The Brownback folks are liveblogging Ames.

As is Team Tancredo, which declares, “This experience of staying up all night to guard our straw poll tent is actually awesome.”

I imagine the Five Brothers will be weighing in. And there’s video of the food line at Ron Paul’s site.

C-SPAN just said party leaders are expecting at least 30,000 and hoping 40,000 attend this event – that would be a pretty darn big increase from the 23,685 in 1999.

Interestingly, I’m hearing from somebody on the ground at Ames that he would be shocked if the vote total was higher than it was in 1999, and he makes something of a compelling case – in 1999, the GOP grassroots were so sick of Clinton, fired up to get a Republican back in the White House. Bush attended, as did most candidates; I can’t remember if McCain did. Compared to this year, Rudy, McCain, and Fred aren’t in attendance.

It’s a compelling case, but on the other hand, I wonder how much population growth has occured in Iowa since 1999. There ought to be more Republicans around than there were eight years ago.

UPDATE: It will have very little impact on the vote, but Newt Gingrich co-writing an op-ed with Mike Huckabee today will result in a lot of speculation about an endorsement or a ticket of the two men.

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Right Here, Right Now,” by Jesus Jones is playing at the straw poll, number fourteen on the list of John J. Miller’s Top 50 Conservative Rock Songs.

UPDATE: Ron Paul: “I think 9/11 could have been prevented if we had had more respect for the Second Amendment.” He ties it to a mentality of centralized bureaucracies for protecting the country instead of individuals.

“The neoconservatives have taken over from the conservatives, and they do not respect our borders as they should.”

“This idea that you are a citizen as long as you are born here – that idea needs to be revisited.”

Now he’s really rocking and rolling – “The Constitution doesn’t even provide for a Federal Reserve system!”

“You pay to bomb bridges in Iraq, and then you pay to rebuild them, when the bridges are falling down here!”