RPI Lincoln Day Dinner

The annual Lincoln Day Dinner for the Republican Party of Iowa turned out pretty well, in my opinion. It was held at the convention center in downtown Des Moines, and drew 1,000 people from across the state. It featured the 10 Republican Presidential candidates, and because of that the event drew C-SPAN which broadcast the dinner live. However, Duncan Hunter had some air travel problems, and wasn't able to make it. I won't give a play-by-play of the event, just things that I noticed, thought, etc. I'll leave the play-by-plays to the other blogs. Please Note that any opinions that might be reflected in this post are not necessarily the opinions of the Webster County Republicans.

The Brownback supporters were out in mass for the event. They stood infront of the doors holding signs, and chanted a bit in the lobby. For some reason, Brownback had several cameramen (both still and video) following him around the entire event. At first I thought they were regular press guys, until I saw the Brownback stickers they were wearing. I'm not sure if it was a visual image the campaign was going for, or, most likely, simply getting shots for future ads.

Flip the Dolphin was also there. Thats the dolphin that follows Mitt Romney around to draw attention to the flip-flops that he has been accused of. Romney had the only "keepsake" of the candidates with his Mitt "mitts"---baseball gloves made of foam ala the famous foam finger seen in sporting stadiums nation wide. The only other "keepsake" was the wine glass that the Fair Tax people had for everyone sitting at the table. John Cox also had volunteers passing out bags of potato chips.

Now, to the speeches. The speeches were only to be 6 minutes long. The only candidate who came close to keeping within the limit was John McCain, the last speaker of the evening. While all of these candidates are used to speaking at longer lengths at their own events, every candidate talking for 20 minutes or so each made the event longer than necessary, and no doubt many in the audience grew bored.

Rudy was the first speaker, and he finished by reminding people to keep Reagan's 11th Commandment (thou shalt speak no ill will of other Republicans). While there were a few candidates who made indirect comments about other candidates (read: Rudy, Mitt and McCain), I saw those as more of differentiating themselves from the others, and the rule was followed pretty well until Gov. Jim Gilmore got up. When he said the line "Rudy McRomney is not a conservative, and he knows he's not a conservative," a hush grew over the crowd, and then came a lot of "oooo's" signifiying that they couldn't believe, and/or didn't really appreciate, the comment. Asside from a few lines, the rest of his speech didn't receive much reaction.

One of those indirect comments won, in my opinion, the line of the night. Tom Tancredo was talking about immigration (surprise, surprise, :-)), and of the recent converts to his side of the issue: "They are welcome, of course, but my concern is that the conversions have occurred not on the road to Damascus but on the road here to Des Moines." Tancredo got a good responce from this line, if for anything else, it's sheer cleaverness.

A nice surprise of the night was when Gov. Mike Huckabee got on stage, and introduced us to the "other" govorner of Arkansas. A bald man took the mike with a great Clinton impression where he thanked his supporters and then rattled off a bunch of women's names. As he left the stage, Huckabee asked the crowd to give a hand to Paul Shanklin, the guy who writes and performs all of the songs we hear on Rush Limbaugh.

Tommy Thompson was probably the surprise of the night. I saw him speak earlier in the day in Fort Dodge, but he was on fire that night. There were several candidates who gave most if not all of the speech in a "fire and brimstone" type voice, which came over more as just being loud than passionate. Thompson was the exception. He delievered some the best recieved jokes of the night, and you could feel that he had he undivided attention of a good part of the audience for a good part of the speech, particulary when he talked about his new granddaughter.

I was most interested in seeing how John McCain was recieved. The national polls have him trailing Giuliani by a bit, however polls in the lead-off states have them running almost even. Then, there are those who have serious doubts about McCain because of his past stances. With all of this, he was recieved very well. From my vantage point, he had a lot of people standing for him both when he walked on and off the stage. He was the only candidate who didn't stand behind the podium. Rather, he took the mic and walked around the stage as in his town hall meetings. He made a couple of jokes that were recieved as well as Tommy Thompson's were, and he focused a majority of this speech on Iraq. While there are a lot of people who have doubts about McCain , you could feel the respect in the room for him and what he has done in his life. I was told afterward that as he was walking through the kitchen, he took and answered several questions from the staff working the event.

After the dinner, the candidates held receptions for their supporters and other interested people. This was probably what made the event. It was a nice, relaxed atmosphere and everyone was enjoying themselves. I wasn't able to make it to all of them, but from what I saw, they all had a good turnout.

McCain had the greatest ice-cream treat invented by man---the Drumstick--- available visiters. McCain made a short speech where he thanked his supporters and asked for their help in the caucuses, and then signed many autographs and posed for several pictures before he left.

The most popular reception was the Fair Tax group. They had a huge table with chocolate covered strawberries, crackers and cheese, cheesecake, and fruit, gave away 10 i-pod nanos at the end of the night, and the most popular attraction of the night---the open bar. I think we are going to keep hearing more from the Fair Tax people. They continue to grow their nationwide organization, and are attracting a lot of favorable attention from both voters and the candidates. Their reception only added to that.

Mike Huckabee, in case you didn't know, plays bass guitar in a rock band. He brought the band up with him, and played until the building guys were ready to close up. They are a pretty good live band, playing a bunch of classic rock hits. People in the audience were dancing along, including a couple prominent people in the party.

RPI should be happy with the Lincoln Day dinner this year. Though the speeches were a tad long, I think everyone enjoyed hearing from all of the candidates in the same night, and further enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere of the receptions. One thing it made evident is that at this point, it's still a wide open race. While Giuliani, McCain and Romney are still the front runners, I don't think we can leave out the possibility of one of the second tier or unannounced candidates from pulling off an upset, or at least a very good showing.

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