The Family Research Council held a conference and invited the GOP presidential contenders to speak. Then they had a straw poll. The poll was open to people on the internet that payed as little as a dollar and joined FRC Action. The FRC was kind enough to break out the poll results by those that were onsite at the conference and those that voted online. And the numbers were quite different.
Here are the total results:
Mitt Romney – 1,595 votes — 27.62%
Mike Huckabee – 1,565 votes — 27.15%
Ron Paul — 865 votes — 14.98%
Fred Thompson — 564 votes — 9.77%Undecided — 329 votes — 5.70%
Sam Brownback – 297 votes — 5.14%
Duncan Hunter — 140 votes — 2.42%
Tom Tancredo — 133 votes — 2.30%
Rudy Giuliani — 107 votes 1.85%
John McCain — 81 votes — 1.40%And here are the on-site results:
Mike Huckabee — 488 votes — 51.26%
Mitt Romney — 99 votes — 10.40%
Fred Thompson — 77 votes — 8.09%
Tom Tancredo — 65 votes — 6.83%%
Rudy Giuliani — 60 votes — 6.30%
Duncan Hunter — 54 votes — 5.67%
John McCain — 30 votes — 3.15%
Sam Brownback — 26 votes — 2.73%
Ron Paul — 25 votes — 2.63%
Undecided — 11 votes — 1.16%
Unsurprisingly, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney were well organized online. But for the people that actually sat and listened to the speeches, Mike Huckabee was the clear and unambiguous winner. In both pools, McCain and Guiliani were dead in the water. Can a Republican win the general election if they get almost no support from the religious right? And, even if, say, Guiliani can win with moderates and independents, what will it do to down ticket Republicans?
Good questions.
Where else would the religious right throw its support? For a < gasp > Democrat?
The ‘religious right’ might try and throw their weight around by threatening to spin off a 3rd party candidate but I really doubt they would do that…they are far more sacred of a dem winning presidency especially Hillary than they would be a repub they didn’t exactly like. In other words they’ll hold their noses and vote for whoever just not to let some godless liberal win.
I can remember seeing Dobson(on Larry King I believe) literally shuddering and saying he was kept up at night in cold sweats worrying what would happen to the Supreme Court if Hillary were president…or no doubt any democrat for that matter.
Frankly I don’t know what to make of Romney’s popularity with the Fundies.
I believe that many of them turn their noses up to Catholics and even some of the Protestant denominations.
We can only hope that the Religious Right will follow through on its threat to field a 3rd party candidate. It would assure a Democratic victory. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that the Democrats are going to nominate Hillary and we will have a kinder, gentler version of Republican corporatist rule. I only wish that we had odds as good as “Random Chance”. When most Democratic office holders are little more than employees of their corporate masters, all of whom are itching for more profits from privatizing government and extending war, it will take a lot more than chance – it will take a level of courage that is rare indeed.
I find that rather odd also but he does have the fundie and war lingo down though to make him appealing to all the nuts. Plus he has been throwing a lot of money around to get himself seen and heard and that does make a difference. He’s also dumb as a post and that almost seems to be a prerequisite anymore for a rethug contender. Dan Quayle almost looks like a genius compared to some of these guys.