Spinning class in session

These results can mean anything you want them to mean.

"Thank you Iowa": Those were the first three words of Mitt Romney's planned speech on Tuesday night after the caucuses, according to a photographer who saw the text queued up in the candidate's teleprompter. Minutes before Romney took the stage, his staff took the teleprompter away.

He wanted to claim victory, but couldn't because the outcome was still in doubt (at 11:30 p.m. CT). Mitt eventually did win, however -- by 8 votes out of just over 119,000 cast. Iowa, it turns out, has about three-fourths the electorate of the city of Houston's mayoral contest two months ago.

Considerably less diversity, of course. To say nothing of giving Mayor Parker bragging rights in her own landslide. But back to Cornpocalypse; the media dutifully reported the caucus results with all of the horse race aspects intact ... and as if the results actually meant something of significance.

But Tuesday's close call undermined (Romney's) rise. Even as he earned back much of the vote he won four years ago, Romney failed to grow his base of support, or to elicit much passion from a Republican electorate that has spent much of the last year searching for an alternative candidate.

Perhaps most nerve-wracking for the Romney campaign is that his close finish came even as his GOP rivals largely ignored him in the state, instead training their fire on one another. That free pass won't exist starting Wednesday, as Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul have all announced plans to aggressively go after Romney's candidacy.

Ah, there he is: Mr. Frothy Mixture, surging from behind.

"Game on," Santorum said as he took the stage at his victory night celebration in Johnston, Iowa.

"What wins in America are bold ideas, sharp contrasts, and a plan that includes everyone," he said. "A plan that includes everyone across the economic spectrum."

Yes, and it nearly won in Iowa also. Too bad the eight Hawkeyes who had the Santorum Salad at the Pizza Ranch in Boone had a bad taste in their mouths and switched their votes to Romney at the last minute. We'll never know for sure.

Ron Paul's close third continues the dilemma for the Greedy Old Pharts.

"This momentum is going to continue. This movement is going to continue, and we're going to continue scoring, just as we did tonight," Paul told cheering supporters at a hotel in a northern suburb of Des Moines. "We will go on. We will raise the money. And I have no doubt about the volunteers. They will be here."

The libertarian-leaning Paul challenged Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum for the top slot in the leadoff nominating contest, cobbling together an enthusiastic and diverse coalition of college students, veterans and tea party activists in a sign of the divided GOP's struggles ahead.

"There were essentially three winners," Paul told the crowd as it chanted "Doctor Paul, Doctor Paul."

At some point Fox is going to have to start mentioning his name. Maybe have him on a show or two. Ask him some questions. You know, acknowledge his existence.

Meanwhile, Newt plots his comeback. And revenge.

Bruised, battered and defiant, Newt Gingrich limped out of Iowa after a fourth-place finish in the state's Republican presidential contest on Tuesday. But he is still alive.

Hit by plummeting poll numbers in recent days, Gingrich is likely now to hold on until the South Carolina primary on January 21 and hope for the backing of conservatives there.

[...]

Gingrich lashed out at Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, who has been linked to some of the toughest attack ads that toppled the former House of Representatives speaker from the top place in the Iowa polls. (He also) blamed SuperPAC fundraising groups linked to Romney and libertarian Ron Paul for the negative TV ads.

"Together I think we survived the biggest onslaught in the history of the Iowa primary," Gingrich said.

"We aren't going to go out and run nasty ads," Gingrich told supporters after it became clear he had won just 13 percent of the Iowa vote.

"But I do reserve the right to tell the truth. And if the truth seems negative, that may be more a comment on (Romney's) record than it is on politics," he said.

"We will have one other great debate and that is whether this party wants a Reagan conservative who helped change Washington in the 1980s ..." Gingrich said.

"Somebody who is into changing Washington or we want a Massachusetts moderate who in fact would be pretty good at managing the decay but has given no evidence in his years in Massachusetts of any ability to change the culture, or change the political structure, or change the government."

One thing is clear; that's more manly talk than than Rick Perry is mumbling.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday that he would head home "to determine whether there is a path forward" for his White House bid after he finished a distant fifth in the Iowa caucuses.

At times pausing to collect his emotions, Perry told supporters that he appreciated their work but that he needed to consider whether there was a viable strategy for him to restart his campaign in South Carolina.

"With the voters' decision tonight in Iowa, I decided to return to Texas, assess the results of tonight's caucus, determine whether there is a path forward for myself in this race," Perry said, his family standing behind him.

Oh come on, Governor Oops. Have Anita whip you up some fresh brains and you'll be alive and stumbling like a zombie again in no time. I hear South Carolina and Florida actually have weather as nice as Galveston this time of year.

Why even Michele Bachmann has bigger balls than you.

"I believe that I am that true conservative who can and who will defeat Barack Obama in 2012," she said. "What we need is a fearless conservative, one with no compromises on their record on spending on health care, on crony capitalism, on defending America, on standing with our ally Israel."

Shortly before Bachmann spoke, her campaign manager suggested she might leave the race. Asked if he could say with certainty whether she would go forward with her candidacy, Bachmann campaign manager Keith Nahigian told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, "I don't know yet."

You may not know yet, Keith, but The Iron Lady does.

"Over the next few days, just be prepared," Bachmann said. "The pundits and the press will again try to pick the nominee based on tonight's results but there are many more chapters to be written on the path to our party's nomination."

Bachmann, it seems, is surrounded by pussies, some current advisers and some former.

“I feel badly for Michele and her team because she has worked very, very hard,” (former campaign manager Ed Rollins) said. “Unfortunately she may have peaked too soon and at the end of the day she didn’t pass the muster that you need to be seen as a credible candidate. I think if she goes on she will go into debt.”

Rollins said that after the Iowa caucuses, Bachmann’s prospects will grow even dimmer.

“I think to a certain extent, there is no way — she has no organization in New Hampshire,” he said. “South Carolina is toughest politics that we play. And you’re going to have Perry and Gingrich and others fight. She would be better to endorse somebody today. She won’t take my counsel but at the end of the day, don’t go in debt.”

Fight on, Crazy Eyes! Fight on! Show Rick Perry and the rest of those liberal rat bastards what "man up" looks like!

I really don't want it to be over. It's been such a thrill ride, these madcap Republicans and their campaign follies. By this time next week we may only have three or four of 'em to kick around some more.

Update: Alas, the Warrior Queen lays down her sword ... but the Head Figure Head Tweets that it's still on for him.

Update II: Transmogrification of Rick Perry into Farouk Shami is complete.

About (10:30 a.m), after Gov. Rick Perry tweeted, "Here we come South Carolina!!!" my editor asked me to try to confirm the Texas governor's apparent reversal of his plans.

I called Perry spokesman Mark Miner. No answer. I then called Perry press person Catherine Frazier. This time, I somehow was connected, though she didn't say hello. I heard Miner telling her, "He tweeted we're going on to South Carolina. Every reporter in the world is calling."

The line then went dead, and in further calling, I could reach neither spokesperson nor Perry adviser Ray Sullivan.

First Weekly Wrangle of 2012

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes everyone a happy and prosperous New Year as it brings you the first roundup of 2012.

There were two big redistricting stories last week, and both favored the plaintiffs against Texas and its retrogressive maps. The DC Court issued its decision defining preclearance standards, and the Justice Department filed an amicus brief with SCOTUS arguing it should use the interim maps drawn by the San Antonio court. Off the Kuff has the details on each.

BossKitty at TruthHugger can only laugh at what the GOP has put in the store window this election season: 2012 GOP Lineup and Songs From The 1960s.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson weighs in on redistricting and the Voting Rights Act: Texas Redistricting Round Up.

More Dallas wastewater is headed for Houston, as a project to route more of the Trinity River toward the Bayou City moves forward. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs says that he can't wait to pour a tall glass of Metroplex toilet water.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme screams to the high heavens that Ron Paul is not a principled man.

Neil at Texas Liberal posted about a longtime musician friend looking to form a new protest band in Cincinnati. It's unlikely that anybody in Texas will be able to join this band. But that's not the point. The point is that we all have talents, and we should work hard to make the best use of our talents in the big political year ahead. Don't just sit around and let somebody else generate content for you to consume.

The Lewisville Texan Journal (formerly WhosPlayin) examined TxDOT right-of-way purchases along the I-35E corridor in Denton County, finding that the state was paying much more for properties than the tax roll values. Denton County's Republican County Judge Mary Horn, who is spearheading the effort to expand the road with toll lanes received $993,000 for an investment property she had, which was 19.7 times more than what it was on the tax rolls for.

Auld Lang Syne Funnies

New Orleans for (in-between) the holidays

The latest in a continuing series of Diddie travelogues.

For the past few years we have chosen to give ourselves as a Christmas present an out-of-town trip. It works well for us in contrarian fashion; we like to go when traffic and hotel room demand is light and no long lines for restaurants or excursions. Last year it was San Antone, this year we picked N'awlins as our end-of-the-year holiday vacay. We drove over last Tuesday, pausing in Lake Charles for lunch at Steamboat Bill's. I have somehow managed never to have stopped here even though its reputation is large, offline and on (Southern Living magazine and USA Today have raved about it in years past). It was as reputed: tasty, huge portions, inexpensive and fast -- off and back on I-10 in 40 minutes. I had a bowl of shrimp gumbo and some chicken strips but Madam Diddie splurged ahead of NOLA's gastronomia with a seafood platter of fried catfish, stuffed shrimp and crab, and about ten decent-sized fried shrimp.

Arriving in the Big Easy early -- around 3:30, we waited for our room at the Dauphine to be ready with a cocktail in May Baily's. From the site...

May Baily's Place, once one of the better known bordellos in the wildly infamous red-light district known as Storyville, now serves as our hotel bar. Our "Bordello" guest suite takes an appropriate featured place above May Baily's, and a red light still burns in the courtyard next to it as a testimony to its sordid history. Today guests are provided with a copy of the license issued to May in 1857, when sporting houses were legal in the Storyville district of New Orleans.

Dinner Tuesday was going to be oysters no matter what, and while we considered the Acme, we chose the less-popular-but-no-less spectacular Royal House Oyster Bar, and yours truly selected the baked ones three different ways: Rockefeller (topped with spinach sautéed with bacon and sambucca stuffing), Royale (shrimp, crawfish, and crabmeat stuffing), and Pepperoni (smoked chipotle peppers, green onions and parmesan cheese stuffing). The scrumptiousness defied description. The wife couldn't be convinced to sample those, or the bubbling char-broiled ones either, and had her usual dozen raw. Gumbo for me and shrimp bisque for her rounded out the light dining. A stroll down Rue de Bourbon and the expected chicanery and debauchery completed the evening and got us both in the proper festive attitude.

Breakfast, after bypassing the hotel's continental, was had at Cafe Fleur De Lis, based strictly on glowing online reviews and proximity to the Dauphine. I have always enjoyed ambling the Qwawtah in the early hours -- as in dawn, 6-8 a.m. -- when the drunks have laid it down, the early-risers like me are poking about, the working men and women are making deliveries, cleaning up from last night inside and out, and so on. We made our way back a different way, passing by the NOPD station on Royal Street and the upscale galleries and antique shops there, up to the Hotel Monteleone on the corner at Iberville Street. Since we have done all of the ghost and cemetery tours in prior visits, and also since my damned Meneire's-induced vertigo precludes any swamp boat rides or dinner cruises, we found two good options: Oak Alley Plantation for Wednesday and a Treme' walking tour for Thursday.

The antebellum period homes have entranced me ever since I first went through the Bishop's Palace, Ashton Villa, and the Menard home in Galveston, and going all the way back to the Mamie McFaddin Ward home in Beaumont. When we last visited Louisiana just a few years ago our itinerary then was Lafayette and Baton Rouge, where we toured Magnolia Mound. All of these come highly recommended if you like that sort of thing. (Probably nothing tops all the antebellum homes one can go through in Natchez MS, which we've also done, but that's another post.) Oak Alley has been the scene of a handful of movies but today is set up mostly for tours and special events like weddings and the like. The 200-year-old oaks that line the approach are the most magnificent I have ever seen. The grounds and home reflect the period: old Southern charm ... if you were Caucasian and wealthy, of course. There's a listing of the 100+ slaves who lived and worked on the plantation, their names, ages, and value recorded in a county archived tax disclosure filed in 1848.

Our fancy dinner Wednesday was one of the old-timers we had not yet been to: Arnaud's. I thought I was going to have the courtbouillon posted on the website as part of the Vermillion Reveillon Dinner menu, but when we were seated I was told that the prix-fixe had gone away after Christmas. Good news: it was replaced by a better and less expensive one. So we both had Shrimp Arnaud to appetize us; camarones frio doused in their renowned special remoulade. I picked the shrimp creole and Mrs. Diddie went for the pork tenderloin Robichaux, which was finished with a quick sear in the skillet to give it a little crunch on the edges. We closed with suitably decadent and diabetes-enhancing desserts: pecan pie a la mode (pecan praline ice cream) and profiterole, a pastry filled with vanilla ice cream and drenched in chocolate syrup. Hope my doctor isn't reading this.

Thursday I let the wife sleep in and wandered the Quarter before trucking back to the Dauphine for the complimentary breakfast (at least it was little healthier) and then we made Eat New Orleans for lunch (crawfish boulettes, butterbeans with shrimp, red beans and rice with sausage) before our Treme' tour.

It was really one of the best tours I have ever done, in NOLA or anywhere else. Our guide started us at the old J&M recording studio -- which is now, ridiculously enough, a washateria -- where proprietor Cosimo Matassa played host to the legends of the music of the time: Fats Domino, Dave Bartholomew, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Sam Cooke, Allen Toussaint, Jerry Lee Lewis, Professor Longhair, Dr. John, Guitar Slim, and many more. From there we moved into the historic African-American neighborhood to the north of the French Quarter and the scene of the HBO series of the same name. The Treme' has been gentrified somewhat since the rebuilding of New Orleans after Katrina, but remains mostly a lower middle-class AA neighborhood and the center of the city's historical music and culture. Much of the early (as in pre-Civil War) struggles for civil rights were waged here, and after the Anglo-Americans took over from the French -- and before them, the Spanish -- in 1803, black people had quite obviously a much more miserable existence. Slave auction houses were prevalent, the War of 1812 where Andrew Jackson's ragtag bunch repelled British forces cemented the Americans' stranglehold on the port city, and Louisiana became a state of the Union later that year.

Things got no better until the Civil War of course, and even up to the 1960s, when the construction of Interstate 10 bisected the Treme' just as it did Old South Baton Rouge, and virtually everywhere else the highway was built in the cities -- right through the minority neighborhoods -- and the area continued to suffer the erosion of its culture and heritage. Post-Katrina, the neighborhood is getting some attention and investment to preserve its legacy. There's a wonderful African American Museum on Governor Nicholls Street, housed in Treme' Villa, one of the city's best examples of an authentic Creole mansion.

On our way back we went past Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop but were too tired to even stop for a drink, preferring a nap instead before dinner. We walked just a block away from the Dauphine to Louisiana Bistro, where the wife had a lip-smackingly delicious puppy drum and I finally had the elusive courtbouillion. Another really magnificent meal.

On the way back to Houston on Friday we stopped again in Lake Charles at the Isle of Capri so Mrs. Diddie and Mother Diddie could feed the slots. We all hit the buffet and I sacrificed, having a large salad, the only vegetables I consumed all week.

When we picked up the furkids at the PetsHotel, we got those looks that said, "You went to New Orleans and didn't bring us a doggy bag?!"