My friend Soren Dayton rightly notes that if you combine Huckabee’s votes and Brownback’s votes, you more than equal Romney’s votes– which can’t be a great sign for Romney. Of course, then again, that would have been true for Bush in 1999, too– but then as I’ve alluded to, that wouldn’t be such a surprising result in a year when all the big dogs played at Ames, which this year, they did not.
I also agree with Soren that Giuliani, Thompson and McCain all have got to be pretty happy about this. The way certain Romney supporters were crowing about Romney’s organization, you might have expected to see Romney pull 40%. But he didn’t, and that is significant.
Yeah, I’m with Liz on this one (Sullivan’s blog has been better this week than it has in years, with this set of guest bloggers). I was up quite late last night, and as of 1:30 AM or so, there was no crowing yet on Hugh Hewitt’s blog, only a post by Patrick Ruffini that was less than congratulatory towards Romney. Given how long Hewitt has been smugly asserting Ames’ importance, and Romney’s all but certain smashing of the field, I don’t anticipate much crowing from that corner of Townhall at all.
Markos, on the other hand, is overconfident as usual, denigrating the entire GOP field as pigmies…one assumes, in comparison to the Democratic field (which includes the last election’s losing vice presidential candidate, a first term senator, and the last Democratic president’s wife). Tsk tsk, Markos…didn’t Ned Lamont teach you anything about overconfidence?
Update: Mea Culpa…Hewitt crows after all.
Update 2: JPod:
I hate to be nasty, but anybody who takes the Ames Straw Poll results seriously is an idiot. A bunch of people spent ludicrous amounts of money to bus-and-truck 14,000 people to a big picnic, and the guy who spent the most bought the win with a mammoth 4516 votes. Goshers! 4,516 votes! Another guy who spent a lot less than the first guy got some people
to eat his fried Oreosto vote for him too — 2,587, of them, to be precise. And he’s claiming a big triumph and momentum blah blah blah.
Uh-oh. John, you just jumped on the Geraghty train, buddy…Hewitt’s going to go guano on you momentarily.
Filed under: Election 2008, Mitt Romney, Politics, Republicans
I’ve got only 3 words to say…
“Dewey Defeats Truman.”
Indeed, Thomas. While I will be (pleasantly) shocked, shocked if a Republican wins the White House next year, I’m far from counting any of the top tier GOP candidates out of the running yet. Even the ones I don’t particularly like.