About 250 Iowa Republicans gathered for a party fundraiser Saturday evening in Des Moines, but none of the elected officials who spoke mentioned the name of the G.O.P.’s likely presidential nominee. Senator Chuck Grassley made this declaration early in his six-minute speech.

“I want you to know that between now and (the) election, nothing will have my attention, time or effort more than helping to defeat President Obama,” Grassley said, to applause.

State legislators, the lieutenant governor, Iowa’s two Republican congressmen and Virginia’s attorney general — the night’s keynote speaker — focused on other races and made references to the presidential race — by calling for President Obama’s ouster rather than Mitt Romney’s rise. It was left to Ann Romney — speaking in a video played at the end of the evening — to tout her husband’s candidacy.

“If you really want to know how a person will operate, look at how they’ve lived their life,” she said in the video, which focused on the couple’s marriage and family and Mitt Romney’s career in business and his leadership of the Salt Lake City Olympics.

Read a live blog of the event and listen to Grassley’s speech here.

First Lady Michelle Obama rallied with about 400 campaign supporters in Windsor Heights late this afternoon, suggesting November’s election may be tight.

“In the end, this all could come down to those last few thousand people that we register to vote. You know, it’s important to remember that,” Obama said. “It could all come down to those last few thousand folks we need help to get to the polls.”

Obama spoke privately to campaign donors before speaking to an invitation-only group of campaign volunteers. Only 250 were able to crowd into the conference center in Windsor Heights, a Des Moines suburb. Another 150 were in a tent outside, watching a video feed of Obama’s remarks.

Without referring to likely Republican rival Mitt Romney by name, Obama touted her husband’s “middle class” values as a point of contrast with the wealthy businessman.

“All you have to guide you are your values and your vision and your life experiences. In the end when you’re making those impossible choices it all boils down to who you are and what you stand for — and we all know who my husband is,” Obama said, with emphasis on that last phrase before the crowd erupted in cheers and applause.

Obama suggested her husband’s signature accomplishments were “all on the line” this November.

“It all boils down to one simple question: will we continue the change that we’ve begun and the progress we’ve made or will we allow everything we’ve fought for to just slip away?” Obama said, and many in the crowd shouted of “no” in response. “We know what we need to do, right? We cannot turn back now. We need to keep moving forward.”

Find the audio of the first lady’s speech here.

The first to speak to the crowd this afternoon, though, was Deidre DeJear, an Obama campaign volunteer who warned there was an onslaught of “millions of dollars” in attack ads coming this November.

“But it doesn’t matter because we have you all,” DeJear said. “No amount of money can measure up to what these people in this room are capable of.”

CeCe Ibson of Des Moines was invited to talk about her struggle to get health insurance after her husband died of cancer and she lost her job.

“No one, until President Obama, stood up for me and millions of Americans like me across Iowa and across the country,” she said, to applause from the crowd.

Then, for about 20 minutes, Michelle Obama talked about the Obama Administration’s accomplishments of the past three and half years, listing things like passing health care reform, resurrecting the nation’s auto industry and ending the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. She closed with this:  “One more person can make the difference…so I have one last question for you: Are you in?” she asked, and the crowd cheered. “Are you ready to do this?”

Debby Prescott, a 55-year-old nurse from Ames, cheered and waved a small American flag as Obama spoke. She’s been going door-to-door and making phone calls already.

“I feel like he’s Prometheus, pushing that rock up the hill because, you know, he goes one step up and congress stomps him right down,” Prescott said. “And yet he has made accomplishments that are taking our country in the right direction.”

Seventy-nine-year-old Carol Briggs of Des Moines goes to Obama’s state headquarters every Tuesday night to make telephone calls, hoping to help Obama win a second term.

“I want him in there so bad,” Briggs said as she waited for Michelle Obama’s arrival. She was dressed for the event in a shirt that had Michelle Obama’s image, as Rosie the Riveter.

President Obama is to be in Iowa Wednesday, speaking at the University of Iowa about efforts to reduce student loan debt. A spokesman for the Republican National Comittee suggests the Obama’s efforts will not yield results in November.

“While Team Obama rolls out surrogates and campaign pageantry, Iowa voters have become disenfranchised with 3.5 years of President Obama’s broken promises and failed policies,” RNC spokesman Ryan Mahoney said in a written statement. “..Iowa has shifted away from Obama and no amount of campaign events can change that fact.”

(This story was updated at 8:05 p.m. with additional information.)

Bill Schickel

The leader of a committee examining the 2012 Iowa Republican Party Caucuses suggests there’s a bit of public relations work ahead to boost the national view of these neighborhood meetings.

Bill Schickel of Mason City, a former state legislator, was appointed chairman of the Iowa GOP’s Caucus review committee in mid-March.

“The bad news is that the Caucuses have been characterized by others as a fiasco, as a clown show. Some out-of-town media have characterized it that way,” Schickel said today during a news conference at Iowa GOP headquarters.

 ”The good news is that on Caucus Night we had 100 percent of precincts reporting.”

Back on January 3, Mitt Romney was declared the winner of the Iowa Caucuses, finishing just eight votes ahead of Rick Santorum. But later in January when Republican leaders at the county level were to submit the official party paperwork to GOP headquarters in Des Moines, that tabulation indicated Santorum was the victor, by 34 votes. Plus, the paperwork for a handful of precinct results was never submitted.

“I think we did 95 percent of everything right, but we did make some mistakes as well,” Schickel said. “We have to look at those mistakes, acknowledge them, review them and fix them — and that’s what we intend to do as a committee.”

AUDIO of Schickel’s 17-minute news conference.

The Caucus review panel will hold public meetings in Cedar Rapids on May 30 and in Sioux City on June 25.

Caucuses in other states have come under scrutiny as well following questions about results and low attendance. Iowa would almost certainly lose its status as the first test in the presidential campaign if it held a primary, run by local election officials, rather than a caucus which is run by party volunteers. 

“By and large, our (Iowa) Republicans, Democrats like the process very much, but we can improve it because we have to remember that these are community meetings in 1774 precincts and we do have other business to discuss — our platform, electing delegates,” Schickel said. “The presidential preference test is part of that. That’s obviously very important.”

Schickel said one of the goals of the task force is to ensure Iowa gives all presidential candidates, regardless of the size of their campaign bank account, a fair chance to compete here.

Vice President Joe Biden makes a point while talking in Ames on March 1st.

Vice President Joe Biden is delivering both a defense of President Obama’s policies and an offense against Republican presidential candidates today in eastern Iowa. Biden will be speaking late this morning to an invited crowd at PCT Engineered Systems in Davenport.

As he did at the beginning of March during a visit to Ames, Biden will be touting Obama Administration proposals that reward companies for “insourcing” — bringing jobs back to America. Biden stressed the concept during a telephone interview with Radio Iowa on March 1, arguing companies that outsourced manufacturing jobs to places like China and Mexico are starting to bring those jobs back to the U.S.

“Because we have the most innovative engineers in the world, the most innovative workers in the world, the most productive workers,” Biden told Radio Iowa.

According to excerpts of his Davenport speech that were released early this morning, Biden will cite statistics indicating the American economy has added 430,000 new manufacturing jobs since January of 2010 — “the fastest growth since the 1990s.” Biden also will accuse Mitt Romney, President Obama’s likely Republican rival in November, of being “consistently wrong” in his approach to the economy. Biden will say Romney offers a “backward philosophy” that rewards “speculators rather than builders.”

Biden will visit Sioux City this afternoon for a private meeting with “grassroots” supporters.