Decision ‘08

Gallup: No News Is Good News…

…if your last name is Giuliani or Clinton, as Rudy and Hillary have maintained their national leads:

• In the race for the Republican presidential nomination, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani has a 10 percentage point lead nationally over former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., maintains his place in third.

• In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has a 16-point lead over second-place Sen. Barack Obama. Former vice president Al Gore, who has repeatedly said he has no plans to run for the White House in 2008, comes in third.

The Ron Paul fan(atic)s are always accusing me of ignoring their candidate, so let’s highlight this as well:

The current numbers for the rest of the Republicans included in the survey: Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, 6%; former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, 2%; Rep. Duncan Hunter, 2%; Rep. Tom Tancredo, 2%; Sen. Sam Brownback, 1%; Sen. Chuck Hagel, 1%; former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson, 1%. Neither former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore nor Rep. Ron Paul registered any support.

No registered support! The Ron Paul juggernaut rolls on…

6 Responses to “Gallup: No News Is Good News…”

1 Ryan Bonneville Says:
July 9th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
The weird disconnect on Paul makes no sense to me. You have media outlets (and Andrew Sullivan) insisting that Ron Paul is a serious candidate and he manifestly isn’t. What the deuce?
2 Mark Says:
July 9th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Here’s how seriously I take the Ron Paul candidacy: I personally swear to give every single person who has ever visited this blog $350,000 a day for the rest of their life if Ron Paul wins the Republican nomination, and a further $1,000,000 per minute for the next 300 years if he wins the presidency.

Oh, man, did I just say that out loud? I’m shaking!…
3 Dennis Says:
July 10th, 2007 at 10:44 am
I went to a Rush concert the other night and saw a couple of fans sporting Ron Paul for President T-shirts. You can always count on a few folks who overdosed on their Ayn Rand at Rush shows.

My instincts tend to be libertarian, so I’m sympathetic to the notion of a more libertarian-minded candidate. But the political realities seem to be that most libertarians who run for office tend to be from the lunatic fringe, so you get guys like Ron Paul running these quixotic crusades and sullying the notion of libertarianism. Whatever appeal he may have for me for talking about things like gun rights and eminent domain is wiped out by his more Luddite views on free trade, returning to the gold standard, a frightening number of supporters who think Sept. 11 was a giant conspiracy, etc.

I’m not sure too many pundits treat Ron Paul as anything other than a Republican version of Dennis Kucinich, something of a semi-nutjob for the true believers. As for Sullivan, it’s usually a good rule of thumb to assume anything he takes seriously is something you shouldn’t take seriously.
4 Sandy Says:
July 10th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Speaking of Ron Paul and earmarks…
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/010430.php
5 Jon Says:
July 10th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
HAHA! Nice props to Ron… yeah, getting annoyed with his fanatics as well. At any rate, I have started a conservative digg alternative called GOP Hub (gophub.com). I wanted to invite you to come over and check it out, and feel free to join up and participate. Plus you can submit any articles your write here on your blog. Take care and have a great rest of the week :).
6 Matt Says:
July 11th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
The question then becomes: how do you integrate the fact that he raised $2.5 million in individual contributions in the last quarter into the “Ron Paul is a total fringe canidate” schema. One must remember that most of the people who “support” the frontrunners only vaguely follow politics and most of them won’t turn up to vote in the primaries. Primary turnout rates range from 5-30% of registered voters. Paul supporters are passionate; if you support Ron Paul, you *will* vote. Most Rudy “Benito” Guiliani will stay at home. The next few months will be interesting…the organizing has just begun.