Two of the top candidates didn't even bother to contest the Iowa straw poll and Ron Paul cannot do any better than 5th, finishing behind such luminaries as Sam Brownback and Tom Tancredo.
So to the Roniacs out there...get over it. You are the very definition of fringe. You are an Ed Wood movie, a Jamie Hoover solo album, and a novel by Jim Thompson all rolled into one. You are the Republican Dennis Kucinich.
And to all those folks who were saying Paul would be the "x factor" in the straw poll, all I can say is what were you smoking?
Huckabee's second place finish, on the other hand, might mark his having a longer run in the whole process than he might have otherwise. We shall have to see if it translates into more campaign contributions or not, but it does offer more legitimacy that he should at least be in the conversation.
3 comments:
Well, that's 9% of Iowa Republicans who won't vote for the eventual nominee in the general election.
Romney, Tancredo, Brownback, Huckabee - if any of these guys doesn't win the nomination, their votes will just go to whoever does win the nomination.
But every vote Paul peels off is lost to the party for the duration of this election cycle. The guys who are running on a platform of torture, secret prisons, the suspension of habeus corpus, and Bush's failed Iraq policy won't get that 9% back.
Repeat that process in a few more states, and the party of Bush is done. Once that party burns itself out and goes down to defeat, we can start over for 2012.
You do know that Ron Paul was only in Iowa 3 times before this week and spent almost no money there, right? He also pulled in 5 times the percentage of votes that he was polling nationally. Its not the most impressive, but it is also moving up in the right direction.
Romney should have had over 50% because there was "no contest"
The party of Bush has been done for quite sometime. They have already stuck the fork in it, pulled it out, ran it through the dishwasher, dryed it, buffed it with the silver polish, and put it away. Whatever the Republicans are running for (any of them, including McCain) it isn't to pick up the Bush mantle.
Jason, I don't see it. The only person who was trying at all that Paul beat was T. Thompson, whose campaign has been an unholy disaster....and he barely beat him at that. This was an opportunity for any of the second tier candidates to distinguish themselves and only Huckabee did so. Had Paul finished a close-up third it wouldn't have been so bad, but this just shows that while he can attract some die-hards he is getting no traction with average Republicans.
Plus Iowa is a place where committed die-hards have a more pronounced effect on results.
Paul has his choir, but it isn;t big enough and doesn't seem to be growing.
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