May 24 2007
Clinton to Skip Iowa? Internal Memo Says Yes
Ah, the early primaries. A time for states that are typically over-looked in the real elections to become important. Iowa has enjoyed the early campaign focus for quite a while and reveled in the financial windfall from the candidates taking up residence in their state. Iowans have relished the fact that people are actually interested in their opinions and have been more then willing to share what is on their minds. Granted, those opinions are heard by candidates who will likely not be around for the real election, but at least someone is listening. Well, everyone except for Hillary Clinton.
Yesterday, the New York Times released an internal campaign memo from the Clinton camp
Proposal: I believe we need a new approach to winning the Democratic nomination.
This approach involves shifting the focus away from Iowa and running a campaign that is more focused on other early primary states and winning this new national primary. More specifically, I propose skipping the Iowa caucuses and dedicating more of Senator Clinton’s time and financial resources on the primary in New Hampshire on January 22, the Nevada caucus on January 19, the primaries in South Carolina and Florida on January 29 and the 20 plus state primaries on February 5th.
Looks like trouble in River City my friends! That’s just not right dag-gummit! How can Clinton skip Iowa? No shots of her at the feed store! No dramatic scene with her “fading” into the outfield corn! No comments on the charm of the simpler small-town life that we all love to quote! Not even a picture of her on a swine farm! Say it isn’t so.
Well, Iowa can relax. According to CNN, this was just a rejected idea:
A source dismisses the memo as an unsolicited idea which was floated, but solidly rejected.
[...]
A Clinton spokesman says the campaign is unequivocally committed to competing in Iowa. She plans to be in the state over the next three weekends and the campaign says it has doubled the size of the Iowa field staff over the past month.
That should help Iowans get the dander back down. This was just a misunderstanding. No wait, it’s not a misunderstanding, it’s the other guy’s fault:
Howard Wolfson, the Clinton campaign’s communications director, said neither Clinton nor Mark Penn, her chief strategist, had seen the memo. A copy of it was provided to The New York Times by an intermediary who said it had come from a rival campaign.
Yeah. It was the “other” campaign that had this idea to abandon Iowa, not Clinton’s. It’s those “other” candidates who are to blame for all of this. They are the ones who were going to take money from you. They are the ones who are not showing Iowa the respect it deserves. Why, they are just down-right unAmerican! Why would you ever vote for such a two-faced individual!
Why indeed.
