote. Regardless of your political opinion, I think the most important things you can do is share your opinion with others, consider input from others, and vote your conscience.

We still have a long way to go.

Tags: 2008 Congressional Elections, 2008 Local Elections, 2008 Presidential Election, Des Moines, Iowa State Republican Convention, Kim Schmett, Platform, Rules

• 2008 Congressional Election , 2008 Iowa Republican Party Convention , 2008 Local Elections , 2008 Presidential Election , Iowa , Iowa Caucus , Iowa Politics , Republican Party
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Art Smith July 12th, 2008

Well, the convention is over. We wrapped up, unbelievably, at 5:30 PM.

I have more to share about the afternoon, but I need to do a few things at home… I’ll finish the update in the morning.

Tags: 2008 Congressional Election, 2008 Local Elections, 2008 Presidential Election, Iowa, Iowa Politics, Republican Party

• 2008 Congressional Election , 2008 Iowa Republican Party Convention , 2008 Local Elections , 2008 Presidential Election , Iowa , Iowa Caucus , Iowa Politics , Republican Party
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