The Big R

A friend to the Cooler sent us an email on Saturday offering to be a Cooler Columnist at the Commonwealth PAC event in Ames. We're happy to give you his/her/its report below:

Caucus Cooler,

I arrived in Ames shortly before the event began and was suprised to see that what was billed as a "picnic" was actually happening in a conference room at a hotel. Given the temperature outside though it worked out just fine. There ended up being about 150 people in attendance. Notably, Congressman Latham, Doug Gross, about 10 legislators and candidates from the area- George Barber made the trip, some Polk County party activists (no Sporers), and the usual Romeny suspects, Dave Kochel, Gentry Collins, Chad Airhart, Jeff Fuller etc.. Only press there was Yepsen and an AP photographer to the best of my knowledge. For a second it seemed like they weren't going to let Yepsen in which was funny, but they relented. Tom Beaumont wrote the article this morning, maybe I just don't know what he looks like. After we lined up for food (the brats were very good) Doug Gross gave a 137 minute introduction. The vast majority of which was a story from his childhood on the farm in which he needed his Dad to bring him the "Big O" (I hope he was talking about overstock.com and not something else), so he could get a cow out of the lake. He somehow parlayed this into Iowa needing the "Big R" (Romney) and then continued to refer to the "Big O" and "Big R" throughout his opening and closing.

Romney gave a terrific stump speech. Started off by talking about the Olympics and then his recent trip to Iraq. He said he spent Memorial Day weekend talking with 90 soldiers family members and not one of them complained because they know their brother/son/father/wife is fighting for a good cause. He also told a goosebumpy story about a flag that had survived one of the two space shuttle explosions (he didn't specify) and went on to talk about what that flag stands for and what the country is about. Overall it was a very positive, moving stump speech that left everybody I spoke with impressed. He then took 5 questions, some of which seemed extremely staged, and he wasn't as impressive. He fumbled the immigration question a bit- not in that he gave the wrong answer, just that the answers didn't seem very polished especially given the fact that those are 2 questions you should be expecting.

Doug Gross gave a 72 minute closing and he only said the phrase "Big R" twelve times. Overall it was a good event, not a huge crowd, but given the summertime and Romney being in Iowa a lot and how far we are away from 08, not too shabby.

We hope to hear about the Chairman's Dinner soon enough, if anything noteworthy happened, we'll update this post. If you would like to be a Cooler Columnist for a future Presidential visit, email us at caucuscoolertipjar@gmail.com. Jeff and Burton we know you are out there, feel free to add anything our columnist missed in the comments section.