30 November 2009 // 12:46 am // 0 Comments
The Faithful Four
Just past Thanksgiving, and I am 56 counties into my tour of Iowa.
County GOP fundraisers are a great way to do well by doing good. Some competitors of mine skip these events. On one hand, it’s hard to blame them. It is much easier to sit down over a steak lunch in Des Moines and ask for a $5000 donation than to spend six hours on the road, speak 10 minutes, and roll quietly into the driveway past midnight. But that’s just not the way to meet the activists of the party, understand what Iowans are concerned about, sense the subtle regional differences and (for what it is worth), learn to really nail the laugh lines in a stump speech. The audiences are generally friendly, even the Democrat operative who consistently follows us around to videotape, hoping one of the candidates will make an embarrassing, sleep-deprived mistake. The venues are nearly always cramped, with organizers scrambling to find extra chairs, thus reminding me that politics is, in a way, Iowa’s state sport. The food? Not surprisingly, it is consistently pork.
Since June, I have been joined by Rod Roberts, Bob Vander Plaats and Chris Rants at nearly every event. We sometimes refer to ourselves as The Faithful Four. We know each other’s stump speeches, applause lines, hand motions and respective willingness to stretch time limits. Each has a great sense of humor – Rod telegraphs his punch lines with suddenly smiling eyes, Bob has a Dutch joke for nearly every topic and Chris’ keen sense of the ironic can be hilarious with his dry deliver. We ask after each other’s families, and I suspect I am not the only one that keeps them in my prayers. So as the fall speaking circuit ends, I thank those that put the work into these county fundraiser events and those that came to listen to the GOP candidates. I’ll look forward to another pork chop next time!
