Right after I posted this video of McCain talking about 2000, I ran across evidence that things are definitely looking better for him this time than last time. Rasmussen has him up nine points over Huckabee. (And for you Fred fans — Thompson’s numbers have improved, too.)
Meanwhile, the race on the Democratic side is seen as tightening up. with Hillary Clinton only five points behind Barack Obama.
Fred Thompson supporters got pretty worked up about me suggesting he should bow out and support his friend McCain, as his best chance to have an influence on the outcome. His wife also explained how wrong I was, although she was nicer about it.
But this new thought occurred to me yesterday morning, when my clock radio came on… NPR was running a bit on the Republicans in South Carolina, and there was a clip of my fellow Memphis State grad talkin’, and he was really pounding on pore ol’ Mike Huckabee from over across the Big Muddy. And in that half-asleep state, I thought: "Is he staying in to help John McCain, by using the soapbox thus obtained to tear down the only candidate with a chance (note the polls) of beating him in South Carolina?" Fred’s no dummy; he can count. He knows either McCain or Huckabee is going to win here.
But I dismissed the thought, on account of its having arisen during the aforementioned twilight state of consciousness. And on account of what’s the point in mentioning it, since it would just make all those folks mad again.
Then I watched the debate last night out of Myrtle Beach. And first thing you know, ol’ Fred comes out whaling on Huck something fierce, just pounding away, using up a good chunk of his allotted time to tear the preacher man down.
After the debate, all sorts of folks commented on Fred’s attack on Huck. In fact, it was probably the most memorable thing about the whole show, one of only three things I still recall 24 hours later. (The other two things were the setting of the new Guinness World Record for saying "Ronald Reagan" most often in a 90-minute period, and the way the group ostracized poor Ron Paul yet again. I don’t agree a whole lot with Dr. Paul, but I believe he’s sincere, and I do hate to see a guy get picked on.)
What struck me as myopic was that so many of those commenting on those attacks by Fred on Huck interpreted them as Fred really, really wanting and needing to win in South Carolina. But he was just attacking Huckabee; he offered only the mildest criticism of McCain on immigration (allegedly the big reason he’s running instead of backing McCain as he did in 2000). Surely Fred knows you don’t win by tearing down just one of the three guys who are beating you.
I’m not trying to goad Fred into attacking McCain — or Romney, either (Romney’s kind a moot point anyway, since he’s deserted S.C. for a live-or-die effort in Michigan). But the facts before me push me toward one of several conclusions:
That last one sounds the closest to right, but I don’t know. All I do know is that, whatever he intends, what he was doing, to the extent that it hurt Huckabee, was helpful to McCain.
Last night, while I was making the rounds of campaign HQs in Columbia, it suddenly hit me that I needed to come in and revamp the editorial page for today, which at that point had gone to the pressroom hours earlier.
The first thing that hit me was that a couple of passages in my column for today were wrong — more about that in a minute. But the thing that would have really hit you in the eye and make you wonder what we’d been smoking was Robert Ariail’s cartoon. What you see above is what would have landed on your doorstep today if I hadn’t gone back in to the office a little before 10 p.m.
When Robert had left for the day, the cartoon was as fine as prognostication could make it. The polls almost uniformly had said, right up until the day of the New Hampshire primary, that Obama and McCain were going to win up there, and that Obama would win by a bigger margin than McCain. All of the talk about Democratic Party insiders was about how Mrs. Clinton would probably have to skip South Carolina, conceding it to Obama, and concentrate on the big states coming up in February.
By 8:30 or so, it was becoming obvious that even if Obama won New Hampshire, it would be close. An hour later, it was looking increasingly like Hillary had achieved an upset win. And this morning, I have yet to find anyone who offers a plausible explanation as to why that happened. People mention the tears, but to me, that remains implausible. I guess I just don’t want to admit voters can be so swayed by something that that. Perhaps I should know better.
Here’s the cartoon I put in place of the Hillary one (it’s also reproduced below) — fortunately, Robert had finished it earlier in the day, only deciding to do the Clinton one late. All I had to do was scan it in and put it on the page.
Due to a glitch in software that automatically searches for each day’s cartoon and puts it on thestate.com, some of you may have already seen the Hillary cartoon. But we’ve fixed that, and at least I was able to keep it out of the paper.
Oh, yes, here are the changes I had to make in my column. Originally, the relevant passage in my column went like this:
Let’s do Republicans first, since y’all face S.C. voters first (on the 19th) and come back to the Democrats (assuming, of course, that Barack Obama hasn’t sewn up the nomination before this column lands on your doorstep).
We’d like some specifics beyond the vehement claims that pretty much each and every one of you is “the real conservative” in the race.
We’ll start with John McCain, the likely winner (as I type this) in New Hampshire Tuesday.
Once again, that was based on the best info available at the time our page needed to go to meet our normal production schedule. Here’s what it changed to:
Let’s do Republicans first, since y’all face S.C. voters first (on the 19th) and come back to the Democrats (after the cliffhanger night Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton just went through, they could probably do with a rest today).
We’d like some specifics beyond the vehement claims that pretty much each and every one of you is “the real conservative” in the race.
We’ll start with John McCain, the big winner in New Hampshire Tuesday.
As the world keeps changing several times a day over the next couple of weeks, this sort of thing is likely to keep happening. I just hope I can always catch it before an error is published.
By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
TO ALL THE candidates seeking the presidency of the United States of America: Welcome to South Carolina. Iowa is behind you; so is New Hampshire, and we understand that we are to have your undivided attention for the next couple of weeks, which is gratifying.
So let’s take advantage of the opportunity. The South Carolina primaries have little purpose unless we learn more about you than we have thus far, so we have a few matters we’d like you to address while you’re here.
Let’s do Republicans first, since y’all face S.C. voters first (on the 19th) and come back to the Democrats (after the cliffhanger night Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton just went through, they could probably do with a rest today).
We’d like some specifics beyond the vehement claims that pretty much each and every one of you is “the real conservative” in the race.
We’ll start with John McCain, the big winner in New Hampshire Tuesday.
You’re a war hero, and you’ve got the most experience in national defense and foreign affairs. You take a back seat to no one in fighting government waste. You were for a “surge” in Iraq long before the White House even considered the idea, and you weren’t afraid to say so. It’s no surprise that you lead among retired military officers, and others who have been there and done that.
But folks who are not retired would like some reassurance that the oldest man in the race, with a spotty medical history, is up to the world’s most demanding job.
Most of all, though, South Carolinians need to better understand your position on immigration. You’re the one who decided to try to lead on this radioactive issue in the middle of a campaign, and plenty of folks around here don’t like the direction you chose. Start explaining.
Next, Mike Huckabee. You have qualities that Sen. McCain lacks: You’re (relatively) young, fresh, new and exciting. As a Baptist preacher, you’re definitely in sync with S.C. Republicans on cultural issues. More than that, you are on the cutting edge of a new kind of Republicanism, one that is more attuned to the concerns of ordinary working people, from health care to education.
But let’s look at some headlines from this week: The U.S. Navy almost had to blow some Iranian gunboats out of the water. Hundreds are dead in Kenya, one of the few African countries we’d thought immune to such political violence. Pakistan, nuclear power and current address of Osama bin Laden, continues to teeter on the edge of chaos after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. I could go on.
Every day, something that threatens the security of this country happens in yet another hot spot, calling for a depth of knowledge and experience for which on-the-job training is no substitute. Those blank looks you’ve given when asked about current events are disturbing. Reassure us. We know you don’t get daily intelligence briefings yet, but you could at least read the paper.
Mitt Romney, you come across as Central Casting’s idea of a Republican: Perfect coif, square jaw, a private-sector portfolio that confirms your can-do credentials. Moreover, as governor of Massachusetts you presided over health care reform that many other states are looking to as a model.
But increasingly, 21st century Republicans are less impressed by a business suit, and I think you’ll find South Carolinians a lot like Iowans in that regard. You’ve got to have more to offer.
Also, voters here would like to hear more positive reasons to vote for you, and less about what’s wrong with everybody else. In all the years since I’ve been getting e-mails, I have never seen anything like the blizzard of releases from your folks trashing this or that rival.
After the nasty whispering campaign that sank Sen. McCain in 2000, South Carolinians have had a bellyful of the whole “going negative” thing. Just forget the other guys, and tell us what’s good about you.
As for Rudy Giuliani, we know you’re a tough guy, and a tough guy can be a good thing to have in the White House. You inspired the nation through some of Gotham’s darkest days, and you took on all Five Families at once as a mob-busting federal prosecutor, which is why John Gotti and some others on the Commission wanted to have you whacked. You’re definitely a man of respect.
But if you do bother to campaign down here, South Carolina Republicans might be forgiven for wondering whether you’re one of them. You were doing OK in polls a couple of months ago, but let’s face it — that was just the early national media buzz, and we’ve gotten past that.
You need to do some fast talking — we hear New Yorkers are good at that — about some of those “cultural issues” that, to put it mildly, distinguish you from candidates who happen to be Baptist preachers.
Finally, Fred Thompson — you certainly have no need for a translator. As your wife, Jeri, reminded me when she dropped by our office Tuesday, you speak fluent Southern.
But there’s a reason y’all were campaigning down here rather than up in New Hampshire: After the biggest “will he or won’t he” buildup in modern political history, your campaign failed to catch fire nationally after it finally got rolling.
That could be because, while you can play a “conservative” well on TV, you have yet to communicate exactly what you bring to the campaign that other candidates don’t bring more of. Are you better on national security than McCain, or more in tune on abortion than Huckabee? And if what the party was crying out for was a guy who was tough enough on immigration (as your supporters keep telling me), why didn’t it go for Tom Tancredo?
Once again, welcome one and all to the Palmetto State. Whether you go on from here may depend in large part on how you answer the above questions.
For my blog, go to http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.
Hey, wait a minute! Wasn’t Obama supposed to run away with this thing tonight, while McCain was supposed to win by a relatively smaller margin on the GOP side? Wasn’t tonight supposed to spell the end for Hillary Clinton?
Sure, the results are not all in yet on the Democratic side as I write this, but what’s happening is far from what I expected, point spreadwise.
That’s what I get for putting too much stock in Zogby. Here’s what he had as of this morning:
Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby New Hampshire Tracking Poll: Obama, McCain Enjoy Solid Leads As Election Day Dawns
UTICA, New York — The big momentum behind Democrat Barack Obama, a senator from Illinois who is seeking his party’s presidential nomination, continued up to the last hours before voters head to the polls to cast ballots in the New Hampshire primary election, a new Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby daily tracking poll shows. Fed by a strong win in the Iowa caucuses Thursday, Obama leads with 42% support, compared to 29% for rival Sen. Hillary Clinton.
In the Republican primary race, Arizona Sen. John McCain extended his lead over rival Mitt Romney from five to nine percentage points since yesterday, the survey shows.
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards mostly held steady, winning 17% support, though he has begun to lose steam. Though he won the Republican Iowa caucus Thursday, Mike Huckabee found himself in the same position as Edwards, unable to build Obama-like momentum and stuck in third – a distant third in Huckabee’s case….
OK, so he wasn’t so far off on the GOP side — he had McCain beating Romney 36-27 percent — but the Democratic contest doesn’t look anything like what anyone expected.
As voting began in New Hampshire, here was the latest from Zogby:
UTICA, New York — The big momentum behind Democrat Barack Obama, a senator from Illinois who is seeking his party’s presidential nomination, continued up to the last hours before voters head to the polls to cast ballots in the New Hampshire primary election, a new Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby daily tracking poll shows. Fed by a strong win in the Iowa caucuses Thursday, Obama leads with 42% support, compared to 29% for rival Sen. Hillary Clinton.
In the Republican primary race, Arizona Sen. John McCain extended his lead over rival Mitt Romney from five to nine percentage points since yesterday, the survey shows.
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards mostly held steady, winning 17% support, though he has begun to lose steam. Though he won the Republican Iowa caucus Thursday, Mike Huckabee found himself in the same position as Edwards, unable to build Obama-like momentum and stuck in third – a distant third in Huckabee’s case….
Charts and other details are available at the Zogby site.
Zogby reported this afternoon that Barack Obama is surging in New Hampshire after his Iowa win, but no such luck for Mike Huckabee:
Democrat Barack Obama’s dramatic post-Iowa momentum has come to full bloom in the Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby New Hampshire daily tracking poll, rocketing to a 10-point lead over rival Hillary Clinton and a 20-point over Edwards. In New Hampshire’s Republican primary race, the survey shows Arizona’s John McCain had a very good day at the same time that Massachusetts’s Mitt Romney lost ground, resulting in a five-point lead for McCain.
Iowa’s GOP caucus winner Mike Huckabee has fallen into a distant third at 10%, barely ahead of Rudy Giuliani, who enjoyed a slight uptick and rests at 9%.
I guess that sort of follows the conventional wisdom line — New Hampshire is all about independent voters, who tend to favor Obama and McCain. Bad news for Hillary Clinton. But with fewer evangelicals, there’s no bump for Huck — It’s still McCain in the lead, with Romney firmly in second.
Could be that Mrs. Clinton has missed her chance.
Anyway, click here for poll details.
On the front page of the WSJ is a story about how the Republican race is wide-open… according to a national poll:
WASHINGTON — Two weeks before the Iowa caucus, the race for president, while tightening among Democrats, is wide open on the Republican side, highlighting the unusual fluidity of the first campaign for the White House in over a half-century that doesn’t include an incumbent president or vice president.
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that Rudy Giuliani has lost his national lead in the Republican field after a flurry of negative publicity about his personal and business activities, setting the stage for what could be the party’s most competitive nomination fight in decades.
After holding a double-digit advantage over his nearest rivals just six weeks ago, the former New York City mayor now is tied nationally with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 20% among Republicans, just slightly ahead of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 17% and Arizona Sen. John McCain at 14%. Other polls show Mr. Giuliani’s lead shrinking in Florida, one of the states he has built his strategy around…
Yes, the race is wide-open — in Iowa. It’s also pretty much up for grabs in New Hampshire, and South Carolina. But each of those is a separate contest, having influence on each other only as they occur in time. The Iowa results will reshape expectations, and to some extent results, in New Hampshire. New Hampshire and Iowa will have an effect on South Carolina, and so on.
But it doesn’t matter (or at least, shouldn’t matter), in terms of how any of those three contests come out, how any candidate is doing in a national poll. Nobody’s voting nationally. That won’t happen until November, and even then we’re talking about separate state contests for votes in the electoral college.
There are only five reasons I can think of why anyone would want to do a national poll any time before next fall:
Of all those reasons, only the first one seems even remotely defensible — and even then, it’s not really worth the money or exposure such polls get.
You know those pop-up ads you get sometimes asking for your opinion? I generally ignore them, using the excuse that I gave at the office.
But yesterday I gave in to one that hit me when I went to the WSJ site to find a link for this post. I thought it would be about some heavy political matter that I might enlarge upon in this forum. And I was right: It wanted to know what kind of SUV I might want to buy (which puts me in mind of one of my favorite Bugs Bunny quotes — "he don’t know me very well, do he?").
I tried to mess with it, to see what would happen. For instance, when it asked, "When thinking of luxury sport utility vehicles, what brand or manufacturer comes to mind FIRST?," I answered, "Unconscionable Waste." But there was no reaction.
My favorite part was when it asked, "What is your martial status?" I wanted to answer, "Total readiness, sir! Just let the bloody Hun try to take us on now!" Or maybe, since I was suffering a mild case of indigestion, "Combat ineffective." But that one was multiple-choice, and those weren’t included among the options.
On the way into Rotary today, I stopped in the men’s room at Seawell’s, and ran into Henry McMaster. I congratulated Henry on the good turnout he and other McCainiacs had out at the smokehouse in Lexington last week. With this post fresh in my mind, I observed to Henry that I continue to find it hard to believe that Republicans would actually want either Giuliani or Romney as their candidate.
As I was saying that, Trip King (late of Fritz Hollings’ staff, now working for the Biden campaign) walked in, and both of them agreed (surprise) with the observation — McMaster saying if Giuliani gets it, it will be the first time he can remember a GOP nominee who flat didn’t believe in some core values of the party he’s known, and Trip just shaking his head over those whacky Republicans in general.
Both took advantage of the chance to push their respective teams. Trip noted that polls show Biden would run neck-and-neck with either Giuliani or Romney — that was news to me — and Henry noted a fact I’ve already heard a number of times (sort of a McCain talking point), that polls indicate McCain would have the best chance to beat Hillary. (Trip, and another correspondent I’ve heard from today, were also pretty pumped about Biden moving up to fourth place in Iowa at the expense of Bill Richardson, for what that’s worth.)
They were right, and I went into Rotary thinking yet again, what are the Republicans thinking this year?
By the way, the photos were not taken in the men’s room. The above shot, with Henry circled, is at the smokehouse event; Trip is seen posing with fellow Biden staff at the College Democrats confab back in July.
OK, sorry about the pun (not really), but almost as exciting as the Obama surge (and I hope Obama supporters won’t mind my using that word), is the fact that Mike Huckabee — possibly on the strength of Christian conservatives finally noticing him — has overtaken Mitt Romney in Iowa.
I continue to find it difficult to believe that Republicans will nominate either Mr. Romney or Rudy Giuliani, no matter how many times I’m told that they will; apparently some folks in Iowa are starting to think the same thing.
Oh, one more thing about Mr. Huckabee — second only to John McCain (who’s done it in a tougher league), nobody on the Republican side has a stronger record of reaching across the aisle and working with people from The Other Party. That means the Huckabee surge can also be seen as good news for the same reason as the Obama news is…
Good news today out of Iowa, and I’m not just referring to the fact that Barack Obama has pulled ahead of Hillary Clinton. That fact in itself would not be all that much to cheer over; in some ways, I’m about as likely to prefer Hillary as I am Obama.
The good news is the reason that "conventional wisdom," as codified by the WSJ today, gives for his ascendance — his anti-partisan message:
DES MOINES, Iowa — A month before Iowa holds the
first contest of the 2008 presidential campaign, a newly energized Sen.
Barack Obama has opened a narrow lead here, but many Iowans in both
parties say they could change their minds in the next 30 days about
which candidate to support.
Mr. Obama’s rising popularity was fueled by a fiery
speech three weeks ago in which he vowed to turn away from the partisan
battles of the Clinton-Bush years. That, plus the surprising strength
of his Iowa ground organization, is galvanizing his campaign.
That, as I’ve written before, speaks to my one great concern about Mrs. Clinton — that her nomination, much less her election, will doom us to more (if not an escalation) of the wasting Bush-Clinton Wars that have so polarized our nation. Mr. Obama, more than any other candidate in either party, has done the most to indicate his desire to be president of the whole country, not just partisan Democrats.
The WSJ traces Mr. Obama’s rise to the above-mentioned speech:
The night of the dinner, he delivered a call for unity that tweaked Sen. Clinton as a polarizing figure, without naming her. "America, our moment is now," Sen. Obama thundered. "I don’t want to spend the next year or the next four years re-fighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s. I don’t want to pit Red America against Blue America. I want to be the president of the United States of America."
Rival campaign operatives sat there stone-faced. But some attendees put down their signs and thunder sticks for other candidates, jumped to their feet to cheer him on and grabbed Obama campaign materials as they streamed out of the arena.
"Barack found his voice" that night, says Gordon Fischer, a longtime Iowa Democratic leader who recently decided to support Sen. Obama. "That’s when the man and the moment met."
This is promising.
Whit Ayres has some figures he’s releasing today from a poll he did for tourism interests. A side finding of the poll — which talked to 300 likely voters each in the S.C. Democratic and Republican primaries — is that the horse race has shifted.
Romney and McCain are within the margin of error (which is large — 5.6 percent — for a sample that small) of each other, with Giuliani between them. Essentially, they’re in a tie for first.
Thompson, who recently had been said to be in the lead, comes in fourth.
I heard about this from someone with the McCain campaign, who was justifiably pleased, as it showed his candidate doing better than in recent polls. He neglected to mention that McCain’s lead over Thompson is also within the margin. But if the poll is accurate, we’re looking at the post-announcement bounce for Thompson wearing off, and McCain apparently being the main beneficiary.
I hear our newsroom will have a story on this, so I await the details from that.
Let’s have a little real-time civic discussion here.
I notice that interest seems high in my posts from yesterday on the subject, here, here and here.
Now that the voting is actually going on, let’s analyze it, and let’s not do it the bogus, TV-style, talking-heads-guessing way. Let’s hear from real people who have voted today:
How did you vote in the District 5 referendum, and why?
I’ll do my best to keep up with approving comments, to keep this as current as possible. Now, let’s see what happens.
Al Gore is living proof that going to the right prep school and Ivy League college, plus racking up the right stuff on your subsequent resume is electoral dynamite.
At least, that’s what I initially garner from Zogby, who has found that the ex-Veep’s bio wins out over those of the current Democratic candidates. Here’s how he was described in the poll:
Candidate A … is an experienced candidate
from the South who has been Vice President of the United States and a
US Senator. This person has won several awards, including an Oscar, a
Grammy, and an Emmy for his documentary about global climate change.
This person has won the Nobel Peace prize and is recognized as an
international authority on foreign policy, energy, the environment, and
technology. This candidate has opposed the Iraq war from the beginning.
OK, so they left out the stuff about educational background. If I were Al, I’d gripe about that — but he’s on such a streak this days, he’s not one to kvetch.
You have to wonder, though, about the respondents who actually couldn’t figure out who this was. In fact, I find myself doubting that such folk exist, and yet this polling approach seems to assume they do…
Zogby has found that 52 percent of the electorate is OK with going ahead and escalating our confrontation with Iran:
A majority of likely voters – 52% – would support a U.S.
military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, and 53%
believe it is likely that the U.S. will be involved in a military
strike against Iran before the next presidential election, a new Zogby
America telephone poll shows.
So it’s time to scramble the bombers, right?
Well, not really — unless you, like the anti-Iraq-war people, believe we should decide whether to fight or not based upon polls of a given moment. I am not of that persuasion. The initial popular support of the Iraq invasion did not validate it, nor did later popular disenchantment invalidate it.
Hot on the heels of the "whom do you hate most" poll, Zogby makes us doubt whether we want to know what his respondents think, reporting this pathetic result:
It won’t make you dinner or rub your feet, but nearly one in four Americans say that the Internet can serve as a substitute for a significant other for some period of time, according to a new poll released today by 463 Communications and Zogby International.
Even though it’s only one in four, that’s sad, people. And that’s without even asking whether we’re talking porn sites here.
Further, the poll found that while maybe we aren’t loser nobodies, a lot of us are willing to become nobodies if the money is right:
What’s in a Name? And while there are well-documented fears about identity theft, many Americans would gladly give up their name for a cash windfall. If they were offered $100,000 by someone who wanted to adopt their name, more than one in five Americans said they would change their name to something completely different. Thirty-four percent of 18 to 24 year olds were prepared to take the offer.
I wonder how much higher the numbers would have been if the money was a little better. Think about it — most of us couldn’t even pay off our house notes and credit card bills with 100 Gs, much less launch a new life.
The good news is that only 11 percent of us are willing to have our brains wired to receive the Internet direct, without need of exterior devices. Unsurprisingly, more than twice as many men as women would opt for this "convenience." Me, I wouldn’t go for it unless the display in my head was really high-quality.
"NEVER? Whaddaya mean, ‘never?’"
Seems like I’ll stoop to anything to get you to click on a blog post, doesn’t it? Sorry about the headline. Tacky. I would never encourage you to hate anyone.
But my point was to share with you the results of this Zogby poll, which found that half the electorate says it would never vote for Hillary Clinton. She has the highest negatives, and Mike Huckabee and Bill Richardson have the lowest, going by that standard. (You may have already read about this, as it came out Saturday, but I’m just now getting around to checking the e-mail account the release came to). An excerpt from the report:
While she is winning wide support in nationwide samples among Democrats in the race for their party’s presidential nomination, half of likely voters nationwide said they would never vote for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows.
The online survey of 9,718 likely voters nationwide showed that 50% said Clinton would never get their presidential vote. This is up from 46% who said they could never vote for Clinton in a Zogby International telephone survey conducted in early March. Older voters are most resistant to Clinton – 59% of those age 65 and older said they would never vote for the New York senator, but she is much more acceptable to younger voters: 42% of those age 18–29 said they would never vote for Clinton for President.
At the other end of the scale, Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrats Bill Richardson and Barack Obama faired best, as they were least objectionable to likely voters. Richardson was forever objectionable as President to 34%, while 35% said they could never vote for Huckabee and 37% said they would never cast a presidential ballot for Obama, the survey showed….
Here’s the full list:
Whom would you NEVER vote for for President of the U.S.?
%
Clinton (D)
50%
Kucinich (D)
49%
Gravel (D)
47%
Paul (R)
47%
Brownback (R)
47%
Tancredo (R)
46%
McCain (R)
45%
Hunter (R)
44%
Giuliani (R)
43%
Romney (R)
42%
Edwards (D)
42%
Thompson (R)
41%
Dodd (D)
41%
Biden (D)
40%
Obama (D)
37%
Huckabee (R)
35%
Richardson (D)
34%
Not sure
4%
I got to thinking about it just now, and wondered for the first time which, of all the candidates, would I be least likely to choose at this point? Here’s how I would rank them personally:
- Gravel — I’m 99.44 percent sure I would never vote for this guy.
- Paul — 97.1 %
- Kucinich — 97.05 %
- Tancredo — 95 %
- Hunter — 94 %
- Edwards — 90%
- Dodd — 51%
- Thompson — 50%
- Richardson — 40%
- Clinton — 35%
- Romney — 30%
- Giuliani — 25%
- Brownback — 20%
- Obama — 15%
- Biden — 14%
- Huckabee — 13%
- McCain — 5%
Mind you, that’s just off the top of my head, based on what I know now, without any of my editorial board colleagues setting me straight on any of the calls. And I’ll admit I cheated on one — I can’t even picture "Hunter," much left summon up any relevant impressions, so I just sort of buried him in the pack toward the "less likely" end, hoping no one would notice.
How about you?
Just as we’re getting this news about Sam Brownback, Mike Campbell sends out this note about Mike Huckabee, the other conservative from out West:
Just wanted to give you a quick update.
Governor Huckabee has had a
great week. Great new poll numbers have
come out:A DesMoines Register poll
shows Governor Huckabee leading among Republicans in Iowa while a new Rasmussen
Iowa poll shows Governor Huckabee at 18% in a virtual tie with Fred
Thompson.
While Governor Huckabee is quickly rising in national polls,
the most recent Rasmussen polls shows him just one point behind John McCain,
there are only three polls to watch – those in Iowa, New Hampshire, and right
here in South Carolina. These numbers show that with your help Mike Huckabee can
win the only poll that matters – the one that takes place on election day, which
will be January 19, here in South Carolina.
Also, tonight, Governor Huckabee will be featured
on the Glenn Beck show; on Sunday morning, you can catch him on Fox News Sunday;
and on Sunday night, I hope you will tune into Fox News Channel at 8PM to watch
the next Republican Presidential Debate.
As you’ve no doubt heard, Sam Brownback is bowing out. Makes all the sense in the world, doesn’t it — too far behind the front-runners, unable to come up with the cash. So of course he must go.
But as we urge him not to let the doorknob hit him in the posterior on his way out, think about this: There goes a guy who, if we went by the kind of candidate S.C. Republicans act like they want, should be someone they would like better than the stars who are still in it:
And while I think McCain’s right about the surge, at least Brownback had a clear plan for what should happen next, something that no one in either party, outside of Joe Biden, could say.
So how come South Carolinians and other voters won’t get a chance to choose Brownback if they were so inclined? Because the TV networks decided long ago who was in, and who is out. And there’s a disturbing truth in politics that I have yet to fully understand — voters answer pollsters by saying who they think is GOING to win (generally based on what the herd is telling them to think), rather than who they think SHOULD win. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not in their own interests. But they do it anyway.