Justin Hart of Race42008 wrote a post that is 95% correct. He said: You don’t try to win straw polls as proof of your national success among a group of voters. You don’t try to win straw polls as proof of momentum. You don’t try to win straw polls as Read more…
Total (fundraising) Offline (real) Candidate Votes Candidate Votes Romney 1595 Huckabee 488 Huckabee 1565 Romney 99 Paul 865 Thompson 77 Thompson 564 Tancredo 65 They made on and offline versions First, values: Abortion Marriage Tax cuts Family tax issues Sounds like Republicans. FRC had indicated that they would provide online Read more…
The Conservative Leadership Conference occurred over the weekend. It had called itself "CPAC West." That is perhaps too generous, but the straw poll results strike me as, perhaps, interesting. After all, these are activists. MSNBC’s First Read has the results, which are somewhat surprising: Paul won with 32 percent, McCain Read more…
UPDATE: The results have been updated. This weekend, the convention of the National Federation of Republican Women was held in California. They held a straw poll. I don’t have complete results yet, but the top-line result is pretty solid. Rudy Giuliani won an outright majority. Giuliani did speak to the Read more…
Here are some facts and a hypothesis: FairTax had 20-30 buses. (how can a 501(c)(4) give to a state party??) Mike Huckabee had no buses. The FairTax had enormous presence and good location. Mike Huckabee had a bad location and little on-site staff. But, Huckabee was the only candidate to Read more…
Some time, some pushback, some reading, and some conversaton has filled out my thinking on Ames. Mike Huckabee is clearly the story coming out of Ames for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that he got a bump. A big one. He will be able to raise money Read more…
Marc Ambinder has the results: Romney 31.5% Huckabee 18.1% Brownback 15% Tancredo in 13.7% Ron Paul with 9% The rest were single digits. My read is that social conservatives are split, and immigration is really important. The fact that Huckabee + Brownback is greater than Romney will be noticed. At Read more…
C-SPAN’s coverage makes it clear that he brought lots and lots of kids to the straw poll. Sam Brownback starts with tying together families with terrorism. Huckabee did that in his own way. He really talks about abortion differently than the others. He talked about "reviving the economy." Republicans don’t Read more…
Mike Huckabee gets a nice intro from Laura Ingraham. Give America back to the people on Main Street. This is an important undercurrent to the language Sams Club Republican thing. Is that really what Huckabee is? Michael Vick joke was cute "I’m not the best funded candidate. I don’t have Read more…
For some good straw poll blogging, I recommend Marc Ambinder, The Fix, and Cyclone Conservative. Well, first Newt started by pandering to the anti-immigration forces. Wasn’t he an open borders guy back in the day? Wasn’t he a hero of guest worker programs? Mitt Romney started by confusing green beans Read more…