Here’s some history I had forgotten:
A win at Ames isn’t necessarily a win — just ask Mitt Romney, who won Ames by 14 points in 2008 but, because his well-funded effort was expected to triumph, got less of a bounce out of the event than the second-place finisher, Mike Huckabee. Because Huckabee seemed to come out of nowhere, the straw poll served as jet fuel for his shoestring campaign, giving him the momentum to surge to a win in the Iowa caucuses.
They’re doing this stupid Ames Straw Poll again today, and somebody is going to win, someone is going to come in second place, and someone is going to come in dead-last. I don’t know that there is a clear favorite to match Romney from 2008, but we can probably expect someone to exceed expectations and get a little bump and someone to fall flat on their face and drop out.
I remember watching Huckabee campaign in New Hampshire with Chuck Norris, fresh off his stunning victory in Iowa. It was bizarre to see someone with so little momentum that he thought it was a good idea to drag a kung-fu star and his wife around with him. Huckabee remained a player for the nomination for a little while. In fact, he was the last man standing in opposition to John McCain. But, other than victories in Kansas and West Virginia, he couldn’t win outside the South. Romney won in Maine, Massachusetts, and Michigan but couldn’t win much outside of the Mormon strongholds of the Mountain West.
Facing two regionally-limited opponents, McCain was able to limp to the nomination. The question for next year’s campaign is whether Romney is going to have wider appeal. Can he break through in the South and win in places like Florida, Texas, and South Carolina? Can he take California? And, if not, will he be facing two strong opponents or just one?
If Bachmann wins Iowa and Romney wins New Hampshire, the big question will be who wins South Carolina. If Rick Perry wins South Carolina, we could see a situation similar to 2008, where Perry wins in the South, Romney wins in New England and the Mountain West, and Bachmann wins in the Upper Midwest. If they continue to trade contests on a regional basis, all three could discover that they are far short of winning a majority of the
delegates. In that case, all eyes will turn to California, which is currently scheduled as the second to last contest, and it’s winner-take-all. The thing to keep an eye out for will be whether any of the candidates is close enough to a majority that winning all of California’s delegates will put them over the top.
If not, things could get very interesting. I can see all kinds of fun things developing. Suppose Romney has the most delegates but not enough for a majority even if he wins California? He might fear that he’d lose in a brokered convention and begin offering the vice-presidency to either Bachmann or Perry to get them to drop out and free their delegates to vote for him. I can see a Romney-Perry ticket that shuts out Bachmann’s supporters and creates a bit of a rift on the right. It will be interesting to see how many delegates Ron Paul can accrue in the early proportional primaries. He could also become a king-maker.
As for the rest of the field, if Santorum or Pawlenty or Cain or Gingrich or Huntsman or McCotter are going to make any noise, they’re going to have to turn some heads in today’s Ames Straw Poll, because their campaigns are dead-in-the-water at the moment.
Perry and Palin have let the world know how important the Ames straw poll is.
But it’s a neat way to fleece the corporate media in tourist dollars to help out the Iowa economy.
So let’s have a $1T campaign season this year. That could get some corporate cash off the table.
Well, it’s important enough for Palin and Perry to try to step on it.
It can have an impact.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I can see a Romney-Perry ticket
Now there’s a scary thought. That’d be worse than Bush-Cheney, and I didn’t think that was possible.
And Romney better not visit Dallas.
How about Perry/Bachmann?
heh.
Bachmann will never accept second billing.
But hasn’t she accepted a second-billing status in her marriage — obedience to her husband?
Besides, taking second billing is what congressmen and women traditionally end up accepting on national tickets.
But by this time nxt yr, it’s unlikely either Perry or Romney would want to run the risk with Bachmann.
As a non-Republican, I still don’t understand how this straw poll works. How can Romney go from the overwhelming winner four years ago, to choosing not to participate this year? What changed? The radicalness of the Iowa electorate? Their greater familiarity of him as a candidate? Was he running more or less moderate four years ago than he is now? I don’t even remember.
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Remember McCain in 2008?
Iowa’s Straw Poll is a GOTV exercise. A Mormon running against conservative evangelicals is a losing effort in Iowa.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Romney spent a massive amount of money on Ames in 2008, and didn’t get the bounce he wanted from it. This year he apparently decided he had better ways to spend his money.
Romney doesn’t need to prove his organizing prowess this time.
It’ll be a chuckle if Colbert’s PAC running ad in Iowa to write in PArry will see any votes.
Here’s a Daily Show Flashback to the 2007 Ames Straw Poll.
It was a funny segment.
McCain got 59,934,814 total votes in the 2008 election.
A little over 21 million votes were cast in the 2008 GOP presidential nomination campaign or 35% of the GOP electorate. McCain won the nomination with 46.5% or 9.839 million total votes.
Speculating that the bare minimum of the Fundie/TeaBagger vote – call it what you may – is adequately represented by Huckabee’s take in 2008 we can estimate that faction represents 4,281,900 votes, 20.8%
Or roughly a wee shy of 1/2 of the vote needed to be nominated.
Romney eked out a thin victory over Huckabee in 2008 for second place, giving him – in theory – a starting point of the same wee shy of 1/2 of the vote needed to be nominated.
Meaning:
Pushing this to tentative conclusions:
Meaning: Bachmann winning Iowa, losing New Hampshire, and winning South Carolina is a high percentage scenario.
Giving rise to the interesting thesis Perry, who has spent a lot of time in SC is running as much as a Bachmann spoiler as anything else.
Ames Straw Poll: Final results – latimes.com
How many will drop out now?
Two
McCotter and Huntsman
Gingrich is too vain and in want of campaign contributions.
Romney thinks the Ames Straw Poll is now irrelevant and will keep going.
For Perry it was irrelevant.
Herman Cain gets a boost, even with 8.62%
We have to endure Santorum for another five months.
Pawlenty is still a lost candidate walking.
And Ron Paul is, uh, Ron Paul, in for the long haul.
With Pawlenty dropping out Bachmann has a mathematical chance of jumping to 42.13% support from the Straw Poll voters. She won’t get that, of course, but she should get a substantial number of former Pawlenty supporters.
The Iowa caucuses is ALL about the ground-game. If Cain and Santorum don’t increase their percentages they will be non-factors in the caucuses. They’ll get wiped-out in the first round and then the bargaining will begin. It will be informative to learn what their supporters second choice is/are.