bedsitter23

If you have followed my blog for awhile, you are probably wondering why I have not been blogging about the 2016 Election.

While i have been very busy, i do still get here quite a bit. So, what's up?

It's just not that exciting yet.

There are a couple of reasons why.

For starters, on the GOP side, the candidates are the same ones generally that I wrote about in great detail 4 years ago.

Things will pick up, but there's no new blood. I have been talking about Messrs. Jindal, Santorum, Rubio, etc for a long time now. Even bonafide conversation starters like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump have run their course.

You would expect some big news from those who have actually announced, but Rand Paul no longer feels fresh (and the story right now is that he can't draw audiences like his dad. Thats probably an unfair accusation at this point in the election cycle, but is also true to date) and Ted Cruz's big announcement was overshadowed by the news story that his wife was signing up for Obamacare.

Still, we have hit the point where every month (probably up to the caucus) there is a major event or fundraiser that will get serious media coverage.

The Iowa Faith and Family Forum this week (headed by ultraconservative Iowan Bob Vander Plaats) is one of those big events. We didn't learn anything we didn't know. Chris Christie and Jeb Bush didn't attend, so their road may lead to the White House, but they will do it without Iowa evangelicals. Meanwhile, Scott Walker takes a further step forward as possible front runner.

Which leads to Pizza Ranch.

It has been written about in many major media outlets, but I will take a few moments to recap.

Every night and every day (it seems) somewhere in Iowa, there's a candidate at Pizza Ranch.

There's a few reasons why this western themed pizza-and-chicken buffet place is so popular. It's located in plenty of small Iowa towns.

These restaurants have meeting rooms which draw the candidates and is cheap (Once when I needed a meeting place, I contacted Pizza Ranch for a place I could put 40-50 people. "Meeting room is free. Everyone has to buy a buffet though." "But not every one is going to eat." "I didn't say they had to eat the buffet")

It also is a very Conservative business- the owners and upper management made of friends and donors of Conservatism. It's a perfect match for the GOP.

Indeed, every significant candidate (with two exceptions) of the last two Republican caucuses visited a few Pizza Ranches as part of their campaign strategy. Indeed, by hitting Pizza Ranches frequently in 2011-12 was likely what won the state for Rick Santorum. Mitt Romney never used the restaurant, trying to distance himself from a new story in which a Founder and significant VIP went to prison for an underage sex scandal. Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather's Pizza passed over Pizza Ranch for obvious reasons.

The Des Moines ran this Pulitzer-worthy piece of journalism on March 25: If you and the family are heading to Pizza Ranch just to enjoy a slice and some wings, you might find your meal interrupted.

Such was the fate of this fellow at a Pizza Ranch in Council Bluffs last week, whose trip through the chicken buffet was halted by a swarm of people surrounding Mike Huckabee during his event there last week. See the video below.

A Republican blogger did respond to this piece, saying 1) it's not actually Huckabee that's holding up the buffet and 2) the delay was a matter of seconds; so this is 3) a liberal media spin piece. This of course means we are all taking this way too seriously.

That said, the terror is real.

Leave it to the Onion to nail this.

“I still think about the morning when Michael Dukakis and Dick Gephardt came in at the same time, and by the time they were done shaking my hand and talking about the struggles of the middle class, my eggs were cold and I was late for work. I didn’t even get a chance to touch my home fries. I’ll never forget how hungry I was.” Brandon added that her most cherished memory was from the 1996 primary season, when she was able to order her short stack to go and slip out of the restaurant before Steve Forbes could talk to her about his flat tax..