Fear the Vest

Unless you have been in a cave these past few months, you know that it is the Iowa Caucuses tonight. As Stephen so clearly pointed out, that means there's a bunch of old Midwestern people in a high school gym sitting on folding chairs.

Some might say each candidate in the GOP had their turn at flavor of the month. Remember Herman Cain? Perhaps he should have come on The Colbert Report way back when so that he could have received the famous Colbert Bump. (Too late now, Herman.) Jon Huntsman decided against coming to Iowa. Most of the GOP candidates have been crisscrossing Iowa in huge buses and drinking coffee in every small town. Millions of dollars have been spent on TV ads.

And after all of this, Stephen was ready to predict the outcome. He announced on his show tonight that he was predicting that Jon Huntsman would lose Iowa. It may have been this quote from Huntsman that, along with not bothering to show up, lost Iowa for him:

"The pick corn in Iowa. They actually pick presidents here in New Hampshire."

Stephen was not willing to predict who the winner would be, but he did talk about Rick Santorum. At one of his speeches, Santorum wore a sweater vest. That speech went over quite well and ever since, Santorum has been wearing sweater vests, a different color it seems, to each event, almost as if he had a rainbow of vests in his closet.

What Stephen was able to do for political junkies and Iowanians alike was to have Megyn Shelly on the show to predict the outcome. ( I don't know if Megyn Shelly and Marcel the Shell are related, but they do look somewhat alike, so I'm thinking maybe cousins.) Unfortunately, there really was not enough time for Meygn to make this determination, but Stephen is hopeful that within a month, Megyn will come through with the news we are all waiting for.

Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent Senator from Vermont, was Stephen's first guest of 2012. He brought along his book, "The Speech," which is essentially the speech he gave when he was filibustering in the Senate. Senator Sanders believes middle class people, you know - the hard working "man on the street" - are having a rough time while the rich can fully afford to pay their share of taxes. When Stephen confronted him about his attitude towards the job creators, Senator Sanders reminded him that the rich are not creating jobs, they are outsourcing them to China. Senator Sanders also talked about the need for a constitutional amendment to save American democracy. You can go over to his website, sanders.senate.gov, to find out more information. Stephen expects the process of getting the amendment passed and ratified should be pretty much wrapped up by May, but I think that might be a little bit optimistic. Time will tell.