Even though these types of polls don’t mean much, the results of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference presidential straw poll are still interesting.
Newt Gingrich 18% (321)
Mike Huckabee 4%
Gary Johnson 1%
Sarah Palin 18% (330)
Ron Paul 24% (438)
Tim Pawlenty 3%
Mike Pence 3%
Mitt Romney 24% (439)
Rick Santorum 2%
Neither Mitt Romney nor Tim Pawlenty showed up in New Orleans for the conference. Whether that was because they’re northerners or because of true scheduling conflicts, I don’t know, but it looks like Romney probably should have taken the time to speak to this audience since he managed to win the straw poll even without being there.
I don’t know if anyone would have predicted that a Mormon from Massachusetts who is closely associated with the national health care plan just passed by Congress would win a presidential straw poll in a southern GOP leadership conference after turning down an offer to appear there.
Almost as interesting is that Ron Paul only lost to Romney by a single vote. It looks like the Paulistas continue to infiltrate these GOP conferences and demonstrate outsized influence.
If Romney and Paul have anything in common, it’s their focus on economic matters over social issues. Notice how poorly moral crusaders Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum did in the poll. It’s also of interest that Romney did so well while Pawlenty got no traction at all.
I’d be tempted to argue that Romney’s numbers reflect a deep pragmatism on the part of the conferees, but then you have to match his numbers up against Ron Paul’s, and that argument doesn’t hold a lot of water.
Maybe it just reflects a fundamental split. A quarter just want someone who can win, a quarter want to completely overhaul the GOP in Paulist direction, and half are split up among various socially conservative long-shots. It’s hard to believe that these people have enough in common to even be able to talk to each other.
Booman, why do think there is no Ron Paul like faction in the democratic party? By that I mean a substantial proportion that opposes corporatism, interventionism/militarism, demands constitutional civil liberties, and worries about a large budget deficit? Yes there is Denis Kucinich, but he doesn’t seem to have nearly as much support among Dems as Ron Paul does among Reps.
Why is that and do you even think there should be such a thing?
Thanks
Well, if you look at how well Ron Paul did in the primaries and compare it to how well Kucinich did, I don’t think there is really all that much difference. Certainly Paul was able to compete in caucus states but how many delegates did he ultimately win?
So, I think the difference is less in how much overall support the candidates have than in how dedicated Paul’s supporters are compared to Kucinich’s supporters.
There is also a cyclical element to this. After eight years of Bush/Cheney, the left became very practical. Not too practical, because they did reject the frontrunner for a black guy from Hawaii named Barack Hussein Obama. But they made no demands on Obama that he talk any hard left positions. They were willing to let him run to the center because they wanted to win so badly.
If Obama serves eight years like Bill Clinton, you can be sure that a rump will grow up again to support a Nader-like challenge the Democratic establishment in 2012. So, Paul’s support is in part a luxury people on the right erroneously think they can afford.
As a more general matter, we don’t have a hard left in this country because we spent 50 years fighting a Cold War against the hard left, and we used all our resources (media, public education, movies, books) to marginalize socialism in all its forms. This, combined with a two-party winner-take-all election system, forces both parties to the center-right. The longer the Cold War went on, the more the country drifted to the center-right, until it no longer mattered whether Communists existed or not.
Interesting point regarding a lack of a true European style left and I think I agree with it. But as you’ve pointed out before, Paul is likely farther from the mainstream than Dennis Kucinich. And Paul did/does generate far more support than Kucinich. He certainly didn’t win any primaries/caucuses but he did get 10% in Iowa, which was still well ahead of Kucinich. And that was Paul’s first time in a presidential primary. He did break 20% in some of the western states (Washington, Oregon, Montana, IIRC) And even in his weakest states his 3% showings were better than Kucinich’s.
None of this is a knock on D.K. I would happily support him over almost any Republican, who isn’t Ron Paul. The rest of the Democratic (or Republican) fields, I just don’t care about.
Wouldn’t Howard Dean have been the Democratic analog of Ron Paul?
Dean is a centrist, seems to me. And smart. Paul is a far-rightest and not very bright. Don’t really see the similarity. As Boo says, we don’t really have a Left in this country. If we did, somebody like Chomsky would be the analog to Paul — if you didn’t consider intellect.
The similarity isn’t in the politics, but in that they both have/had strong and enthusiastic grass-roots support from younger people.
I view Ron Paul as a Libertarian more than anything else..
Could Huckabee’s number be due to the fact that he has said unequivocably that he will not run for president in 2012?
sure, but then the votes would logically migrate to another social conservative.
Really interesting?
Gingrich is in position to become the next Dick Cheney.
Romney’s handler.
Only smarter and more adept at the connive than was Cheney.
Watch.
AG
I hadn’t thought of that. Good catch Arthur.
“Gingrich is in position to become the next Dick Cheney.
“Romney’s handler.
“Only smarter and more adept at the connive than was Cheney.
Sorry, I’m not very fluent in Gilroyese, but to me this reads like a series of non-sequiturs. Other than both being megalomaniacs by temperament, I can see little in common between Cheney and Gingrich. Nor can I fathom how or why Gingrich would be in a position to be Romney’s handler. I can’t see that either of them is any more intelligent than the other. Neither is particularly intelligent, but Newt is a pseudo-intellectual, Cheney has no interest in that sort of thing but is a very shrewd operator. While both are highly incompetent in real-world issues, Cheney is a consommate aparatchik, an insider, and Newt is not even competent at that. Newt is better on the PR front, but it avails him little, as whatever appeal he might have had belongs to a bygone age. Amidst the current field of GOP hopefuls, he has the air of a grand old man, but that’s all it is, air, something the GOP is really into, especially in its heated form.
Interesting, as before this was taken, I was guessing that Gingrich will win the nomination.
AB Stoddard at MSNBC this am was explaining (?) to viewers that Ron Paul’s followers were very good at organizing and so had preloaded the audience and thus the high vote count.
Since R’s watch Fox they don’t know that Romney has got some major hurdles to get over.
Newt’s gotta be pissed. His speech was full of Palinisms and he still didn’t score so he’s got to be scratching his head on how to proceed.
Ron Paul may be many things but he is consistently true to his platform and I wouldn’t be surprised if TeaParty’rs start taking a solid look at him vs Romney who would be perceived as Big Bad Business.
Tina Fey Unveils -The Sarah Palin Network- on SNL – sarah palin
Embed code is disabled but here is the URL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9t9HH_uavs
I don’t think the results are so odd. If we didn’t hold the WH and had a similar conference, the results might be all over the map, too.
Romney, apparently, bought his votes with trinkets: http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/04/11/early-morning-open-thread-straw-men/
Republican Straw Polls are usually rigged. Romney paid the entrance fee and likely bought lunch for each of his votes.
Those Ron Paul votes are real though.
Remember this Daily Show coverage of the Iowa Straw Poll? I couldn’t embed their video here, but it’s a great educational piece.
I think it’s hilarious that Mittens one…
and that Caribou Barbie wasn’t even second.
sorry…Mittens WON…LOL
Here’s what the numbers say to me:
Mitt Romney (24%) – Newt Gingrich (18%) – Sarah Palin (18%) – Ron Paul (24%)
Conclusion: Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin are contending for the center of the Republican Party in the South. But that center represents only 36% of the party.
The elite establishment now constitutes only 24% of the party, at least in the South.
Libertarian economic populism constitutes 24% of the party.
The real fight is going to be among Romney, Gingrich, and Paul.