Heh, my daughter's entire senior high school alone has 2,500 kids.
http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/10/mccain-is-in-iowa-no-one-bring.htmlSen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced Sen. John McCain this morning at a rally at the University of Northern Iowa.
Attendance: 2,000, according to the local fire department. As you may know, Grassley is one of the biggest cheerleaders for corn-ethanol subsidies. Makes sense, Iowa is to ethanol as Texas is to oil and natural gas. (Just look at the cluster of ethanol refineries in the Midwest.)
But McCain absolutely detests ethanol subsidies. As he said during the third presidential debate, "I oppose subsidies for ethanol because I thought it distorted the market and created inflation; Senator Obama supported those subsidies." (Obama's home state of Illinois is a big corn-ethanol producer as well.) Perhaps more important, McCain wants to eliminate the tariff on imported ethanol from Brazil. That would kill the monopoly that Iowa and other farm-states have on ethanol -- which by law must be blended into the fuel supply.
Grassley said energy was among the four subjects where McCain's positions were superior to Obama's. On this point, Grassley only mentioned drilling for oil. The wod "ethanol" wasn't uttered.
One wonders why McCain is even bothering to campaign here this late in the game. Makes sense that he has to make a good show of it. But polls show that Obama, who won the Iowa caucuses, is clobbering him here. Ethanol aside, Iowa does not look too hospitable to McCain.