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Michele Backmamm wins the Iowa straw polls.

Lemon law

Lemon law

Lifer
It in a clear victory for the GOP radical right, Michele Backmann won, second place went to Ron Paul, and Pawlenty was a distant third.

http://news.yahoo.com/bachmann-wins-gop-2012-test-vote-224544660.html

Shades of 2008, will this be a cross section of the GOP voting public nationwide in 11/2012?

Somehow I doubt it! But is this about all the tea in Iowa or all the straw, as the long road to 11/2012 has delivered its first result.
 
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You should be happy.

The winner of the straw poll does't always win the nomination.
Romney won it in 07 and Pat Robertson won it in 87 and neither went any where.

Bachmann isn't going to get anything past Iowa either, don't get that this is her home state.

Perry and Romney are going to win everything else.
 
T-Paw is finished. 1 million dollars and months in Iowa to get a distant third and about 2200 votes.\

Edit: The winner of 2 of the 3 from Iowa/New Hampshire and South Carolina has won the Republican nomination in the last 30 years. I can see 3 different winners in these early states. Perry probably has the best chance to win Iowa/South Carolina.
 
Meh, the Iowa straw poll is increasingly seen as becoming irrellevant anyway. There have to be better ways for the GOP to select their candidate than what we see in Iowa.

Congratulations to Michele Bachmann though. She won this round, but she still has plenty more to go. Don't count Paul, Perry, Romney, etc. out yet. Pawlenty may still end up being the dark horse nominee though....who knows at this point...
 
You kind of understated it, PJ. I remember seeing a recap of the last 20-30 years of this poll and, as I recall, only two GOP nominees won this poll-Dole and GWB. Of course in years past it used to be really wild-free beer, candidates bussing in supporters from out of state, washing off the hand stamp so you could revote (apparently really rampart in the Dole race).

All in all its a pretty foolish and meaningless thing. I think it says a lot about about 24/7 news channels and their obsession with scoing politics by daily metrics that all three focused almost exclusively on this today-at least every time I surfed by.
 
Might have something to do with the 6000+ tickets she gave out (and yet still only got 4800 votes). 😛

Like ProfJohn said, I wouldn't read too much into the straw poll results. It's more about who can rally their supporters to get out there and vote than who Republicans across the country want representing them in the presidential election. Not to say that they can't provide some insight either, but the results should be taken with a grain of salt. McCain, for example, didn't even participate in the Ames straw poll in 2007 and came in 10th place, but still ended up getting the Republican nomination. It's still really early in the campaign, a lot of stuff can happen between now and the primaries.
 
I'm glad Michele won. I'm sure the Ron Paul fans are pleased with their showing today, but I think his remarks on Iran during Thursday's debate will come back to haunt him. He's great on economic policy, but I wouldn't want him looking the other way when Iran wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

I'm shocked that Pawlenty made number 3. He made a complete ass of himself going after Michele!
 
Using people in a small Iowa city that are more or less paid to show up and vote for a particular person is a really good way to determine national trends!
 
What is it with Republican women that makes them put the dumbest examples of their gender forward as candidates? Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Christine "I am not a witch" O'Donnell are embarrassments to the XX chromosome. I swear, the only reason any of them opens her mouth is to change feet. 🙄

If Bachmann is the Repugnican candidate, she'll guarantee even Democrats who are thoroughly dissatisfied and disappointed with Obama will campaign aggressively and vote for him.
 
MovingTarget said:
Meh, the Iowa straw poll is increasingly seen as becoming irrellevant anyway. There have to be better ways for the GOP to select their candidate than what we see in Iowa.

Congratulations to Michele Bachmann though. She won this round, but she still has plenty more to go. Don't count Paul, Perry, Romney, etc. out yet. Pawlenty may still end up being the dark horse nominee though....who knows at this point...
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No i think we can safely count out Ron Paul. He will never get the evangelical and neo-con vote.
 
I think some of you may be confusing this straw poll with the caucuses next January. The straw poll is essentially a fund-raiser for the Iowa GOP. They charge $30 per ticket to attend and vote. The candidates generally pay this cost by giving tickets (and food, entertainment, and transportation) to supporters to come to Ames to vote for them. For example, Bachmann had a big tent with free food and Randy Travis (IIRC) entertaining her supporters today.

The results are more a measure of the strength and organizational skills of the candidates' campaign teams than of their public support. Increasingly, candidates openly call the Iowa Straw Poll a shakedown by the Iowa GOP. Most of them bend over anyway. Romney was the most notable exception this year.

The Straw Poll has nothing to do with awarding Iowa's electoral votes. That comes from the January caucuses.
 
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Bowfinger said:
I think some of you may be confusing this straw poll with the caucuses next January. The straw poll is essentially a fund-raiser for the Iowa GOP. They charge $30 per ticket to attend and vote. The candidates generally pay this cost by giving tickets (and food, entertainment, and transportation) to supporters to come to Ames to vote for them. For example, Bachmann had a big tent with free food and Randy Travis (IIRC) entertaining her supporters today.

The results are more a measure of the strength and organizational skills of each candidates' campaign teams than of their public support. Increasingly, candidates openly call the Iowa Straw Poll a shakedown by the Iowa GOP. Most of them bend over anyway. Romney was the most notable exception this year.

The Straw Poll has nothing to do with awarding Iowa's electoral votes. That comes from the January caucuses.
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So how much do the actual electoral votes cost?
 
raviolissimo said:
Ron Paul was very impressive. He actually told the truth about Iran on public TV - that they were a democracy until the US deposed Mossadegh in favor of the Shah in the 1950's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'état

So now when the US talks about "bringing democracy" to Iran - they are completely dishonest.
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That's just code to confuse the rest of the world. US citizens are given code books, and "democracy" translates to "bombs." :thumbsup:
 
ProfJohn said:
You should be happy.

The winner of the straw poll does't always win the nomination.
Romney won it in 07 and Pat Robertson won it in 87 and neither went any where.

Bachmann isn't going to get anything past Iowa either, don't get that this is her home state.

Perry and Romney are going to win everything else.
Click to expand...
Well with Bachman and Perry around Romney actually looks half way decent. It's like women who hang around with real fat women just so they look good in comparison.
 
Q: How do you get the American people to elect a corporatist sellout in an era when the wealthy have grabbed so much wealth and caused so much harm?

A: Fund candidates such that their only choice is that, or a nutty fundamentalist radical. Obama or Romney the former, Bachmann or Perry the latter, that's the field.

It maintains the illusion of 'choice', while, like a magician, pushing one selection, with the bonus sigh of relief of 'well, at least we kept the worst one out'.
 
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Harvey said:
What is it with Republican women that makes them put the dumbest examples of their gender forward as candidates? Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Christine "I am not a witch" O'Donnell are embarrassments to the XX chromosome. I swear, the only reason any of them opens her mouth is to change feet. 🙄

If Bachmann is the Repugnican candidate, she'll guarantee even Democrats who are thoroughly dissatisfied and disappointed with Obama will campaign aggressively and vote for him.
Click to expand...

I've been wondering this out loud for years, the lowest common denominator strategy for the GOP is a deal breaker for pretty much every intelligent person I know. Male or female.

I stopped caring about the Iowa strawpoll in the early 90s, no reason to change now.
 
Howard said:
Are you intentionally misspelling her name?
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I'm not so sure. Bachmann vs Backmann I can see, but Backmamm is a little far off. I may disagree with just about every plank in her platform, but I do respect her enough to spell her name correctly.

Then again, O'bammah, Obummer, Bobo, Barry, etc. etc. Get it? Har har. Making digs at someone's name via the spelling shows you have the IQ of a third grader or less. I hope that it is a genuine misspelling by this poster. If it is, they will correct it if it is noticed.
 
Bachmann represents the views of the members of her party in Iowa or at least those who bothered to show up. This is exactly how parties should pick their candidates; pick the ones who actually represent the party, not the ones who appeal to the least common denominator of the general electorate.
 
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