Althouse: The Iowa Straw Poll!!

August 12, 2007

The Iowa Straw Poll!!

I'm just way too excited about it to think of a thing to say.

6 comments:

High Power Rocketry said...: : ); 8/12/07, 8:15 AM
hdhouse said...: Well I'm all pumped up about it!. Where is the bus? The free ones taking me round trip to Ames? Where's the lunch? Do I get any money?; 8/12/07, 9:40 AM
Peter Hoh said...: Well, I guess Mitt Romney knows how to get more from his money than, say, John Connally.; 8/12/07, 10:28 AM
Simon said...: Well, congrats to Romney, although let's not oversell this: Romney has been on the ground in force in Iowa for quite a while, and botht he serious competitors (Guiliani and Thompson) left him to it there. I have to admit, my opinion on Romney has gone up since the incident where he insisted on actually answering the question (instead of offering some kind of pablum "I feel your pain" response) when the woman in NH asked about healthcare. That impressed me a little - the subtext was "I know what you want to hear, and I'm going to tell you what you need to hear, whether you like it or not." That was a very Newt moment, and I didn't realize he had it in him.

From the story:
“'[Ron Paul]’s against the war. He wants to get rid of the I.R.S. He wants to abolish the Patriot Act,' Mr. Doucette said. 'He stands for freedom.'”

I think he also wants - I mean, he'd be totally inconcistent if he didn't - to abolish the civil rights act and the voting rights act. I bet if people realized the consequences of Ron Paul's vision of government, they'd rethink, quickly. "There is something incredibly obtuse about the libertarian view, something that misses the reality of human life and that is very wedded to a stark abstraction. In pure form, it is repellent." I think it's good stuff to cut conservatism with, each tending to curb the other's worst impulses, ... [and] I'm sympathetic to the idea that the state should intervene minimally (and that the federal government should use as light a touch as possible and only ever as heavy a touch as is constitutionally permissible), but that is a far cry from saying it lacks authority to do so when required by outstanding moral exigency, and Paul's vision is too extreme for me."; 8/12/07, 11:41 AM
hdhouse said...: Simon said...
"That was a very Newt moment..."

No simon. a very newt moment is "tough luck with the cancer sweetie..by the way my attorney will be in touch.."

Romney did this by bus...shipping people in from all over. I remember Steve Forbes running...after 100 million bucks he had 1% of the vote. romney will dump as much money as it takes for him to be viable. when the money stops paying for the vote there will not be a lot of takers.; 8/13/07, 6:42 AM
Simon said...: Harry, as Howard Dean discovered, you can bus in supporters to your hearts' content, but what wins election is votes. Remember that memorable juxtaposition offered by Clay Shirkey, eulogizing the Dean campaign, that while the internet represents "the victory of affinity over geography ... [v]oting, though, is the victory of geography over affinity." "Deaniacs in NYC could donate money and time, blogging like mad or tramping through the cold to talk to a handful of potential voters, but they couldn’t actually vote anywhere but NYC. Iowa was left up to the Iowans." Boots on the ground can help persuade people, but they don't win elections, freestanding.; 8/13/07, 9:21 AM