Here are the results of the Ames, Iowa Straw Poll that was conducted this afternoon:
1. Michele Bachmann: 4823 votes
2. Ron Paul: 4671
3. Tim Pawlenty: 2293
4. Rick Santorum: 1657
5. Herman Cain: 1456
6. Rick Perry: 718 (write-in)
7. Mitt Romney: 567
8. Newt Gingrich: 385
9. Jon Huntsman 69
10. Thaddeus McCotter: 35
This is really not a scientific poll. It’s more an indicator of who has organizational strength and money to waste on buying votes. And, let’s face it, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul are not going to be the president of the United States of America. Not to pick on anyone, but this is like suggesting that Dennis Kucinich or Alan Grayson might plausibly win control of the Earth’s most lethal military arsenal some day. It will never happen.
As for Tim Pawlenty, he actually tried to win this thing and got totally humiliated. He used to be the governor of Minnesota. Michele Bachmann is a measly back-benching member of Minnesota’s congressional delegation. And she more than doubled his tally. He probably should end his campaign tomorrow since he can’t gain any traction whatsoever.
Now, even though Mitt Romney is a Mormon and Iowa’s Republican base is mostly made up of Christian evangelicals who compete with Mormons to make converts, Romney actually won the Ames Straw poll in 2007. He did it by throwing a lot of money around. The problem is that it was Mike Huckabee, an actual Christian evangelical, who got the bump out of the straw poll by coming in second place. Huckabee went on to win the Iowa caucuses in 2008. So, this time, Romney saved his money and he won’t seriously contend to win the plurality of Iowa’s delegates. Still, his name was on the ballot today, and Texas Governor Rick Perry’s name wasn’t. And Rick Perry got more write-in votes than Romney got regular votes.
If you’re honest, you have to go all the way down this list to sixth place before you find in Perry someone who has the remotest chance of becoming president. I mean, Pawlenty has a certain surface-level plausibility, but he just got doubled up by Michele Bachmann. And if TPaw is dead-in-the-water, you have to go all the way down to seventh place to find in Romney someone who is both acceptable to the Republican Establishment and not absolutely loathed by the Bush family and machine.
It’s an extraordinary situation. Molly Ball of Politico might want to turn Perry’s entrance into the race into some fairy tale, but I’m here to tell you that a huge segment of the Republican Establishment will only embrace him with the most extreme reluctance. They’re secretly hoping that he does one thing. They’re hoping that he dilutes enough support from Bachmann to ensure that Romney can limp to the nomination. And then they’re hoping that Romney picks neither of them to be his running-mate.
And let’s face up to one more thing. The Republicans are like a boat that has broken up on the rocks. They have no coherent political philosophy at all, and the one that they’re pretending exists is so stupid and toxic that it just resulted in a downgrade in the country’s credit rating. To even have people this stupid and dishonest exist is dangerous enough to make us an AA+ nation.
Good luck trying to overcome that obstacle while lying yourself into the Oval Office.
Who the hell is Thaddeus McCotter? This is the first I’d heard of him in the Presidential race. He got a whopping 35 votes! So who voted for him? Half of his campaign staff? Who’d the other half vote for?
Whatever…
When I see Perry speak, he appears to me like a former traveling snake-oil salesman who now owns a very successful Pharmacy chain that sells low quality generic drugs that are very cheap, and pays his employees crap wages.
Pawlenty picked a fight with Bachmann, and she kicked the shit out of him…just as was easily predicted. Silly, silly man.
There’s not much more analysis anyone can do beyond your picture perfect image here. Well done.
Huntsman will probably stay in it until he can test the waters in Nevada just to see how he does. Then he will end his campaign.
Pawlenty should end it tomorrow…but will he? Also, when do the debate start getting more selective? After September, or during it?
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."When the economy craters between now and 2012 and Obama is still trying to woo Independents, don’t count out the appeal of a Perry-Bachmann ticket to the general populace. Rick Perry is no McCain and Bachmann is no Palin (ok, she’s an exact clone, but the public won’t see her that way… sometimes you’re in the right place at the right time).
Regretfully, this race is the Republicans to lose.
No, it’s not. Not a one of them has a lead in the polls right now.
Bachmann is what Palin would be like if Palin could utter a sentence that contained one and only one complete thought.
Alright… I concede. Maybe a Perry-Huntsman ticket would have more appeal. But still…
The candidates who did better than I expected were Santorum and Cain. The candidate who should really give up based solely on these results is Newt Gingrich.
The Ames Straw Poll may have some predictive value for the Iowa caucuses, but the Iowa caucuses don’t have as strong a predictive value on who wins the nomination. You just have to avoid being one of the candidates who get culled from plausibility as a result.
Last time around, I think the threshold was that you can’t be seen as getting destroyed by Ron Paul. This time around, I think the threshold will be Herman Cain. If you have problems outpolling the black Republican, then your campaign will be deemed to be in trouble. You’d better have a damn good excuse if you ever finish behind Cain in anything or your candidacy is dead.
So, candidates who have some legitimacy are everyone who finished above Cain, Romney (who skipped the straw poll like McCain did four years ago), Perry since he announced late, maybe Huntsman, and whoever decides to throw their hat in the ring at a later date.
So, when did you become a “Republican Establishment” insider, exactly?
C’mon, you have no idea what they will/won’t do with the VP slot. It’s mid-2011…
I think I can predict the VP. It will be one of Ryan, Christie or Jindal. Unless there really is a brokered convention and the VP slot becomes part of the deal.
Ryan is an interesting choice; a friend of mine thinks he’s running lol…
Jindal? No way. Christie? Doubtful.
I think they choose Rubio…unless, as you said, it’s brokered.
Think Progress reports that the Iowas State Fair “Butter Cow” sculpture got 3 write-in votes.
That Molly ball piece makes me want to gag. If that fairytale here to the rescue meme gets taken up by the media, I will have to be on dramamine or zofran during the entire 2012 campaign season.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."You beat me to it. Apparently he made the concession on ABC’s “This Week” this morning. But he did not endorse anyone yet.
Now I follow your link and see they’ve even got the video (which cannot be embedded here, so y’all should go see it.) I’m in the Pacific Timezone so we don’t get “This Week” yet.
Wow, this is totally bizarre. I didn’t think anybody took a straw poll that seriously. Straw polls are just something to talk about because you have to talk about something. Remember when Alan Cranston won the Arizona straw poll in 1984? (Why do I remember that?)
This feels to me like a baseball team firing the manager for losing a game in spring training.
And especially weird that it is Pawlenty. This is the guy who is nobody’s first choice, so his whole strategy was supposed to be to hang back and wait it out until the front-runners destroy each other, and then make his move. Weird.
The Straw Poll proved (to big-money contributors) that after a couple of years visiting every small town in Iowa and blasting the airwaves with ads portraying him as some kind of cool guy, which he is not, that this guy is a dud. He ran out of money weeks ago and there are no prospects for more.
Kerry and McCain also ran out of cash before the Iowa caucuses. So I guess Pawlenty’s fatal misstep was not to have married an heiress.
I thought the whole virtue of the Iowa/New Hampshire system was that you didn’t need to raise tons of money to compete. If you had the shoe leather to spare, you could make an impact. I guess it doesn’t really work that way.
But it’s true abit the shoe-leather, low budget campaign bit.
He didn’t raise much money. He didn’t spend much money as ads in Iowa are dirt cheap. (both are relative to a campaign in a big state.)
He definitely did wear out the shoe leather and no one cared. He visited every household that would let him in and didn’t call the cops. He’s just dull-as-dishwater-Timmy to them. No interest.
That is what the big-money contributors were looking for. If he can’t get much interest in a neighboring state that he can supposedly relate to, where can he get any interest at all?
He’s a dud. He knows it, average viewers of politics know it and now the big-money donors know it for sure.
See ya, Tim. Don’t let the door hit ya….
thanks BooMan
Juan Cole on Rick Perry’s Candidacy:
Rick Perry and the Hucksterism of the Rich
Good analysis throughout, but here are some pointed quotes.
Huckster, property spirituality…all the classical marks of the evangelical revival preacher of the 1930s and 1940s. And the Crystal Cathedral set of the 1980s. Not to mention Rick Warren.
Where I disagree with Juan Cole is that Rick Perry does not seem “like a normal person.” He comes off (to me anyway) as an idiot pretending to be an actor who is pretending to be Ronald Reagan. Everything about him is stage-crafted. We haven’t seen many candid appearances from him just yet.
Just wait.
Didn’t you feel the same way about Bush?
He’s “W” Bush version 2.0 and everyone should be able to detect that. Dumb-ass Governor of Texas. He’s also a former “fighter pilot” you know. So expect the flightsuit moment in this campaign. Some will fall in love but most, who have now woken up to what happened under the influence of Bush/Cheney/Rove (with a really BAD hangover) will hopefully see right through this phony.
Give him a few weeks when he has to do a real objective interview or debate somewhere other than Fox. He’ll show us what a dumbfuck he is.
But don’t we elect dumbfucks at least 50% of the time?
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Need we say more? See my diary – Rick Perry, Texas and Hagee’s Christianity for Profit .
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The PermaGov, Its Media and the Presidency. How It Works.
The real deal.
Bet on it.
Check it out.
AG
And down… Down goes T-Paw.