Republican Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan campaigned in Des Moines yesterday, while Vice President Joe Biden kicked off a two-day swing through Iowa in Burlington. I’ve enclosed highlights from both men’s speeches after the jump. I’ll update this post later with clips from Biden’s events today in Ottumwa and Grinnell.

One of Republican Mitt Romney’s latest television commercials in Iowa asserts that cutting government spending and eliminating the federal deficit will create 130,000 jobs in Iowa. Meanwhile, in states with more military bases and defense sector industry, Romney campaign advertising promises to create hundreds of thousands of jobs by reversing planned cuts in defense spending.

Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan just wrapped up his event at Kirkwood College in Cedar Rapids, the first stop in a two-day swing through Iowa.

WEDNESDAY UPDATE: Added clips from Ryan’s rally in Adel.

Getting out the vote early was a major theme of President Barack Obama’s campaign rallies in Urbandale and Sioux City yesterday. Democratic candidates for other offices need a strong early vote as well, but there’s no sign the president is concerned about electing Democrats up and down the ticket.

Normally I am a political party convention junkie, but I haven’t watched any of the Republican National Convention so far. Judging from media accounts of the prime-time program, it seems that Ann Romney gave a decent speech, dwelling on the theme of love, after which New Jersey Governor Chris Christie talked mostly about himself and said Republicans need to seek respect, not love. He also praised presidential nominee Mitt Romney for being willing to tell the hard truths about how to fix the deficit, but naturally, didn’t share any details on those tough budget cuts to come.

Any comments related to the GOP convention are welcome in this thread. Many links and news stories related to the Iowa delegation are after the jump.

President Barack Obama held a campaign rally in Ames today, drawing a crowd of approximately 6,000 on the Iowa State University campus. I enclosed the transcript of the president’s remarks at the bottom of this post. As in all his campaign speeches, he framed the election as a “choice” between two paths, rather than as a referendum on his performance. Obama also emphasized his administration’s efforts to make college tuition and student loans more affordable.

The president will need strong turnout in places like Ames this November, because yet another Iowa poll shows the gap between Obama and Romney within the margin of error.

For the past ten days, GOP strategists have worried anonymously that Representative Paul Ryan’s presence on the national ticket will hurt Mitt Romney’s campaign, especially in the must-win state of Florida. One of the top Democratic talking points of the last year and a half has been Ryan’s plan to “end Medicare as we know it” by forcing future retirees to purchase government-subsidized private health insurance.

Romney’s strategists seem to have decided that the best defense on Medicare is a good offense. A television commercial launched last week attacked President Barack Obama’s record on Medicare, and a brand-new spot echoes that charge. Both videos are after the jump, along with transcripts and one of the Obama campaign’s response ads.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has tried to keep his campaign focused on economic and fiscal issues, but President Barack Obama’s latest television commercial in Iowa spotlights abortion rights and federal funding for Planned Parenthood. The video, annotated transcript, and related news are all after the jump.

One of the top international news stories of this week was the criminal conviction of three Russian feminist punk rockers from the group Pussy Riot. Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova face two years in prison on trumped-up charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” Read the closing statements they delivered at their trial and tell me these women aren’t more brave than anyone you know. They must be missing their families and hating their crummy prison conditions, but the defendants denounced the show trial instead of apologizing and asking for mercy from the court.

Meanwhile, Iowa politics-watchers once again debated whether it’s appropriate to heckle speakers at the Iowa State Fair soapbox.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced his running mate this morning: Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the chair of the U.S. House Budget Committee. The two men are launching a four-day bus tour today. I don’t know what surprises me more: Romney not choosing Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, or Ryan’s willingness to give up his committee chairmanship for a shot at the vice presidency.

Democratic House incumbents and challengers have already been running against the Ryan budget. Iowa’s representatives split on party lines when the House approved this plan in April 2011, and Representative Leonard Boswell was eager to draw this contrast between himself and IA-03 opponent Representative Tom Latham. Having Ryan on the Republican ticket ensures that tax and budget issues will be at the center of the presidential campaign discourse this fall. Ryan’s approach to solving the long-term deficit problem asks virtually nothing of wealthy people but would devastate Medicaid, not to mention the Medicare program for future retirees. After the jump I’ve posted excerpts from a new report on the Ryan plan’s impact on state budgets, along the Iowa Policy Project’s comment on how the Ryan budget would affect Iowa in particular.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread. I will update this post with Iowa reaction and more news and links after the jump. Representative Steve King was enthusiastic about the pick.

So what if the next Iowa caucuses are nearly four years away? I’m on Public Policy Polling’s wavelength: 2016 Iowa caucus polling is interesting, even if it doesn’t mean much now.

Public Policy Polling’s new Iowa survey indicates a wide-open race among Republican presidential candidates with Mike Huckabee out of the running. PPP surveyed 481 Iowa Republicans from May 27 through May 30. Given a choice between Representative Michele Bachmann, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Representative Ron Paul, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, 21 percent of respondents expressed a preference for Romney as the GOP presidential nominee. Cain and Palin tied for second with 15 percent, followed by Gingrich (12 percent), Bachmann (11 percent), Pawlenty (10 percent), Paul and “someone else/undecided” (8 percent), and Huntsman (0 percent).

Asked to choose a candidate if Palin did not run for president, respondents favored Romney (26 percent), Cain (16 percent), Gingrich (15 percent), Bachmann (14 percent), Paul (11 percent), Pawlenty (10 percent) and Huntsman (1 percent).

I don’t know why PPP didn’t include former Senator Rick Santorum on these lists, since Santorum has hired staff and made several Iowa visits during the past year. The full polling memo (pdf) includes favorability numbers for Santorum and a bunch of other Republicans who have been mentioned as possible presidential candidates.

I wouldn’t put too much stock in a poll taken seven or eight months before the Iowa caucuses, especially a survey over Memorial Day weekend, when many potential respondents would not be at home. Still, Cain has to be thrilled to be making inroads with Iowa Republicans. This poll will make it difficult for Romney to avoid participating in the Iowa GOP’s August straw poll fundraiser. The results must be disappointing for Pawlenty and Gingrich, who have spent time and energy in Iowa recently and have high-profile Republican endorsers here. Tom Jensen of PPP saw a silver lining for Pawlenty, though:

Romney’s leading in Iowa based on his strength with centrist and center right Republican voters. With moderates he’s at 34% to 16% for Palin, 13% for Paul, and 11% for Gingrich. With ‘somewhat conservative’ voters he’s at 24% to 15% for Pawlenty, 13% for Palin, and 12% for Gingrich and Cain. His strength with those two groups outweighs his continuing weakness with the furthest right group of voters in the state, which constitute the largest segment of the Republican electorate at 41%. With those ‘very conservative’ folks Romney can muster only a fourth place finish at 13%. Cain and Palin tie for the lead with that group of voters at 19% followed by Bachmann at 15%. […]

Pawlenty doesn’t poll the strongest head to head among Romney among ‘very conservative’ voters- he leads by 17 compared to a 21 point lead for Palin and a 24 point advantage for Bachmann with that group. But with center right voters- those calling themselves ‘somewhat conservative’- Romney leads Pawlenty by just a single point while he has a 19 point advantage over Palin and a 22 point lead over Bachmann with that group. What that says to me is that many Republicans are looking for someone more conservative than Romney but someone who isn’t bound to get creamed in the general election the way Palin, Bachmann, and Cain probably would. That’s very good news for Pawlenty if it ever plays itself out in real life.

Jensen also noted that non-candidates Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, or Paul Ryan posted better favorability numbers in this poll than any of the declared Republican presidential candidates.

Share any thoughts about the GOP presidential race in this thread.

UPDATE: PPP replied to my question about not including Santorum in this survey. A maximum of eight candidates can be tested in this automated poll; adding Santorum would have meant removing Huntsman, about whom “there’s much more national interest.” Since Huntsman hasn’t been in Iowa while Santorum has spent time here and hired staff, I would have liked to see whether Santorum is gaining ground like Cain.

Remember when Republicans were saying that Washington was going to pull the plug on grandma? Little did we know, they were on to something.

The newly released Republican budget does indeed threaten grandma – by dismantling Medicare and ending the guaranteed health care that so many seniors' lives depend on.

If House Republicans and Budget Chairman Paul Ryan get their way, they would privatize Medicare – getting rid of the government guarantee that makes the program accessible for all elderly Americans. Under this “brave” and “courageous” Republican plan, seniors would get a voucher to purchase insurance on the private market. This may sound like a reasonable plan until you consider that privatizing Medicare would cost seniors significantly more, almost doubling their out-of-pocket costs to more than $12,000 a year and leaving many unable to afford health care at all.