The Iowa Freedom Summit has kicked off this morning, and the Townhall/RedState/Hot Air team is on the job. The Des Moines Register has a live stream of the event, which will allow Hot Air readers to follow along. We arrived about an hour ago, wending our way past about three protesters (at least at 8 am) to find long lines of attendees waiting to enter the hall. We are positioned outside of the Green Room, and plan to have lots of opportunities to talk with the speakers as they exit.

I’ll have more as the event goes along.

Update, 9:31 CT: Steve King had a number of applause lines, but barely mentioned immigration. One of the biggest applause lines was a call to “abolish the IRS!”, and he got a lot of response to attacks on Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Terry Branstad talked about it to start his speech as well. This may be an interesting trend, and one that could leave the Democrats demonstrating outside bereft of substance for later attacks.

Update, 9:57 CT: I’m waiting in the briefing room for a press avail with Terry Branstad, but listening to the speeches. The early speeches and applause lines are making it clear that foreign policy will be just as much of an issue as the economy … and that immigration is not much of an issue in comparison.

Update, much later on: I changed the headline because it very quickly became impossible to do much live-blogging. I should have known better, but was just a little too optimistic. My wrap-up post can be found here.