What Comes After Iowa? Iowa!

[Dave]

I've read some discussion about what comes next after our excellent showing in Ames. For better or worse, what follows Iowa is Iowa. Not that there aren't a lot of important milestones around the country between now and the start of caucus/primary season, but the first caucus/primary is in Iowa - 8 days before the NH primary and most likely less than 20 weeks away (it keeps moving up).

The purpose of the Iowa Caucus is to further winnow the field of candidates. It's kind of unfair that Iowa gets 2 whacks at this but that's the game. While the two winners of the Iowa Caucuses have rarely gone on to be President, no candidate (R or D) has ever skipped Iowa or finished worse than 3rd in Iowa and gone on to win the nomination. So historically only the top 3 in the Iowa Caucus remain viable.

I want to see RP finish in the top 3 in Iowa, giving any fence-sitters in NH the courage to join the NH Ron Paul faithful and give him a victory there! This is our best chance to spring-board into Super Duper Tuesday with the big momentum.

[LibertyEagle]

Do your Iowa Meetups have a plan of attack in mind?

[Dave]

Do your Iowa Meetups have a plan of attack in mind?

Ames wrapped up less than 72 hours ago after weeks of busting our butts. So no - we haven't formulated a plan yet. Any suggestions?

[Badger Paul]

Dave if no one else has I want to thank you and each and every Iowan for all the work you all put in last few months. We would have never got over 1,300 votes without you.

Now's the time to take thise 1300 names (if we have most of them) and organize them into precint and county chairman and really build a solid organization there.

[stevedasbach]

Dave,

Does the campaign have any idea where the 1300 votes came from? That is, what activities were most successful at producing votes, and which ones didn't have much impact?

[jorger]

Great Work Dave and everyone else in Iowa.

Really hope you can get many of those 1300+ voters to join the meetups and campaign in Iowa for the Good Doctor.

[Dave]

Dave if no one else has I want to thank you and each and every Iowan for all the work you all put in last few months. We would have never got over 1,300 votes without you.

Now's the time to take thise 1300 names (if we have most of them) and organize them into precint and county chairman and really build a solid organization there.

Thanks but we don't deserve any more thanks than everyone else who has contributed so far. Maybe less since we're already right here in Iowa. The BIG thanks go out to everyone outside Iowa for contributing their energy and money (to HQ and non-HQ efforts!) and to so many people for coming here from all over America to help. Without help from outside Iowa the Straw Poll would have been a disaster, I assure you.

I'm humbled by all of you. We'll do everything we can to make Caucus night a success.

[Badger Paul]

You're welcome Dave. I was going to mention too, Iowa's college campuses will be a great place to organize RP meetups and groups. Standing outside college football games and passing out RP literature this fall is also a great way to reach large groups of people. And I would strongly encourage you to set up a PAC or just a paypal account RP supporters across the nation can contribute to to fund newspaper and radio ads just as Lord Xar's did (that last minute advertising I firmly believe did the trick). Find some creative people among your Meetup.com groups to work on this.

Those are just some ideas to go forward to the caucuses with. If the campaign still has its phone and or mailing lists, those of us outside Iowa can still help to influence voters.

[Lord Xar]

Ames wrapped up less than 72 hours ago after weeks of busting our butts. So no - we haven't formulated a plan yet. Any suggestions?

Yes, I will be having (with the help from libertyeagle, scribbler and freelancer) some radio ads coming your way very soon.

I suggest that you organize some donation drive among all 500+ meetups member and whomever else, and start using the radio ads...

[rich34]

That's a good idea Xar. I'm thinking we should probably start hitting both Iowa and New Hampshire with radio ads. How much are we talking to run ads for a week or so?

[Lord Xar]

That's a good idea Xar. I'm thinking we should probably start hitting both Iowa and New Hampshire with radio ads. How much are we talking to run ads for a week or so?

Yes.. but I dont want to say too much right now.... hold your horses... I am trying to move as fast as possible.

[cujothekitten]

We're also working on some TV ads if anyone is interested in helping out with that.

[ARealConservative]

Thanks to the Des Moines and Ames groups for carrying the load. 5th place considering the amount of time and money HQ spent on Iowa is extremely encouraging.

One positive is that Voter turnout would of been low anyway thanks to the current administration but if they really move this thing into late december it will even further harm the turnout. That could help.

My concern is how college students would deal with that. Voting absentee for a caucus couldn't work yet out of state students go back home in December.


My ideas

1) Make States of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina priorities and seek national volunteer assistance.

2) Expand meeting group presence in state. A group in each of the 99 counties in Iowa would be ideal -same goes with the other states. Stay active with these groups.

3 Continue Mail Program. Hammer Letters to Editor, Radio call in's across the state

4) Identify and start planning for a couple big events now so out of staters could plan to come attend.

5) Get people to donate money. Convince them even $5, $10 will help. 6 weeks left in the quarter and we can't let Huckabee or the other 2nd tier guys gain on us.

6) Help and encourage the national student grassroots campaign that is starting up with Jeff Frazee. This needs to be successful.

[rich34]

That's fine Xar no hurry.

[jpa]

Ames wrapped up less than 72 hours ago after weeks of busting our butts. So no - we haven't formulated a plan yet. Any suggestions?

My suggestions for Iowa:

Target middle class & upper middle class independants. Win them over with
- low to no federal income taxes
- peace in the middle east (fight the war on terror smarter)
- stop illegal immigration

If Ron Paul can get strong & visible support in the polls of non-Republicans, he can win over more GOP skeptics. The key to the GOP nomination is "electability". The reason Rudy leads the national polls is he is the one who people currently think has the best shot vs. Hillary.

We need to show (in Iowa, NH, SC) that Ron Paul is winning independants & "Reagan Democrats" and that he is the party's best hope against the Clinton machine.

Remember, Clintons dominated the GOP for 8 years. The party faithful do not want another 8 more, and a larger "Clinton dynasty"

[mdh]

From what I've heard from folks on the ground in NH, NH state folks are planning to push their primary up again to beat Iowa. They even went so far as to say they would break with tradition and hold their primaries in 2007 if need-be to be the first.

[Badger Paul]

Dave I had a question on Iowa caucus process concerning voter registration. I know you have to be a registered Republican to vote in the GOP caucus but how much time do you have to say switch your registration from say, libertarian or Constitution Party? I have a list of CP supporters in Iowa and some of them did make to Ames thanks to the efforts of the Minnesota meetup.com group to contact them. I want to be able to encourage them to vote in the caucus as well.

[Dave]

Dave,

Does the campaign have any idea where the 1300 votes came from? That is, what activities were most successful at producing votes, and which ones didn't have much impact?

I would imagine they have a pretty good handle on who most of these 1300 are. I'm less sure if they know what brought them on board.

[Dave]

From what I've heard from folks on the ground in NH, NH state folks are planning to push their primary up again to beat Iowa. They even went so far as to say they would break with tradition and hold their primaries in 2007 if need-be to be the first.

Iowa and NH have been in cahoots with this 'first in the nation' thing for a long time. Iowa gets the first caucus and NH gets the first primary. They generally protect each other's turf. Other states like SC and NV moving theirs up just causes IA and NH to move up, too. Sometimes a few states will go before IA and NH anyway (like AK last time) but the candidates and press generally ignore those since everything has already been invested in IA and NH.

Right now the Iowa caucus is scheduled for January 14th but that will certainly move up since SC moved up. The Iowa governor has said he won't move into 2007 but I don't know if he will have a choice. Can you imagine a caucus between Christmas and New Year's or during the football bowl games? Attendance would be awful (which might benefit RP but diminish the importance of the Iowa results).

This is all in flux...

[Dave]

Dave I had a question on Iowa caucus process concerning voter registration. I know you have to be a registered Republican to vote in the GOP caucus but how much time do you have to say switch your registration from say, libertarian or Constitution Party? I have a list of CP supporters in Iowa and some of them did make to Ames thanks to the efforts of the Minnesota meetup.com group to contact them. I want to be able to encourage them to vote in the caucus as well.

You can register as a republican on your way in the door on caucus night. Just to be safe, of course, I would get this done way ahead of time - we don't want any surprises or to chance anything to an uninformed precinct chairman.

[Badger Paul]

Thanks for the info!

[jacmicwag]

I'm interested in this student movement. After watching all the golf carts carry in the older folks at Ames, I've got to believe a few thousand new student/young people votes in Iowa will be the difference in January 08.

Someone mentioned Jeff Frazee - is he on this forum and what type of national grassroots organization is in the works so far? I'd definitely think these votes are the "low hanging fruit" if we can get them registered.

[IowaSupport]

The Iowa City/Cedar Rapids groups were all tuckered out after the Straw Poll and the work put in prior to it, so we've taken a few days off.

We're planning on getting back into the swing of things here very shortly - I'll be "Painting the town Ron" like other cities here on the first day of school - and we're looking into creating a Student Organization. Iowa City is a college town through and through - we'll be focusing on the younger folks in the coming weeks.

[ARealConservative]

Same here.

We need a couple days to spend with family and regroup.

Tommorow a bunch of us are heading to the Illinois Straw Poll.

Otherwise, I need to get the meetup calendar going again. We had tunnel vision for Aug 11th.

[poppop_schell]

Food for Thought.... IF we can't be 100% sure that each vote made for Ron Paul is counted and the other candidates (i.e. Romney, McCain and Guiliani) aren't falsely increased, then why are we making all this effort which IMO is outstanding and failing to insure that vote fraud doesn't occur like it did at the Iowa Strawvote? You can ignore what happened but it could cost Ron Paul a victory in most of the votes that really count for delegates.

[Bro.Butch]

In a caucus people join into groups of who they are supporting. Two or 3 RP supporters can headcount the support of every candidate @ their caucus site. There will be no possible cheating if RP HQs sets up a central location to copy all this info cellphoned into them. If the numbers don't match with the "official" numbers they can double check and know where the problem is located. I said 2 or 3 RP supporters count so they can double check each other and get accurate numbers so there won't be any question if the officials must be challenged !!!

A caucus is the most open form of election there is in the world. The cheating can only come from the numbers being wrote down wrong or reported incorrectly to the official state tally location. If the RP campaign has the people watching closely and calling in the totals for all campaigns at each caucus location the RP campaign will actually know the totals before America does. RP reps @ the official state computation center can be comparing the numbers against the numbers as they come in to make sure no cheating is taking place. This caucus can be completely honest. Now as for the general in Nov. you would hope the machines will be outlawed by then !

I think I saw somewhere that 50,000 votes should win the Iowa republican caucus. If that is correct, that is what we need to be aiming for and accepting no less ! Remember you vote for free in your own city/town/communities. You don't have to convince someone to go on a trip to spend $ to vote. It seems a much easier sale if we just get the name & message out...

[jacmicwag]

Bush took it with 35,000 in 1999. With Mitt, Rudy, and Thompson going toe to toe this time around, it may only take 20,000 votes to win the prize. All the more reason to tab into the student/young people bloc. It's ours for the taking.

[Dave]

There are about 2,000 precincts in Iowa. We need at least one RP supporter in every precinct - preferably assuming the role of Caucus Chairman so our people are running the show.

On caucus night there is an opportunity for someone to speak on behalf of each candidate. We need someone GOOD doing this in every precinct to sway people's opinion right before the vote. In each precinct votes are tallied in front of one supporter for each candidate, if any are present and volunteer to watch.

[Litanss]

Iowa is a critical state to gain support in. I really hope the Iowa RP groups work very hard this fall to gain more support - I wish you guys the best, and I hope your work pays off when the caucus comes around.

[Dave]

Iowa is a critical state to gain support in. I really hope the Iowa RP groups work very hard this fall to gain more support...

I'm taking a 20% pay cut and volunteering at the Iowa Ron Paul HQ on Mondays and Thursdays from 9 to 1.

[hatefalseweight]

I managed to make the Straw Poll with a few people from Milwaukee and Chicago and was struck by how noncommital a lot of folks attending the poll were. I was out in the lots chatting and reasoning with incoming, and later outgoing voters, literally all day and got so caught up in it I didn't eat all day and barely got enough to drink.

I was just asking people if they had picked a candidate and if there was any hesitation I just started walking in with them and often got several minutes of conversation with people. I lost track, but I know I had significant conversation with close to 50 people or more and probably close to 1000 heard me give out a few of Dr. Paul's positions as they walked by.

We had more than enough volunteers there to personally articulate Dr. Paul's message to anyone who would listen had we been better organized. I think we should look at getting 100 or 200 reasonably articulate and informed people who can swamp events like this where people are open to this type of discussion and I believe this sort of presence would be very compelling. The straw poll was great for all the signage and hoopla, but there were too many young people either just standing there not saying anything as people walked by or doing the marching and making noise thing. Then I don't know where they went - on my two trips down there so far, it doesn't seem like people really know how to be effective once they get there.

I'm looking forward to coming back and would to see if we could get together some sort of volunteer "speaker's burueau" or something that could sharpen up the message and get around to different venues, churches, schools for a week tour or weekends here and there.

Chuck Maier
Wisconsin meetup

[ronpaulhawaii]

I'm taking a 20% pay cut and volunteering at the Iowa Ron Paul HQ on Mondays and Thursdays from 9 to 1.

Wow, thanks!


I managed to make the Straw Poll with a few people from Milwaukee and Chicago and was struck by how noncommital a lot of folks attending the poll were. I was out in the lots chatting and reasoning with incoming, and later outgoing voters, literally all day and got so caught up in it I didn't eat all day and barely got enough to drink.

I was just asking people if they had picked a candidate and if there was any hesitation I just started walking in with them and often got several minutes of conversation with people. I lost track, but I know I had significant conversation with close to 50 people or more and probably close to 1000 heard me give out a few of Dr. Paul's positions as they walked by.

We had more than enough volunteers there to personally articulate Dr. Paul's message to anyone who would listen had we been better organized. I think we should look at getting 100 or 200 reasonably articulate and informed people who can swamp events like this where people are open to this type of discussion and I believe this sort of presence would be very compelling. The straw poll was great for all the signage and hoopla, but there were too many young people either just standing there not saying anything as people walked by or doing the marching and making noise thing. Then I don't know where they went - on my two trips down there so far, it doesn't seem like people really know how to be effective once they get there.

I'm looking forward to coming back and would to see if we could get together some sort of volunteer "speaker's burueau" or something that could sharpen up the message and get around to different venues, churches, schools for a week tour or weekends here and there.

Chuck Maier
Wisconsin meetup

Great approach, good job, good post, great points. Thanks!

I was bummed when I saw RP waiting to speak at the podium. Exuberance is great but... The word "freedom" is much more powerful than anyones name.

my 2 ¢

[LibertyEagle]

I'm looking forward to coming back and would to see if we could get together some sort of volunteer "speaker's burueau" or something that could sharpen up the message and get around to different venues, churches, schools for a week tour or weekends here and there.

Chuck Maier
Wisconsin meetup

That's an excellent idea.

[jacmicwag]

Chuck - I like your idea about the Speakers Bureau. Maybe this is another way to get to the student vote via some type of campus tour. That's cool you approached people getting off the buses in Ames. I was up there but didn't think to try this approach. I've been calling Republican delagates in Texas for the Straw Poll down here and I've noticed that most are undecided and are willing to talk. That's been a real surprise. Could be we have more leverage than any of us thought.

I want to go after the student/young people vote in Iowa. I can help with the message, presentation and anything else if you want to pursue this. Just let me know.

[Allerious]

Between now and then, we've got more straw polls and debates.

Paul needs to go from top-5 to top-3 material and he needs to do it by January.