Today’s doings:
- If this PPP poll is accurate (and you know I have a concern about PPP), then the negative ads being run against Newt are having a big effect in moving Newt lower and Ron Paul higher. I’d like to see some more before jumping to conclusions, since two polls released today show Newt maintaining a large national lead. Mitt Romney may find he’s attacking the wrong person, as a big loss to Ron Paul in Iowa will hurt him, Rich Lowry calls it Romney’s “doomsday scenario.” (UPDATE: Another poll just released by Insider/Advantage shows Newt way up in Iowa, but it was done by a polling firm run by someone who used to work for Newt, so let’s wait for the bigger polling firms before reaching any conclusions.)
- ACLU threatening suit against Wisconsin over voter i.d. law as state announces it will accept Adolf Hitler and Mickey Mouse signatures as valid unless challenged.
- Trump will not host Newsmax debate. Not clear whether debate moves forward without him. (added) The Donald’s statement is here.
- NY Times Sunday cover (?) – The Anti-Obama — makes Newt look like devil (via RightScoop)
- Mark Levin offers Michael Savage $100,000 if Savage drops show (via DanRiehl)
- more to follow
- Major Garrett: At Drake debate, Newt served Romney “Cinnabon … with cold milk“
- It may be time to start giving Ron Paul some scrutiny. The other candidates and commentators treat him with kid gloves because they don’t want to deal with his supporters attacking them.
- David Axelrod keeping it classy talking about Newt: “Just remember, the higher a monkey climbs on a pole, the more you can see his butt.” (h/t to commenter)
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Comments
The huge difference this cycle is that the early states (primaries ) are not clinchers. I believe 5 such states have had their delegates reduced 50% plus some are proportional.
re PPP – I have read their words & came away with the impression it is a highly opinionated outfit . Further it is not easy to tack into states primary voters who are quite elusive. A sample of 450 will capture 450 opinions but much fewer who actually go to these things.
Ron Paul ? Are there words in the English language to describe him ? I tried to think of some but failed.
Also his supporters do not have any either.They have nuttin .
Try pointing out Ron Paul’s life-long Porker-Barrel Republican record and you’re met with Alex Jones freakazoids screaming that 9/11 is an inside BushCo job to protect Israeli Genocide on Palestine.
When Krauthammer dictated that Sarah Palin should “leave the room” all who remain in that Republican room are a bunch of palm-greasing techocrats, habitual Rulign-Class reachers across the aisle and thuggish Ronulans screaming their anarchist rage.
At a briefing for reporters, David Axelrod was asked about Newt Gingrich, and Axelrod said, quote, “The higher a monkey climbs on the pole, the more you can see his butt.”
giving Ron Paul some scrutiny
You mean that guy who quit the Republican Party back in 1987 ?
“You mean that guy who quit the Republican Party with a full-page newspaper article doing little more then attacking Reagan back in 1987?”
There, fixed your sentence for you. It was missing a very important part…
The Ron Paul supporters really need to stop & consider what they may be doing. There is no way Ron Paul would get the GOP nomination and if by the one chance in 1000 he did a lot of Republican voters would just leave the POTUS slot blank rather than vote for him. His reputation as an isolationist drives away all but hardcare Libertarians.
I thought this voter photo ID thing was settled by Crawford v. Marion County Election Board back in 2008.
Professor, you left out a very important category: 3rd party.
If the GOP candidate is anyone but Bachmann or Santorum, I will vote “none of the above”, aka 3rd party.
If Ron Paul runs 3rd party, he gets my vote.
I never vote for Democrats or liberals, ESPECIALLY when they run as Republicans. (Pasadena Phil rule)
If Ron Paul is the GOP candidate, I’m not decided as to whether I would vote for him or 3rd party but there are two things I know for sure:
1) If Romney, Gingrich or Perry wins the election, government spending will continue to accelerate as will debt and global government will continue to entrench itself. This represents no improvement over Obama except that those rolling out global fascism will be more competent at getting it done.
2) If Ron Paul wins the election, at least we will finally have someone who can be trusted to actually shrink government and rein in the out-of-control Federal Reserve. Smaller government means more freedom for citizens and more power. I’d rather by working on those things that worry me about Paul facing a smaller, less powerful government than those things that bother me now and will be at least as bad were Obama, Romney, Gingrich or Perry and facing an even bigger and more powerful government.
The real problem we are fighting is not Obama but an entrenched and corrupt one-party system. Just follow the money. “Both” parties are competing for the same big globalist money and in order to get it, they have to prove that they are the favorite to win and that they can be trusted to deliver on the globalist agenda. The global economy is already wired for global government. All that is missing is the formality of treaties and a high-minded narrative of “the brotherhood of man” fulfilled.
You put this under the wrong post. Trying not to make it too complicated, assuming Paul will not run third party.
D’oh! If you don’t mind, I’ll move it over. You might want to delete this one unless you enjoy the joy of my embarrassment.
PPP and Ron Paul: Yes, PPP does work for KOS, and they’ve always been a left-leaning operation. However, they generally do quality work and get reasonably accurate results. I certainly find them more credible than any polls that come out of WaPo, NYTimes, ABC, etc.
Ron Paul in Iowa: Paul has by far the best ground game in Iowa, and has had it in operation for a long time. Newt, of all the R candidates, has one of the weakest (remember, just a few months ago his national campaign consisted of himself and his suitcase, which he had to carry himself).
Is Paul really just 1 point behind Newt in Iowa? I find that hard to believe, but the combination of the full-court press against Newt by the Republican establishment with Paul’s first rate ground game in the state might well account for it.
@BannedbytheGuardian Good points. The R primary will likely take longer to be decided for the structural reasons you mention. Proportional representation, in particular, will drag it out. I was making fun of the D’s last time around for the idiocy of proportional rather than winner takes all primaries, and the R’s have copied them…
The Guardian? You link to the Guardian as a source? Really? You couldn’t find a less credible source?
At least put a warning before the link so we can decide if we want to give them any traffic.
As for Ron Paul scrutiny, why bother? There’s nothing to know about him that we didn’t already know two decades ago. He’s libertarian to the point of almost being an anarchist. He exists where the extreme Right meets the extreme Left. If there’s anything the federal govt does that you want to eliminate – he’s your man. Anything the federal govt does that you want to keep, like say provide us with a means to defend ourselves against foreign aggression, then you should seriously reconsider whether you want to continue to support him.
Paul has an exceptionally dedicated base. He’s getting additional support this time due to the extremely rapid growth of the federal govt under Obama. The fact that the R’s haven’t decided which non-Paul candidate to support yet makes his support seem larger than it is.
Make no mistake though: he has a precisely zero chance of winning the nomination. He simply holds too many positions that no more than 5% of R’s (1-2% of the nation) would find as anything other than completely disqualifying for a Presidential candidate.
If this PPP poll is accurate (and you know I have a concern about PPP)
Instantly, I see two questionable aspects with this PPP poll in the smaller 555 voters (1/3 of the pew sample) and very high +/- of 4.2. That alone would mean their sampling error could lead to a nearly 10% difference between Newt and Paul (27/28 – 17/18 (and those numbers looking much more logical next to the other polls we are seeing, so leaves me wondering…)
However, polling in Iowa will also be skewed by how much each candidate has been campaigning there though – so it could be true, just the same. I know I have heard Paul has done a ton of work there, so could even make sense.
I think Rich Lowry is dead wrong. Romney’s doomsday scenario would be Gingrich winning with a commanding plurality. At the moment, it seems that Iowa voters are moving away from Gingrich to Paul. If Paul were to win, it would signify nothing and be largely ignored. Attention would fix for a couple of days on the spread between Gingrich and Romney and on whether Perry or someone else did well enough to hang in.
The contest would move on to NH where presumably Romney would win.
Moving on, as the race goes to SC and Florida, much bigger primary states, money and organization will begin to count for a lot. If Ron Paul is still a factor, his votes will be coming at Gingrich’s (and perhaps others’) expense.
I am waiting till Florida to get a better idea. In reality Iowa NH & SC are quirky & big on themselves but Florida is a microcosm of GOP voters. Plenty have moved there from other states. It is said that 100 miles of the Orlando – ? highway will determine the whole election.
The only info from Florida was that Sarah Palin did a fundraising speech recently & raised $880,000 in one night -outshining all previous efforts including Dems. She did not soften her current corruption theme.
It is not that Romney is corrupt at all but Floridians must be thinking they need to break the NE /rustbelt domination .(may I say Yankee?).
You’re thinking of Interstate 4 which runs from Tampa Bay through Orlando and on to Daytona across middle Florida — the swing part of the swing state.
And the more likely you are to get sh!t in your eye.
This from personal experience David?
The note about Wisconsin and an ACLU lawsuit over photo IDs and the acceptance of Mickey Mouse signatures on the recall petition are two different subjects, Professor. Shame, Shame Shame! – as the Union protestors would say. Is this what Democracy looks like?
Christine O’Donnell, the former Republican Senate candidate and a tea party favorite during the 2010 election, has officially endorsed Mitt Romney for president.
This must be the kiss of death.
Ron Paul is pretty much NOTA, so finishing after him is a poor showing.