Matt Lewis of Townall has the inside scoop on a pretty neat tele-marketing strategy Mitt Romney is using to connect with Iowans (en masse):

According to one senior Romney aide, last night the Romney campaign hosted a tele-townhall conference call for values voters in Iowa. Approximately 20,000 households were called, and close to 5,000 households participated, I'm told.

Conservative leaders Jay Sekulow, David Keene, and Mark DeMoss were speakers on the call.

According to my source, this wasn't merely a persuasion call; Listeners were instructed to press "1" on their phone if they wanted to caucus. They were then given instructions on where (and how) to caucus.

Considering that only about 75 to 80 thousand Iowans are expected to participate in the Republican caucus -- and that temperatures are very cold -- this seems like a wise way to campaign.

When I worked at the U.S. House of Representatives, we used a similar tele-townhall strategy to connect with constituents. My boss would talk about issues like the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill, energy independence, and the Global War on Terrorism.

The technology is tremendous because it's a great use of the candidate/Member's time (callers are always on the other end of the line) and it is rather cost-effective. A number of phone vendors on the Republican side are now providing this service so it shouldn't be hard to find one.

Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has a secret weapon -- a keyboard army plugging away on his behalf. Of note, Huckabee recognizes this talented pool of volunteers and is working with them to get his message out directly to the American people.

As reported yesterday by The Nation:

Mike Huckabee huddled with a smattering of conservative bloggers today, in a Des Moines hotel room packed with reporters and television cameras.

"The greatest secret weapon we have is over 700 dedicated bloggers to get our message out to people," said Huckabee, who credited conservative web activists -- the "RightRoots" -- for catapulting him past better funded establishment candidates. "We don't have the kind of money that other campaigns have," he explained, "a lot of the reason is because of the 700 bloggers out there pounding away on their keyboards and hitting the send button and making magic happen."

How far we've come. How far we will go before it's all over.

It's the day after the Iowa straw poll in Ames and all is calm. (At least we hope that little town of 50K will return to a state of normalcy in the very near future.)

If you haven't yet read up on the results, look to these fine posts for all of the analysis of what it means, or doesn't mean for our pool of candidates:

1. Captain's Quarters: Ames Poll Produces Winner -- And It May Not Be Romney
2. Marc Ambinder: AMES: The Romney Victory
3. Chris Cillizza: Analysis: Huckabee's 2nd-Place 'Win' in Ames
4. Soren Dayton: Romney Wins; conservatives split
5. Patrick Ruffini: Huckabee!

As expected, Romney won - and won big. Huckabee pulled out a surprise "win" by pulling second place with little resources. Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and John McCain barely made an impact.

Are we looking at a Romney/Huckabee ticket or was this little exercise inconsequential? Time will tell.

Today, each of the Republican Presidential candidates participating in the Ames Straw Poll will speak before 12,000 Iowa Republican activists at the Hilton Coliseum. Though I have my doubts about overall attendance, the Iowa Republican Party claims that more than 40,000 could be in attendance. Whatever the number [will it even break 1999? -ed.], these are certain to be the XX,XXX most committed Iowa Republicans, at least those who are supporting Ames players.

Is it just me, or isn't this the perfect place to roll out an SMS program? An intrepid candidate could stand at the podium, and say, "And to join my campaign, please text AMES to MITT08 (PAUL08, HUCK08, BRNBK, etc. etc.) [here, he holds up his cell phone]. Then please join us by our tent, show us the confirmation message on your phone, to receive your special Ames collectible ______."

This can work because you have a large number of activists who are driven by incentives and looking for swag. Romney has the "best BBQ in Iowa." Hunter has an Elvis impersonator handing out ice cream cones. The candidates could easily wall off one of these incentives for people who gave them their email address or cell phone number. And then have a list of 10-15K Iowa names, many of whom are supporters, but others who are potentially open to supporting you. And SMS is probably the best way to collect mass supporter info off a single speech.

When I first posted the Clinton Sopranos parody video to YouTube, I could hardly imagine it would become the second most viewed video that day, with over 250,000 views. Other versions trailed narrowly behind, fetching at least 700,000 extra viewers. All told, over a million watched the video on YouTube.

That's not what the Clinton campaign intended. They wanted to have this moment all to themselves, so they didn't post it to their YouTube channel, instead roadblocking people to HillaryClinton.com where there would be no conversation, no comments, and no pesky video replies. While on the site, they also wanted people to sign up and donate.

You'd think only a Clinton supporter would post such a funny and flattering video of the two, but I saw this as an opportunity to divert traffic from the Clinton web site and perhaps reduce their online take from the video. It was successful, to the tune of a quarter million people who watched it on YouTube instead of HillaryClinton.com.