NY Times:
For decades, Iowa has served as the official kickoff for the presidential campaign, providing the first real test for candidates hoping to win their way to the White House.
But there are signs that its influence on the nominating process could be ebbing and that the nature of the voters who tend to turn out for the Republican caucuses — a heavy concentration of evangelical Christians and ideological conservatives overlaid with parochial interests — is discouraging some candidates from competing there.
The non-representational rabid mob in IA (aka GOP primary voters) is scaring the kids.
Charles Babington/AP:
Another party strategist, Virginia-based Mike McKenna, said the modest interest that Romney, Huntsman and Gingrich are showing in Iowa "is testament to the amount of juice that Michele Bachmann has there." Bachmann, a tea party favorite, appeals strongly to social conservatives who turn out heavily for the GOP caucus.
Long before Romney announced he was skipping the Iowa Republican Party straw poll, Pawlenty was planning a major investment in the event, which is a state GOP fundraiser. Pawlenty has hired Romney's 2007 straw poll coordinator and is reserving buses to ferry supporters to Iowa State University for the daylong event.
With Romney out of the Ames poll, and Gingrich not expected to participate, Pawlenty would have high expectations to win. But the payoff might be minimal without top-tier candidates to defeat, said Will Rogers, Gingrich's Iowa political director until he resigned last month.
So if Pawlenty loses, he's screwed and if he wins, it's like his first debate performance against Herman Cain—no one will notice him. Sounds like a lose-lose to me.
Steve Kornacki:
If his goal when he officially launched his presidential candidacy last month was to inflict a massive amount of humiliation on himself in as short a time as possible, then Newt Gingrich has succeeded spectacularly.
Barbara Feder Ostrov:
The long-awaited Federal Communications Commission report on American journalism, Information Needs of Communities, paints a poignant, if slightly dated, picture of the decline of health journalism at the nation’s newspapers, even as it highlights some of the online ventures that have stepped into the void.
Joe Nocera:
No, the real reason Warren has become a piñata is that, as a Harvard law professor, she dreamed up the idea of a federal agency that could help prevent consumers of financial products — like, oh, predatory subprime mortgages — from being taken advantage of. Then she lobbied to turn it into reality, as part of the Dodd-Frank reform law. And now, working for the administration, she is busy setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will “go live” in less than six weeks.
What’s worse, she’s been doing a pretty good job of it so far. When she was first appointed to set up the agency, I heard rumbling that she had no management chops and would make a hash of things. This prediction has turned out to be spectacularly wrong. She has attracted first-rate talent for virtually all the top jobs. The new bureau’s first move was to persuade two government agencies to combine mortgage forms into one easy-to-read document — no easy task given how government works. She has consistently talked about making bank disclosures easier for consumers to understand.
On the financial front, opposition to Elizabeth Warren tells you everything you need to know about the GOP and what they stand for.
Seth Mnookin:
At a prenatal appointment, with no baby to distract or soothe, parents could ask how vaccines work. They could digest the fact that, contrary to some rumors, vaccines are not injected directly into the bloodstream, they do not contain antifreeze, and there is no evidence that children receive “too many too soon.” They could discuss early warning signs for developmental disabilities and review the studies showing that there is no connection between vaccines and autism. They could hear about the dozens of infants who have recently been hospitalized with measles or have died of whooping cough. And they could learn about “herd immunity” — what occurs when enough people in a population are immune to a disease to prohibit it from being spread in the first place.
Many pediatricians have prenatal counseling sessions now, but there's a lot to go over and this topic is not always completely covered. As it is now, the anti-vaccine advocates continue to do immeasurable harm. Measles is on the rise (it shouldn't be), pertussis still kills babies, and precious health dollars are spent inefficiently (in the form of office time.) The author suggests a better way to get info to parents (before the baby is born, before everyone is exhausted and confronting their first shot), but the health system has to agree to pay for those visits or it's a non-starter.
