Garance Franke-Ruta

White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley predicted "a very tough and close election" in 2012, thanks to continuing "tough times for the American people" and a highly polarized electorate that has ricocheted between parties in elections since 2006.

Daley, a former Commerce Secretary who rarely makes public remarks, was interviewed at the Washington Ideas Forum by CBS Chief White House Correspondent Norah O'Donnell in a wide-ranging conversation that addressed the president's upcoming re-election campaign, White House hopes for the economy and the president's jobs bill, and Ron Suskind's recent book. 

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"I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings."
--Roger Ailes, President, Fox News Channel

Read the full story here.

The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the current vice president and the most recent former vice president and his daughter are among the speakers at this year's Washington Ideas Forum at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

Organized by The Atlantic, the Aspen Institute, and the Newseum, the two-day forum -- first launched in 2009 as a Washington companion to the Aspen Ideas Festival -- will feature more than 60 politicians, policy makers, business leaders, and journalists before a live audience of hundreds on Oct. 5 and 6. It will also be streamed live online TheAtlantic.com starting at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday. The Twitter hashtag for live coverage is #IdeasForum.

From the White House, speakers will include Chief of Staff William Daley, Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett, Domestic Policy Council Director Melody Barnes and Vice President Biden. The vice president will be interviewed by NBC News anchor Brian Williams.

Former vice president Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney will be interviewed by The Atlantic's Washington editor at large Steve Clemons. Also on the line-up is a man often named as a possible GOP vice presidential pick in 2012: Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who will be interviewed by National Journal's congressional correspondent Major Garrett.

Congressional leaders featured at the program include House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, interviewed by The New York Times' Washington Bureau Chief David Leonhardt, and Speaker John Boehner, who will be interviewed by Garrett.

The third branch of government will also be represented, with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia interviewed by the Newseum's Jim Duff.

The complete schedule can be read here.

Republican presidential candidates differ on the killing of the American-born radical cleric in Yemen

Updated 1:33 p.m.

Libertarian Texas Rep. Ron Paul condemned the Obama administration for killing an American-born al-Qaeda leader in Yemen, while Texas Governor Rick Perry had some rare kind words for the commander in chief following the successful drone strike Friday morning that killed radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and several others.

"The death of Awlaki is a major blow to al-Qaeda's most active operational affiliate," Obama said in remarks at Fort Myer in Virginia Friday morning.

But Paul, who has urged the U.S. to leave Iraq and Afghanistan, this morning in New Hampshire blasted the killing as an "assassination," the Associated Press reports, and warned American leaders against "assassinating American citizens without charges."

Awlaki was born in New Mexico and was a joint U.S.-Yemeni citizen. Also killed in the attack was Samir Khan, co-editor of al-Qaeda's jihadi magazine Inspire, The Washington Post reports.

"Nobody knows if he ever killed anybody," Paul said, according to the Wall Street Journal. "If the American people accept this blindly and casually...I think that's sad."

Perry had a different view, and one more in sync with the rest of the GOP field's stance on the targeted killings of terrorists, even ones who are American citizens.

"I want to congratulate the United States military and intelligence communities -- and President Obama for sticking with the government's longstanding and aggressive anti-terror policies -- for getting another key international terrorist," he said in a statement.

"The death of American-raised al Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki is an important victory in the war on terror," he added.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney had similar sentiments, calling the killing of al-Awlaki "a major victory in our fight against Islamist terrorism and proper justice for the numerous attacks and plots he inspired or planned against America."

"I commend the President, the members of the intelligence community, our service members, and our allies for their continued efforts to keep Americans safe," he said.

But libertarian GOP presidential candidate Gary Johnson, the former governor of al-Awlaki's birth state, also raised doubt about the killing.

"I understand that laws may allow these decisions by the President and other officials in regard to al-Awlaki, and I do not in any way want to diminish the skill and dedication of our CIA and military. But, at the same time, it must not be overlooked -- and thoughtfully examined -- that our government targeted a U.S. citizen for death, and carried out that sentence on foreign soil. To my knowledge, that is a first, and a precedent that raises serious questions," he said in a statement.

"If we allow our fervor to eliminate terrorist threats to cause us to cut corners with the Constitution and the fundamental rights of American citizens, whether it be invasions of privacy or the killing of someone born on U.S. soil, I could argue that the terrorists will have ultimately won.

"The world is very likely a better place without al-Awlaki in it, but let us not neglect to ask the tough questions this attack raises and about the laws that allowed it to be carried out," he said.

It's a debate that seems certain to continue at the next GOP presidential primary debate, to be held in Hanover, N.H., on Oct. 11.

Once upon a time he was your new bicycle. But now his new media campaign makes him sound like a different stock character.

Some are marveling over the informal tone of the president's reelection campaign emails, asking: "Obama campaign email subject or message from my aunt?"

But I say forget the aunties. The false intimacy of the Obama online media campaign has finally gotten to the point where the president sounds like a plaintive boyfriend worried about trying to save the relationship.

He's texting again. He's emailing regularly. He wants to take us to dinner, maybe. He's full of reasons he hasn't called recently. He made us a T-shirt, tweeting, "Hey, Twitter: we made a shirt just for you."

Can a Mix-Tape for America be far behind?

He knows he's got a problem, and the problem is maybe we don't love him any more -- not like we did in the heady days when he swept us off our feet and we decided we wanted him to move in with us.

Can a Mix-Tape for America be far behind?

"If you love me, you've got to help me pass this bill!" he told an audience at North Carolina State University earlier this month. If we love him, we will do what he says. But we all know that the "if you love me" stage of any relationship means trouble.

Barack Obama wants to talk, and talk, and talk. But the American people are frustrated and depressed. "You just want to have the same conversation over and over again," they seem to say, sending his approval rating into the 40s. It's almost like they don't want to talk about it anymore -- they just want him do something.

Can this relationship be saved? He's relaunched a focus on jobs again and again, but sometimes it seems as though he is just pivoting in circles.

And so today America's sad boyfriend campaign sent an email with an even sadder email subject line: "If I don't call you."

If he seems distant, we shouldn't interpret that as meaning he's just not that into us anymore, he tried to reassure. After all, "if I don't call you, there's a chance I'll see you at dinner with three other supporters sometime soon," he writes. A chance. But we all know the odds are stacked against us. And also what it means when he finds it easier to avoid seeing us alone....

But maybe he is trying to say it's not us, it's him.

"Sometime soon, can we meet for dinner?" he asked in an email last week, unsure of when we were free or how we would respond. He sounded like he missed us, but was afraid he'd become a bore.

"If this sounds a bit familiar to you, it's because we've done this before," he reminded.

Yes we have, Barack Obama. Yes we have.

Image credit: REUTERS/Larry Downing

Rick Perry addressed his shaky debate performances while speaking before a Conservative Political Action Conference meeting in Florida today:

As conservatives, we know that values and vision matter. It's not who is the slickest candidate or the smoothest debater that we need to elect. We need to elect the candidate with the best record and the best vision for this country.

The audience seemed to buy it, by all reports, which raises a point worth recalling -- Perry, though not so great under questioning, remains a very skilled retail politician and knows how to deliver a heck of a stump speech.

The former Massachusetts governor went after the Texas governor's ability to communicate as Perry tripped over his words

Mitt Romney subtly laid out a line of attack against Rick Perry last night that raised questions about the Texas governor's sometimes garbled syntax and increasingly apparent difficulty giving mid-length answers to policy questions in order to raise questions about his fitness to be president.

The most obvious point of difficulty for Perry in Thursday night's Fox News-Google Republican presidential primary debate came when he was trying to deliver what seemed a pre-scripted line slamming Romney for flip-flopping -- and instead came off like a cross between Gertrude Stein and Joey from Friends. The New York Times transcribed the moment thusly:

"Is it the Mitt Romney that was on the side of -- against the Second Amendment before he was for the Second Amendment? Was it -- was before -- he was before the social programs from the standpoint of -- he was for standing up for Roe v. Wade before he was against first -- Roe v. Wade?" he said. "I mean we'll wait until tomorrow to see which Mitt Romney we're really talking to tonight."

No wonder Romney's attack strategy was to say over and over that you can't understand what Perry is trying to say -- as well as to argue with him on policy.

"I'm not sure exactly what he's saying," Romney said of Perry's views on education funding at one point in the debate, according to the Fox News transcript.

"It's an argument I just can't follow," he said of Perry's views on the Texas DREAM Act.

"I don't think he knows what he was talking about in that -- in that regard," Romney said of Perry's accusation that the former Massachusetts governor's state health plan was socialism.

Perry is on a ledge here. One more debate performance like this and he stops being Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the man who has never lost an election, and becomes Rick Perry, the regional candidate who stumbled on the national stage and got tangled up in his words. If that happens, it doesn't mean he can't still be a formidable national political force -- just look at Joe "Say Anything" Biden -- but it will decrease the odds that he'll be the GOP nominee.

"There are a lot of reasons not to elect me, a lot of reasons not to elect other people on this stage, but one reason to elect me is that I know what I stand for, I've written it down," Romney said at the debate. "Words have meaning, and I have the experience to get this country going again."

The words and experience to be president: It's a message that could have increasing resonance if Perry continues to underperform in the GOP's verbal jousting forums.

Image credit: Reuters

They've applauded record executions in Texas and letting a 30-year-old man die. Now a GOP debate audience boos an out gay serviceman.

The last three GOP presidential primary debates have been nearly as notable for the actions of audience-members as for the candidates who appeared before them.

In California at the MSNBC-Politico debate at the Reagan library, the audience applauded mention of the high number of executions in Texas and Rick Perry's defense of the death penalty. "If you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you're involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that is that you will be executed," the Texas governor said to hoots, whistles, and applause.

In Tampa, Fla., at the CNN-Tea Party Express debate, the audience cheered the idea of letting an uninsured 30-year-old man die (video) without care, greeting the idea with applause and shouts of "Yeah!"

And last night, at the Fox News-Google debate in Orlando, Fla., some audience-members booed a recently-out gay soldier stationed in Iraq who submitted a question through Google's YouTube video-sharing site. His offense? Asking the candidates if they would circumvent the progress made for gays and lesbians in the military.

Watch the interaction with Stephen Hill:

"Any type of sexual activity has no place in the military," former senator Rick Santorum told Hill, saying that the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on out service constituted "special privileges" and "social experimentation."

The audience response led former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer to tweet, "Booing a soldier serving our nation is uncalled for. If I were on stage, I would make that point."

But he wasn't on the stage, and none standing there spoke up on Hill's behalf.

Some dynamics to look for as you watch the Fox News-Google Republican presidential primary debate, which takes place in Orlando, Fla., tonight at 9 p.m. ET:

1. Romney vs. Perry on Social Security and the Fight for Florida. Obama is underwater in Florida, a state he won in 2008 with 51 percent of the vote. A new Quinnipiac University poll finds that "Florida voters disapprove 57 - 39 percent of the job President Barack Obama is doing, his worst score in any Quinnipiac University poll in any state" and that "Obama does not deserve a second term, Florida voters say 53 - 41 percent."

Head-to-head polling matchups at this early date don't really tell us much about how a specific Republican candidate might perform as the nominee, but what is clear is that the already weak support for the president in Florida has dropped since early August. "Romney tops the president 47 - 40 percent while Perry gets 42 percent to Obama's 44 percent, a dead heat," the university pollsters report. On August 4, "the president led Perry 44 - 39 percent."

That makes the Social Security fight an even more important one for Democrats seeking to hold the state, which is home to many elderly voters who rely on the entitlement program for support.

Perry has doubled-down on his argument that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" and a "monstrous lie," but there is as yet little evidence that his comments about the entitlement program have hurt him statewide in Florida, where the Quinnipiac poll showed he's increased support in recent weeks. To be sure, Perry does less well with elderly voters than younger ones, and that might make a difference in the GOP primary in the state, where older voters turn out at higher rates.

But Romney is trying to make the fight over who wants to transform Social Security more radically a fight over general-election electability, and Democrats fear -- rightly -- that Romney will emerge from that battle having cast himself as a savior on Social Security when they argue he also wants to transform the retirement system in ways future retirees will find objectionable.

Will Romney continue to press on this topic? He's shown remarkable message discipline in the past two years, holding fast to a strategy of focusing on the big subjects that people say they care most about, like jobs, the economy and, now, retirement security, as other candidates have risen and fallen in polls and notoriety by going off on red-meat and so far futile tangents ranging from gay marriage to Obama's birth certificate.

2. Does anyone lay a hand on Romney? New Hampshire polling by Suffolk University released Wednesday showed declining support for Perry in this battleground state since the debates began.

"Romney has surged among Republican voters in New Hampshire, and Rick Perry is a distant fourth, according to a Suffolk University/7NEWS (WHDH TV) poll of likely voters in New Hampshire's GOP presidential primary," the pollsters report. "Romney has opened up a 27-point lead over his nearest rival in New Hampshire."

Coupled with Perry's strong support in Iowa (where he leads in polls, though polling for the caucus is notoriously difficult and necessarily fails to account for the last-minute vote switching deals that can make or break candidates in libraries and auditoriums across the Hawkeye State), this continues to raise the prospect that the two could slug it out through a tough and protracted series of primaries until someone has the delegates to win. Think of it as Hillary vs. Barack all over again. The Suffolk pollsters also caution, however, that Romney's lead is so big "pundits may have to rethink predictions of a two-man GOP race between Romney and Perry."

Unless someone is able to put a dent in Romney, who has proved remarkably durable and resilient -- think of all the mini-surges candidates and potential candidates have had this cycle, from Donald Trump to Herman Cain to Michele Bachmann -- his quietly dominant position in the race seems likely to grow more solid.

Romney has been able to skate in the debates so far -- or create the appearance of doing so by effortlessly parrying those attacks directed at him -- first thanks to the Bachmann-Tim Pawlenty rivalry, and later as Perry became the focal point of attacks. It will be interesting to see if anyone -- and particularly Perry -- will be able to scratch his amiable veneer tonight.

3. Bachmann who? Hunts-what? Bachmann has been sliding in polls and in her public appearances, struggling with what should have been an easy appearance on Jay Leno, after he confronted her about her family's Christian counseling business and opposition to gay marriage, which she tried to brush off with a flat joke about "pray the gray away" as if it were a hair thing. There's a general sense that her moment -- and the Minnesota moment overall -- has passed, as the few who ever expected her to be able to run a campaign beyond Iowa have diminished in number with Perry's rise. Her former campaign manager, Ed Rollins, made that rather explicit early this week when he said she'll lack the resources to compete beyond Iowa if she fails to win the state. But Bachmann was also a strong presence in the early debates, and she's shown a real ability to go on the attack without coming across as angry. Will she try to go after Romney or Perry and bring the conversation back to her own candidacy?

Former Utah governor Jon Hunstman, meanwhile, who can claim a mini-surge in New Hampshire polling, still lacks a clear path to the nomination. But that didn't stop him from trying to be a much more substantial presence at the CNN-Tea Party Express presidential primary debate in Florida, and there's no reason it should stop him tonight, either.

4. Gary Johnson! The former New Mexico governor is being allowed onto a debate stage tonight for the first time since May, when he appeared in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary debate, also hosted by Fox News. He didn't move the needle for himself in that debate, and it's unlikely he'll do so now, but he could provide libertarian ballast to Texas Rep. Ron Paul and will add a fresh perspective to the stage.

Image credit: Danny Moloshok/Reuters

White House revelations notwithstanding, office football is not an actionable offense. It is a stress habit for men, like smoking or biting nails.

Of all the revelations spurred by Ron Suskind's book Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President, perhaps the least surprising is that footballs were tossed around in staff meetings at the White House.

Peter Wallsten and Anne E. Kornblut report on what former White House communications director Anita Dunn described as a near-hostile workplace environment for women:

The complaints began circulating early in the administration.

In interviews at the time, female officials complained that top aides fueled the high-testosterone atmosphere. Footballs were occasionally thrown during staff meetings, by one account. Rough language abounded.

That, of course, made the White House hardly different from most other political operations.

Boy are the reporters right in that assessment. As I sat down to write this yesterday, one of my young male colleagues was playing with a hackey sack in the hallway in front of my desk.

Sometimes the men who sit either side of me toss one over my head and throw it back and forth over my desk, at high velocity. They use standing desks, so there's no risk of hitting me at my seated one, and you don't work in a newsroom for any length of time without learning how to tune out what's happening around you when you need to.

But this is not hostile workplace behavior. It is the same category of activity as smoking or nail biting, a way for people to burn off steam while they are thinking through some thorny editorial issue or unwinding from a jag being wired in (or whatever the writerly equivalent is). It is a stress habit for men, expressed socially.

And like many stress habits, it connects the hand and the mind, activating the ancient primate link between grasping with one and grasping with the other.

When I first started in journalism I don't think I understood that. As a reporter-researcher at The New Republic in the late 1990s, the hallway football-tossing seemed like an aggressive assertion of masculinity in an office that was already pretty male. In restrospect, senior editors and fact-checkers chucking footballs at each other had nothing to do with the well-documented gender issues that place had. And it wasn't as if the young men there weren't feminist, even if the owner seemed to lack interest in the careers -- or names -- of the ambitious young women who worked there. Many of the guys who liked to toss around a pigskin or keep one in their offices in later years left Washington to follow their high-powered, high-earning girlfriends or wives, sacrificing career opportunities of their own in the process. They were not guys holding women back.

Over time, I realized that football-tossing was pretty commonplace in DC workplaces, and, I am told, it's not just DC -- that it's like this in workplaces all over the country.

Such behavior is so pervasive I've even developed something I call the football test for work environment. "Is it the kind of place where people toss footballs around?" I've learned is worth asking a new employer. What I am really asking, of course, is, "How guyish is the office culture?" Because it is important to know something like that going into it.

Sometimes when I talk with my lady journalist friends I joke I should write a whole book about this stuff -- the Black Book of Being Female in Washington, the real story of what the women of this city really talk about as they trade stories among themselves, from their perspective as a minority of usually 17 to 35 percent of their workplace, and full of tips from people who have been doing this for a while.

If ever I did, it would have a whole chapter on how to think about office football.

Image credit: White House

In Ron Suskind's book, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President, Treasury Secretary Tim Geither had some harsh words for his one-time White House colleague and Council of Economic Advisers chief Christina Romer:

Can't imagine why White House women might have felt under-valued.

The billionaire advocate of higher taxes for the rich has several executive assistants in Omaha

Carrie Kizer is not amused. An executive assistant for Berkshire Hathaway Inc. CEO Warren Buffett in Omaha, Neb., she has been fielding media requests for two days from reporters looking to talk to Warren Buffett's secretary. The calls have been coming ever since the president in announcing a plan to raise taxes on investment income said Monday morning, "Warren Buffett's secretary shouldn't pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett."

"I've gotten several of these requests today and yesterday," Kizer said.

Not surprisingly, the billionaire Obama-backer has more than one executive assistant, individuals who are not secretaries per se in duties any more than in titles. Indeed, they help with media and other calls and are sometimes quoted in the press as company spokesmen. Asked point blank if she were Buffett's secretary, she said, "I am not."

Debra Ray, who passed me on to Kizer, took more ownership of the new secretarial role she's been cast in. "I am one of them, yes," she said, though her actual title is also executive assistant, not secretary. You're famous, I told her. She laughed. "Oh, Mr. Buffett is the famous one."

Obama's construction immediately resonated in the public imagination, and the group MoveOn is now trying to turn "Warren Buffett's secretary" into a stock character in election 2012, releasing an online video in which a series of people step up and say, "I'm Warren Buffett's secretary."

Meanwhile, actual staff at Berkshire Hathaway are seeking to stay out of it. Kizer declined to give out more information about how many executive assistants Buffett has or their names. "I can't give you the answers that you are looking for," she said.

Update: Slate's Annie Lowery has more on another Buffett assistant, Debbie Bosanek, who "For nearly two decades ... has fielded press calls, investor queries, and sundry other requests for her boss, billionaire investor Warren Buffett." She's also not talking.

Image credit: Larry Downing / Reuters

While Mitt Romney and his aides argued last night that Texas Gov. Rick Perry would be a poor fit for a general election contest thanks to his argument that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" based on a "mountrous lie," Erick Erickson of RedState.com points out that there's actually a precedent for a successful Republican candidate who says just that: tea party-backed Republican Senator Ron Johnson. In this 2010 campaign video, Johnson says:

Guess what's coming in Russ Feingold's negative campaign? He's going to tell you I said Washington treats Social Security like a Ponzi scheme. You know what? I did say that -- 'cause it's true. Russ Feingold and politicians of both parties raided the Social Security trust fund of trillions and left seniors an IOU. They spent the money. It's gone. I'll fight to keep every nickel of Social Security for retirees, and I respect you enough to tell you the truth.

Of course, Johnson -- who beat the incumbent Feingold 52 to 47 percent -- was running in Wisconsin, not in states like Florida. And as author Michael Cohen pointed out last night, President Obama could in 2012 lose the states of Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Colorado and Ohio and still win reelection if he can pick up Florida.

Still, as much as Social Security is the third rail of American politics, were Perry to become the GOP nominee and chose someone like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) as his running mate, it would likely complicate the picture and negate some of the damage Democrats are hoping his Social Security stance will do to his support among seniors.

The charges were dropped after he spent more than a month in prison. Now he's rallying Bachmann's faith-based support and prepping for a movie about his ordeal.

Updated 6:35 p.m.

The evangelical organizer who helped Michele Bachmann win the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa Saturday was previously charged with terrorism in Uganda after being arrested for possession of assault rifles and ammunition in February 2006, just days before Uganda's first multi-party elections in 20 years.

Peter E. Waldron spent 37 days in the Luriza Prison outside Kampala, where he says he was tortured, after being arrested along with six Congolese and Ugandan nationals for the weapons, which were described variously in news reports as having been found in his bedroom or a closet in his home. The charges, which could have led to life in prison, were dropped in March 2006 after a pressure campaign by Waldron's friends and colleagues and what Waldron says was the intervention of the Bush administration. He was released and deported from the east African nation, along with the Congolese. On Saturday, Waldron told The Atlantic in Ames that he was a staffer for Bachmann and responsible for her faith-based organizing both in Iowa and South Carolina. But he also declined repeatedly to give his name.

Asked about Waldron's role and background, Alice Stewart, the press secretary for the Bachmann for President campaign, replied in an email: "Michele's faith is an important part of her life and Peter did a tremendous job with our faith outreach in Iowa. We are fortunate to have him on our team and look forward to having him expanding his efforts in several states."

Waldron's ordeal and life are the inspiration for a film, "The Ultimate Price: The Peter E. Waldron Story," from Big Promise Production. Here's the synopsis of the film that accompanies the trailer released on YouTube earlier this year:

Lebanon. Iraq. Syria. Afghanistan. Pakistan. Uganda. India. For over thirty years, his family never knew where he went -- never knew what he did. Based on a true story, Dr. Peter Waldron was on a mission. Was he a businessman, a preacher, a spy? Tortured and facing a firing squad, he never broke his oath of silence. What secret was worth the ultimate price?

The trailer was removed from YouTube after The Atlantic posted this story.

Waldron, a Republican operative since the late 1980s, had been in Uganda since 2002 and was at the time of his arrest working for the "Africa Dispatch" newsletter and, according to reports in 2006, working on a pilot study of a new health-care information technology management system.

One Ugandan paper alleged he was working with Congolese rebel militia members to capture Joseph Kony, the leader of the Ugandan guerrilla group the Lord's Resistance Army, and claim a $1.7 million bounty on his head being offered by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, but that planning for the operation was botched, leading police to Waldron's house and the guns. But the Kampala Monitor reported that the inspector general of police "told a news conference Waldron was suspected of links to a group in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and 'planned to set up a political party here based on Christian principles.'"

On his website, Waldron says he was "falsely accused of being a spy by the Uganda government's secret police," leading to his arrest. One man who knew Waldron in 2004 told The St. Petersburg Times in 2006 that Waldron had told him he used to work for the CIA, and the question of whether or not Waldron has worked as a spy is prominently teased in the trailer for the movie based on his life now being promoted on his personal website.

(Andrew Rice, the man who spoke with the Times about Waldron's purported history as a spook, on Wednesday said he had incorrectly recalled their conversation, but that his general impression of him was "that he was quite a vivid storyteller" and "a particularly flamboyant example of an archetypal character: the American who goes to Africa, a continent where a little money and a lot of talk can buy substantial power, in search of a position of influence.")

At the time of his arrest, Waldron was hailed on one blog as being ""the latest victim of Christian persecution in Africa." His allies seeking to free him said he was being persecuted for his reports in the "Africa Dispatch" newsletter about Ugandan opposition activities, and that he denied that he owned or was storing weapons.

Dave Racer, who worked to free Waldron in 2006, said Wednesday that he was uncertain as to the veracity of the allegations against him or the counter-claims. At the time, there was, as he understood it, "an allegation that Peter was involved in gun-running, I believe he was accused perhaps of fomenting some uprising against [Ugandan] President Museveni."

But, he said, "It's not possible from here to know what was fact. There's just no way to know. From here, it looked like he was a victim of political persecution."

The passage of the years has made him even less certain. "I have no knowledge of what really happened," he said, except that the detention "was very hard on him."

Waldron has been described at times as a leader of a wide variety of organizations, including Advancing American Freedom (co-founder); Christians Restoring America's Greatness (founder and president); Cities of Faith Ministries (founder); the Contact America Group, Inc. (president); and The Save The Family Foundation (president).

From 1995 to 1999 he ran the Rising Stars Education and Sports Foundation in Florida, according to The St. Petersburg Times, taking in $600,000 from state and local governments, and he later had an affiliation with "the Rocky Mountain Technology Group, a Montana software development company," according to the paper.

This year's was his third Ames Straw Poll organizing campaign, Waldron said Saturday. On his website, he says he also has worked for the Reagan/Bush; Bush/Quayle; Bauer; McCain; and Bush/Cheney presidential campaigns.

Waldron did not reply to emails seeking comment sent to three different addresses linked to his websites.

Image credit: PeterEWaldron.com

Twice in his speech in Waterloo, Iowa, the Texas governor drew laughs with gender stereotypes that might not play well elsewhere

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Paul Begala reports that Texas Gov. Rick Perry wore such tight jeans and "adjusted himself so often" as a young Democrat in the Texas state legislature Begala and a group of other aides called him "the Crotch."

That's an interesting data point, as two turns of phrase from the now-Republican governor of Texas last night to a GOP dinner in Waterloo, Iowa, suggest that the way Perry talks about women and deploys his masculinity on the stump will bear watching in the months ahead.

First, Perry invoked the old "girls have cooties" stereotype at the start of his Waterloo speech:

I was about eight years old, and my momma decided I needed to have some musical influences in my life. So I took piano lessons. Mom drove us 16 miles from out in the country into town, and I sat by a little blonde-headed girl.

I'm pretty sure I wasn't real happy about that at the moment, having to sit by a girl when I was eight years old.

Eight years later, I had my first date in my life with her.

And 16 years after that, I married her. Now that's a whole 'nother story about how long it took, that long.

But it just kind of goes to tell ya, sometimes it kind of takes me a while to get into something, like this presidential race. But lemme tell you something, when I'm in, I'm in all the way!

Then, after he finished speaking and was about to entertain questions, Perry took off his jacket and handed down from the stage to his wife at front-row table, who passed it on back to his daughter, who was wearing a sleeveless dress.

"Excuse me, my daughter's cold, so I gave her my jacket. And if this shirt's got a few wrinkles in it, it's not my wife's fault," Perry quipped. The crowd laughed.

Perry's cocky persona and apparent relish for playing gender stereotypes for laughs could sit uneasily with women in a general election contest. Of course, there's no evidence he's got any appeal to Democratic women in Texas -- or to Democrats there more generally -- but half of winning is avoiding angering the other side enough to turn out against you in force.

In any event, something to keep an eye on.

But it's Iowa, and she's a hometown girl, and that gets him an inch. It will be a long road from here to the caucuses.

WATERLOO, Iowa -- The electricity in the Electric Park Ballroom was palpable when Texas Gov. Rick Perry took the stage Sunday night at the Republicans of Black Hawk County Lincoln Day Dinner. Moving away from the podium and holding a handheld-mic, he worked the crowd from his first applause line -- that he had been a 4-H "gold-star boy" -- to the last of a folksy speech that was at turns biographical, combative and policy-oriented. His antics on the stage marked him as a master performer and deft politician who will be able to deliver what will appear to be plain talk on the economy and debt.

It was the sort of performance that made congresswoman Michele Bachmann, daughter of Waterloo and winner of the Ames Straw Poll the day before, seem almost an afterthought when she spoke after him to tepid applause under changed lighting conditions (to give her "a different color temperature," according to her "lighting guy" Kenneth Morton) in the room.

But while Perry certainly won converts from the Cedar Valley area last night -- not to mentioning wowing the national press -- this is Iowa. Things run different here. While the day's chatter at the national level was all about how the GOP presidential primary contest was now a three-way race between Bachmann, Perry and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, in Iowa, the only contenders that mattered were those who were committed to playing on the ground.

"You're number three now!" Marc Lattin of Cedar Falls greeted former senator Rick Santorum, who was shaking hands and talking to attendees at the early-bird dinner.

"That's what I'm looking at," Santorum replied with a smile. The exit of former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty from the race earlier in the day meant that fourth-place Ames finisher Santorum, who also spoke briefly at the dinner, was able to savor having moved up a notch in the game, at least in theory.

After the speeches, I ran into a couple I'd lunched with the previous day at the straw poll in the Pawlenty tent who'd been intrigued by Perry. Lavada Dennis was now totally sold. "I think right now I'm in Perry's camp," she said.

Agreed her husband, Erv Dennis, "He's got depth. He's got experience....This was a great event."

But Russ Knoll, who represents central Iowa to the state GOP and was for seven years the Black Hawk County GOP chair, was less immediately impressed.

"I was a little taken aback by Perry's non-preparedness. He got stuck a couple of times. Being the governor of Texas I expected a little more," he said.

"I took that as him choosing his words carefully," Erv said.

Knoll clearly had already developed an eye for local gal Bachmann. "We was down here when she announced and she gave a great speech then and a great speech tonight. She's a little ball of dynamite."

And that's Iowa in a nutshell. Perry and Bachmann could not have more different personal styles, even as they are both charismatic tea party figures and social conservatives. Where he was all bluster and testosterone, her voice got high and breathy at times as she touted her Waterloo roots and told the story of her grandmother who changed snow-tires in a dress. She ended her remarks by giving away an apple pie to the oldest GOP mother in the room, 100-year-old Mary Canfield. Perry, in an act of chivalry, had taken off his jacket mid-speech and given it to his daughter, saying he could see she was cold.

It's too early to say which approach will play better here in February when the caucuses take place, though Perry's executive experience and greater time in public life seem likely to make him a more formidable campaigner, and Texas's jobs picture as he presents it is already making people take notice.

Clay Trittle, for one, was still undecided after hearing Perry speak. "That's kind of why I'm here," he said. "We know Bachmann. We know Romney." But Perry was an unknown quantity and he'd need to see more of him to know what he thought. Perry was still a newcomer to the scene.

One thing he did know, "It's gonna be a tough, bloody race. I can see it coming."

Image credit: REUTERS/Jim Young

The victorious Minnesotan's tent was thronged, Ron Paul's support proved deep as expected and Tim Pawlenty's many green T-shirts couldn't mask his soft support

AMES, Iowa -- Women wearing sign-boards that say, "I am a person" over an image of a fetus. The ubiquitous Fair Tax people. The AARP. The National Association for Guns Rights' development director barking into a bullhorn against "Hillary Clinton's small arms treaty" and "the international destruction of the Second Amendment."

The Ames Straw Poll is a test of Republican presidential contenders' organizational strength that has a strong track record of accurately predicting the winner of the Iowa caucuses -- since 1979, that man's always been an Ames No. 1 or 2 finisher, Nate Silver reminds -- if not the GOP nomination or the presidency.

It's also a zoo, the political equivalent of the Iowa State Fair down the road in Des Moines, a festival of Bar-B-Q and T-shirts, bumper stickers and personal mobility devices. Some 700 members of the press reportedly signed up to cover it this year, and an eye-ball estimate of the conservative throngs by midday suggested to me attendance was far larger than in 2007, when 14,302 cast votes. Of course, not everyone here voted. Some just came for the scene.

Here's some of what they saw:

BACHMANN SWAMPS

"I have been to 4 #iastrawpoll events and never seen a line as long as Bachmann's," Iowa Gov. Terry E. Branstad's Communications Director Tim Albrecht tweeted midday.

That seemingly endless line was the subject of much speculation, snaking out from her tent and curving back around until it nearly intersected with the food line at former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum's tent on the other side of the Hilton Coliseum on the campus of Iowa State University. At the line's front, once could actually slip unimpeded into her tent to see musical acts like Randy Travis in the dim air-conditioned space, where there were seats for the elderly and infirm. The hold-up at the tent's entrance wasn't to enter -- it was the thousands of people waiting to sign in and be given tickets that would allow them to cast a vote for Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

Ultimately, more than 6,000 of the $30 tickets to vote were distributed by her campaign, according to a source inside her tent, giving her the edge and making her the first woman to ever win the Ames Straw Poll after 4,823 of them cast ballots for her.

"Thank you everyone for being here," Bachmann said to cheers, emerging briefly from her campaign bus to shake hands and thank supporters after being declared the victor. "This is the very first step toward taking the White House in 2012 and sending the message that Barack Obama will be a one-term president." The one-term president line has become a signature in her stump speech, so much so that the coliseum audience chanted it along with her when she used it in while addressing them earlier in the day.

"We love you. Thank you so much. It's your victory," she told supporters.

It's not totally clear what happened to the rest of the distributed Bachmann tickets, some 1,200 of which did not turn into votes. What was clear was that not everyone in Bachmann's long lines was an eligible voter -- there were a slew of people from Minnesota still waiting for beef sundaes toward the end of the balloting period, for example. Among them was Pat Konkleir, 58, who came down from Blaine, Minn., in Bachmann's district to help organize straw poll activities. "We brought down a bus of 40 or 50 or so," she said.

Even so, with 16,892 ballots cast, it was highest number of votes at a straw poll since 1999.

Bachmann's Iowa faith-based coalitions organizer credited her win to the churches. "I've not ever seen anything like this," he said, strolling the floor in the press center after it was clear she'd won but before the results were announced -- and before realizing he wasn't supposed to give out his name. They were "extraordinary numbers."

"At the end of the day, the story is going to be the faith-based turnout," he said. That, and Ed Rollins, Bachmann's top political adviser, who was "really an inspiration. He told us how to do it."

But in talking to volunteers wearing orange Michele Bachmann T-shirts or wilting in line for her tent, Bachmann's social conservatism stood out as only one aspect of what appeared to be a coalition that's gathered around her.

"She's a constitutionalist," observed volunteer Paul Dayton of Boone. "She's fiscally conservative. She votes the way she says she will."

"She's firm, she's solid. I love her enthusiasm. I love everything she is," effused Shirley Ripley, 70, of Charles City, a self-described "tea party person." Pressed for specifics, she pointed to "regulations up the ying yang," "how they're trying to tell us how we can't have salt, can't have potato chips, can't have pop" and what is being taught to children.

In addition to religious conservatives, fiscal conservatives and constitutionalists (which usually means people with a libertarian stance toward federal government regulations), Bachmann appeals to conservative women. Even if they are so conservative they can't always vote for her.

Dea Davenport, 73, of Diagonal, Iowa, said she was a Bachmann supporter but hadn't cast her straw poll vote for her. "If she were a man I would have voted for her," Davenport said. "I feel like a man ought to be running the country, but she'd be my second choice."

"I think she's a good candidate, though, I really do," she sighed. "I just wish she were a man."

A STALLED PAUL

Texas Rep. Ron Paul is waging his third presidential bid and has said he won't run for the House again so he can focus all his energies on it. The fact that he won as many votes as he did, 4,671, and that Bachmann could put together an operation that bested his years-long effort in just 48 days -- a number she mentioned repeatedly during her speech in the coliseum Saturday afternoon -- suggests both how narrow and deep his base of support is.

Paul has tended to win straw polls wherever he goes, but the critical difference between the Ames Straw Poll and the ones at the Conservative Political Action Conference and the Republican Leadership Conference earlier this year -- both of which he won -- is that this poll was limited to people from a circumscribed geographic area.

It's easy for Paul to gather his impassioned supporters from around the country at a conference; it's harder for him to muster support within a single locale. That was the case for him last cycle as well, when he was able to build enormous presence at GOP and conservative events throughout Iowa by drawing supporters from around the region but came in fifth in the straw poll.

This time, Paul did a better job turning out his local backers, but there was little to suggest he'd significantly broadened his appeal. His Hawkeye-State backers in Ames by and large seemed to have been with him for the long haul, rather than new supporters, raising questions about how much more backing he can gain before the caucuses. Sure, he had a dunk-tank near his tents for little kids, to compete with Bachmann's entertainingly tiny yellow blimp, which floated above her campaign bus all day to signal where her tent was, but the people who turned out for him weren't there for that or the hot dogs or his giant inflatable "Sliding Dollar" slide game.

Ray Bures, 69, of Ely, Iowa, had been a supporter of Paul's "going all the way back probably 20 years, when I first became aware of him." Tony Stuntz, 30, of Council Bluffs, had been backing him "since 2007" and says he'd "met a couple of guys who voted for him in '88." Mark Hansen, 30 and also of Council Bluffs, described himself as "a strong supporter for the last four years."

Paul's consistency has kept these voters and others like them with him, even as new candidates have entered the field. "He's always been doing the same thing," said Bill Hofmeister, 39, of Cedar Rapids, a Paul supporter since 2009. "He's not a flip-flopper."

SOFT PAWLENTY SUPPORT

Tim Pawlenty's machine seemed well-organized, but interviews with individuals in and around his tent revealed less than firm support for him -- a level of support that was ultimately reflected in Pawlenty's third-place finish with just 2,293 of the votes cast.

"Why are you supporting Tim Pawlenty?" I asked Becky Reif of Cedar Rapids, who was one of many people wearing a green Pawlenty 2012 T-shirt.

"I don't have a candidate," she replied. "I'm still open to other people."

"But you voted for him today?" I followed up.

"I did vote for him today," she said. "He sounds like a good man. He sounds like he's got the same Christian values."

She'd come in with a group from the River of Life Church that was all voting Pawlenty, she explained. She was not in Ames out of any kind of personal passion for him.

Over in the food tent, Lavada Dennis, 74 and from Cedar Falls, was similarly noncommittal. "I'm a Pawlenty supporter. But it's a long way from the election," she said while eating a sandwich from Famous Dave's BBQ. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who announced his presidential campaign today at an event in South Carolina, was also of interest to her.

"I think Rick Perry has a lot of experience running the state of Texas," she observed. That made his argument much like Pawlenty's -- the experience argument, "versus, you know, Bachmann," she said.

Pawlenty, perhaps sensing his weak hold on those wearing his T-shirts, warned them from the stage midday: "I hope you have all voted. If not I'm gonna come over and give you the what for."

A SANTORUM BUMP

"This is the little engine that could campaign," Santorum described his candidacy in remarks in the coliseum.

Wooed with hot dogs and peach preserves made from peach trees on Santorum property -- quite excellent by the way -- a surprising number of people appeared to have turned out for him. But he still came in fourth with 1,657 votes, a finish that was clearly disappointing to him. Ebullient and cautiously optimistic at midday, he had a deflated look when he came back to speak to the press long after results were announced and staff from Iowa State University was trying to clear press out so the space could be turned over to NBC for a taping of "Meet the Press."

The Santorum effort would be "the fine wine candidacy," he said, committing to staying in the race. "We will age very, very well."

***

Below are the rest of the official results:

OFFICIAL RESULTS

2011 Straw Poll Full Results (Votes, %)
1. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (4823, 28.55%)
2. Congressman Ron Paul (4671, 27.65%)
3. Former governor Tim Pawlenty (2293, 13.57%)
4. Former senator Rick Santorum (1657, 9.81%)
5. Herman Cain (1456, 8.62%)
6. Gov. Rick Perry (718, 3.62%) write-in
7. Former governor Mitt Romney (567, 3.36%)
8. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (385, 2.28%)
9. Former governor Jon Huntsman (69, 0.41%)
10. Congressman Thad McCotter (35, 0.21%)
Scattering (162, 0.96 %) Includes all those receiving votes at less than one-percent that were not on the ballot.

Image credits: Bachmann (REUTERS/Daniel Acker); Santorum (Garance Franke-Ruta)

At the Iowa State Fair, those planning to vote in the straw poll and others just having a pork cutlet were clear: the ceiling should not have been raised

DES MOINES -- The lingering effect of the debt ceiling fight seems likely to be felt at the Ames straw poll Saturday, as anger over a nation perceived as living beyond its means suffused the comments of Iowans drawn to the Des Moines Register soapbox for presidential candidate speeches. But it came up, too, over and over in conversations with others around the fairgrounds, independents and Republicans alike, some of whom saw in President Obama's fiscal policies a continuation of the Bush-era profligacy they despised.

A frequently mentioned beneficiary of their sentiments? Michele Bachmann.

Jim Ritz, 69, said he was going to go to Ames to vote for Bachmann. "I just know whoever's following the line that we need to freeze our income and cut our spending is following my line," said the Des Moines resident, who was sitting on a bench after listening to former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty speak at the fair. "All along I said I don't care if we go into default, I'd like to see them live within their means....The sooner they get the budget balanced, the sooner they're going to get it upgraded. If I spend more than I take in, my budget wouldn't be in good shape either."

Ronald Van Genderen, 70, of Monroe, Iowa, and William DePorte of Council Bluffs were talking about it earlier in the day, after former business executive Herman Cain left the hay bales of the stage to head out onto the concourse.

"Obama, he stretched this budget thing. Don't you have to balance your own house? Come on, you can't just keep putting it on a credit card," Van Genderen, a "semi-retired" cattle and hog farmer wearing a John Deere cap, said.

That's one reason he said he'd be backing the House Tea Party Caucus founder at the straw poll, he said. "Palin, if she don't run, it'll be Bachmann."

DePorte, for his part, says he'll back "the first one that says, 'Get a roommate if you can't pay your mortgage.' Duh!"

Rick and Jerri Bittner of Oskaloosa are both independents and said they probably weren't going to vote at the straw poll. They were surprised and pleased when Pawlenty sat down with them in the Iowa Pork Producer's tent where they were having lunch after Mary Pawlenty learned the Bittners had a son who'd just returned from service in Afghanistan. They're not sure who they would back in 2012, but when it comes to the Republican candidates, "they're all at least talking about the same thing," Rick Bittner said. The budget, "it does need to get balanced."

Chimed in Jerri Bittner, "Yah. It's a good thing to talk about. They gotta get control of it before it gets too far out of line."

"They need to lower it," added Rick. "Like Ross Perot said years ago, government should run like a business. If it ain't got the money, don't spend it."

Back at the soapbox, Fred Dailey was passing through from West Virginia. His interest this cycle was taking back America, "not just from Obama, from Obama and Bush and everyone who's made our government too big." A retired environmental engineer who once worked for GE, he and his wife wore matching T-shirts that read, "You Are Not Entitled to What I Have Earned."

The country needs "a Balanced Budget Amendment and not to spend more than they take in. And if that means I have to give up some of my Social Security, so be it," he said.

Curious if the soapbox was drawing a particular type, I headed over to the Agriculture Building to see the famous butter cow and interview folks coming off the line there -- perhaps a more representative sample. Sure enough, I found of a handful of Des Moines Democrats with different views. "I'm kind of on a balanced approach side and I'm kind of upset with everybody involved," said Drew Selim, 31, an AV tech from the city. Richard White, a retired engineer and and independent, said the fight was "nothing new." Things just cost more these days so of course the limit had to go up, he said. "Every president who comes in has to do it."

But back at the soapbox, supporters were predicting a Bachmann victory in Ames thanks, in part, to her leadership in the fight against raising the debt ceiling limit. "She led the fight and every other candidate followed her on that," said Ryan Rhodes, the founder and chairman of the Iowa tea party who on Tuesday endorsed her for the straw poll. "She's shifting the terms of the debate" and forcing other candidates to commit to her positions, he observed. Those may not be legislative results, but he's certain legislation will soon flow from the changes in views she's bringing about.

"I think Michele's going to win," he said.

Image credit: REUTERS/Daniel Acker

Romney unscathed, Bachmann-Pawlenty clashes, and a defense of civil unions from Jon Huntsman

Updated 08/12/10

AMES, Iowa -- Some observations on the Fox News Republican presidential primary debate here, filed from the basement press center of the Hilton Coliseum at Iowa State University, where they normally hold basketball games or Ice Capades:

Good-bye, Minnesota Nice. Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann clashed early and often. Pawlenty, who had clearly come prepared with some zingers for Mitt Romney and others to make up for his lackluster debate performance in New Hampshire, denied upon questioning that he'd drawn attention to Bachmann's headaches. But he worked hard to give her some new ones. She responded with the poised and polished fierceness that's made her every appearance seem as orderly and, uh, intense as a scripted television spot.

"It is an undisputable fact that in congress her record of accomplishment and results is nonexistent," Pawlenty said of his one-time state colleague and now national rival.

"I would say governor, when you were governor in Minnesota you implemented cap and trade in our state and you praised the unconstitutional individual mandates and called for requiring all people in our state to purchase health insurance that the government would mandate," Bachmann retorted. "Third, you said the era of small government was over. That sounds more like Barack Obama, if you ask me."

Bachmann cast herself as a fighter: "People are looking for a champion. They want someone who has been fighting. When it came to health care, I brought tens of thousands of Americans to Washington to fight the unconstitutional individual mandates. I didn't praise it. When it came to cap and trade, I fought it with everything that was in me, including I introduced the Lightbulb Freedom of Choice Act so people could all purchase the lightbulb of their choice."

"She's got a record of misstating and making false statements. And that's another example of that list," Pawlenty retorted. "She says that she's fighting for these things. She fought for less government spending, we got a lot more. She led the effort against ObamaCare, we got ObamaCare. She led the effort against TARP, we got TARP. She said she's got a titanium spine. It's not her spine we're worried about, it's her record of results.

"If that's your view of effective leadership with results, please stop, because you're killing us."

"I was at the tip of the spear fighting against the implementation of ObamaCare in the United States Congress. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama ran Congress, but I gave them a run for their money," Bachmann was unmoved. "Again, on cap and trade, I was there from the very beginning, giving Speaker Pelosi a run for her money. That's why I was Speaker Pelosi about her number one target to defeat last year, because I was effectively taking them on on nearly every argument they put forward...when others ran, I fought. And I led against increasing the deficit."

An exchange about a Minnesota bill that raised taxes on cigarettes and strengthened an anti-abortion position served as the second round of their squabble, with Pawlenty saying he regretted having voted for the act and Bachmann explaining why she supported it as an anti-abortion candidate. Hard to say who was the victor here, but it was good to see them actually debating their records and actively seeking to distinguish themselves.

Newt Gets Feisty with Liberal Media Outlet Fox News. Maybe he got too much sun at the Iowa State Fair, where he was walking about under the noonday sun, giving fair-goers the thumbs-up with Callista and taking photos with families, but Newt Gingrich seemed to have had it with acting like he might actually have a shot at things if he pretended to be someone other than himself.

First he went after Fox News host Chris Wallace, chastising him, "I wish you would put aside the gotcha questions" and declaring, "I intend to run on ideas."

And then he seemingly remembered that he used to be someone, and not just an afterthought on the would-be presidential stage who people make fun of for his now-shuttered Tiffanys account and policy flip-flops.

"Look, I think this super committee is about as dumb an idea as Washington has come up with in my lifetime," he said, after all the candidates on stage affirmed they'd walk away from a ten to one cuts to revenue budget deal in the future.

"I mean I used to run the House of Representatives," the former speaker said. "I have some general notion of these things. The idea that 523 senators and congressmen are going to sit around for four months while 12 brilliant people, mostly picked for political reasons, are going to sit in some room and brilliantly come up with a trillion dollars or force us to choose between gutting our military and accepting a tax increase is irrational. This is -- they're going to walk in just before Thanksgiving and say, all right, we can shoot you in the head or cut off your right leg, which do you prefer?

"What they ought to do is scrap the committee right now, recognize it's a dumb idea, go back to regular legislative business, assign every subcommittee the task of finding savings, do it out in the open through regular legislative order and get rid of this secret phony business."

It was perhaps his applause line of the night.

His repeated clashes with the Fox News crew quickly drew praise on right-wing blogs, proving that it's possible to score points with anti-media tirades, even if the outlets in question are conservative ones. Wrote Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit: "It's about time a Republican candidate slammed the liberal media for asking bogus 'gotcha' questions of the candidates rather than substantial policy questions. Newt went after Chris Wallace tonight for his outrageous tabloid questioning of the candidates. Awesome!"

Romney Unscathed. Romney continued his laser-like focus on the economy, but he also continued to lay out seemingly contradictory principles. For example, he backed a states rights approach to health-care legislating, but said he believed marriage should be governed at the federal level. But mainly Romney was just a pained face in a reaction shot, purposefully resisting being drawn into any explosive exchanges with his competitors. "That's fine," was all he said after Pawlenty proposed to mow the lawn of any person in America who could find Obama's stated policies on Social Security and Medicare reform -- except Romney's, whose lawn he'd only mow but one acre of.

Jon Who? Jon Hunstman was not a presence at the debate, with the exception of his support for gay rights, which is perhaps one reason he is not running hard in Iowa. "A Des Moines Register poll found that 58 percent of likely caucus goers, Republican caucus goers here in Iowa, consider support of civilian unions a deal killer for a candidate," questioner Byron York of the Washington Examiner pointed out. "You support civil unions. Why are you right and most other candidates along with most GOP caucus goers, why are they wrong?"

Huntsman's reply made clear that he really is a different sort of Republican, and while he's not as obviously an unelectable figure as Ron Paul, his role in the field may yet be the same -- to advance the general idea that Republicans can actually have a wider array of opinions on issues than they often appear to these days, and broaden the conversational space in the party. "I'm running on my record. I'm proud to run on my record. Some people run from their record, I'm running on my record. I believe in traditional marriage first and foremost. I've been married 28 years. I have seven terrific kids to show for it," he said.

"But I also believe in civil unions. Because I think this nation can do a better job when it comes to equality. And I think this nation can do a better job when it comes to reciprocal beneficiary rights. And I believe that this is something that ought to be discussed among the various states.

"I don't have any problem with states having this discussion. But as for me, I support civil unions....

"I believe in traditional marriage. But I also believe that subordinate to that we haven't done an adequate job when it comes to equality. That is just my personal belief. Everyone is entitled to their personal belief too."

Submissive No More? York posed a question to Bachmann that was greeted with more audience dislike than any other: "In 2006, when you were running for Congress, you described a moment in your life when your husband said you should study for a degree in tax law. You said you hated the idea. And then you explained, 'But the Lord said, 'Be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.' As president, would you be submissive to your husband?"

This is the kind of question that can kill a candidacy if answered poorly, but Bachmann manged to handle it deftly. While she may play in the same media space as Sarah Palin and even former Delaware senate candidate Christine O'Donnell -- two other hyper-conservative, attention-getting female party outsiders -- what's become increasingly clear as she has campaigned is that she is a much more self-controlled and skilled politician than they were and, at least since announcing for the presidency, not so prone to gaffes. (Though she does remain mistaken on a number of critical points, such as the relationship of the debt ceiling fight to Standard and Poor's downgrade of America's credit rating.)

"Marcus and I will be married for 33 years this September 10th. I'm in love with him. I'm so proud of him. And both he and I -- what submission means to us, if that's what your question is, it means respect," Bachmann told York at the debate.

"I respect my husband. He's a wonderful, godly man, and a great father. And he respects me as his wife. That's how we operate our marriage. We respect each other. We love each other."

There will be some debate over whether that was a fair question. It's true it would never be asked of a man, but then, there was no man on stage who has publicly stated he believes in a doctrine of submission for himself. It would be interesting and illuminating, however, to know if any of them believe in it for their wives.

Image credit: Jim Young / Reuters