With Oral Roberts law school alum Michele Bachman and sometimes libertarian party member Ron Paul as the #1 and #2 players in the Iowa straw poll, #3 Pawlenty is dropping out of the race based on his poor performance there, and Romney coming far back in the pack, it seems that the Tea Party will be alive and well in the lastest round of GOP Presidential nominations. Rick Perry, who announced his candidacy in South Carolina, is no prize for his party either.
If the crazies make a good showing in New Hampshire and South Carolina as well, President Obama's chances of re-elections will be greatly elevated.
3 comments:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/05/cnn-poll-still-no-front-runner-in-the-battle-for-the-gop-nomination/
"Who does best against Obama? Paul. The congressman from Texas, who also ran as a libertarian candidate for president in 1988 and who is well liked by many in the tea party movement, trails the president by only seven points (52 to 45 percent) in a hypothetical general election showdown."
Most other polls have show Romney as a front runner vis Obama. And Paul hasn't had a lot of recent bad press which will change if he becomes more prominent.
Meh, I'll wait until the actual Iowa caucuses before I say anything about Iowa Republicans. The straw poll is a paid event and only attracts some of the activists, so performance in the straw poll is heavily influenced by how much a campaign is willing to spend on tickets. Romney made a pretty open decision not to participate, so he wasn't going to do well. I don't think that he'll win the actual caucuses--while he won the 2007 straw poll, the second place finisher Huckabee won the actual caucuses--he'll make a stronger showing than he did at the straw poll.
Pawlenty dropped out because he staked his campaign on the straw poll (i.e. spent a lot of time an money on it) and only eked out a distant third, which suggests that continuing his campaign is a waste of time.
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