Posted May 15, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Two Republicans who could top the 2016 ticket in Iowa offered similar messages on strategy during a party event Friday night in Cedar Rapids. Former State Rep. Rod Roberts of Carroll, a potential candidate for the U.S. Senate, and a Republican already in that chamber, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, stressed
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Posted May 08, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Former State Rep. Rod Roberts, R-Carroll, is one of many Iowa Republicans in a political career holding pattern as U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, continues to roll over a decision about a Senate bid. “I think that needle’s just a little over 50-50 right now, just a little over,” King
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Posted May 01, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
National Republicans are struggling with strategies and angles for the party’s relevancy and viability in the 21st century. Enough with the caterwauling over changing racial and family dynamics, this rather sad coveting of the 1950s, goes the trendy reasoning. Scrapbook photos, no matter how long you stare at them, won’t
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Posted April 24, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Republicans, actively conducting an autopsy of the last presidential election, should be cautious about throwing overboard long-held principles and core constituencies in a chase for quick political fixes with younger voters and Hispanics, U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, says. Bottom line: Count King out on the head-turning facelift some key
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Posted April 17, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Politicians looking to yarn folksy images often talk of being plain-speaking, just-folks fellows. Bruce Braley, who grew up in Brooklyn, Iowa, takes that angle a step further. He authored a bill requiring Washington bureaucrats to dispense with what Braley, a Waterloo congressman, calls “gobbledygook” and deliver information in clear English.
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Posted April 10, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, who recently has characterized his likelihood of running for the Senate as something of a toss-up, went further last Monday. “I think that needle’s just a little over 50-50 right now, just a little over,” King said in an interview. Speaking after an economic-development session
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Posted April 03, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
In Mark Segebart’s world, the minimum wage is a quaint notion, something along the lines of an allowance. Make your bed. Clean your room. Flip some burgers after school, and you’ll get $7.25 an hour, enough to take your best girl to the sock hop with some spare change to
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Posted March 27, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Iowa Republican insiders tell Political Mercury they’re planning on rolling out an unconventional political makeover of Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds, one fraught with potential trip wires that could confound her ambitions to become the first female governor or U.S. senator in Hawkeye State history. But GOP sources see the move
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Posted March 20, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
Oh, for the 1970s — were it not for those wildly ridiculous pants. Those of us in older generations remember a time when K-12 educators were asked to teach reading and writing and arithmetic, with a field trip to the zoo or some such place thrown in maybe once or
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Posted March 13, 2013in Featured Story, Political Mercury
The “Iowa Nice” guy — he of the snark and snarl, the Internet sensation with the clockmaker’s timing for profanity — talked of being nice. Honestly. For real. Even in a virtual world. “We have to somehow transition into listening again,” Scott Siepker said. Siepker, a Mount Carmel native and
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