Ron Paul’s third place finish was a huge success considering the rules of the poll were designed specifically to prevent him from winning. As evidence, take a look at what the sponsor of the event (townhall.com) had to say:
Unfortunately for the Paulistas/Paul Pods, whatever it is they’re called, only registered Republicans who’ve attended one of the last four Texas Republican conventions can vote in the straw poll. Paul may have about 300 supporters out here with signs, but I’ve been unable to find one of them who’s a delegate qualified to vote.
Additionally, they refused to allow Ron Paul delegates in the door:
But the congressman said a bus-ful of his supporters was a little late and was denied entry to the straw poll. “People weren’t allowed to be able to vote?” Mr. Paul exclaimed. “That doesn’t sound fair.”
GOP officials set a hard and fast rule, though, that if you weren’t inside by 10 a.m. to pick up your credentials, too bad. We even had to pull some strings (translation: sweet talk the PR folks) to get our photographer in.
Lew Rockwell says:
The Texas Republican Party set up its straw poll to hurt Ron Paul. That’s why the voters were restricted to past delegates and alternates from Texas Republican conventions, that is neocons and party hacks for the most part. Also, the poll was placed in Ft. Worth, five hours away from Houston and the Gulf Coast, to discriminate against delegates from Ron Paul Land. Ron was supposed to get zero. Instead, he got more than 16%.
The Republican Party of Texas has been controlled by the Bushes since 1980. That means the Ron Paul campaign and all its volunteers and donors can be very proud. This is yet another step upwards in the growth of a movement that is already shaking the world of all the bad guys. Note: Hunter did so well because he alone, of all the warmongering candidates, bothered to show up. BTW, Fred the Late was supposed to win–that was Gov. Perry’s plan–but he was elsewhere, delaying.
Evidence of Gov. Perry’s plan here:
…while Governor Perry could not make it to the event, he sent a pre-recorded message. According to Erik, the Governor said that despite the fact that Texas does not have a presidential candidate, at least a Republican can win the presidential race.
Now I knew Governor Perry was a little bit on the slow side, but to be oblivious to the fact that there is a GOP presidential candidate in your own state? Come on.
Out of approximately 1,400 votes cast, the results:
Duncan Hunter: 534
Fred Thompson: 266
Ron Paul: 217
Mike Huckabee: 83
Rudy Giuliani: 78
Mitt Romney: 61
Ray McKinney: 28
John Cox: 10
John McCain: 8
Sam Brownback: 6
Tom Tancredo: 6
Hugh Cort: 3
The blogophere is about ideas. Winning the presidency is about sharing your ideas and getting the majority to agree with you.
All I’m hearing here is whining.
telling me that the national polls are rigged aginst him is stupid. Instead of jamming polls on nationaly known blogs, which makes Ron Paul look like a fool or worse like he is running a cult of personality. make comments when people complain, say Ron Paul would not do this, he would do that instead. Communicate what makes him your choice, not whine that no one takes him seriously. Posts like this one are why most people do not want to listen to him.
TVFOH
The View From Out Here
Oh yeah
Perry is a Idiot for saying no one from Texas is running.
TVFOH
The more I see of neocon dirty tricks within the Republican Party, the more I’m convinced that the GOP is heading the way of the Whigs.
Of course, I get the same feeling when I see how Republicans have become brain dead over the War on Terror, government spending, and civil liberties, plus the occassional circus freak show like the Larry Craig affair. After this week, even the Evangelical Christian base is shuffling toward the exits.
I expect that Ron Paul won’t win the Republican nomination, but will do so well that he will run in the general election on the Libertarian Party ticket. I don’t expect him to win, but it is possible that he will draw so many votes away from the Republican candidate that the GOP’s continued existence will be threatened.
THIS SHOULD BE THE STORY TODAY!
Paul First, Hunter 8th overall in 11 straw polls since Iowa
Rank Candidate………%…….. Votes
1…Ron Paul………….24.9%….782
2…Mitt Romney…….16.0%….583
3…Fred Thompson…18.9%….483
4…Rudy Giuliani………8.1%….247
5…Sam Brownback…..4.4%….169
6…Mike Huckabey…….5.3%….131
7…John McCain…………3.0%….111
8…Duncan Hunter…….14.1%….34
9…Tommy Tancredo……0.5%….16
…..Other…………………. 4.2%….22
…..Total………………….100%….2578
Last 11 Straw Polls included:
Texas GOP 1-Sep-07
Allegheny County (Pittsburgh, PA)
Dekalb County, GA
Ronald Reagan Club (Washington)
Strafford County, NH_West Alabama
West Lafayette, Indiana_Illinois State Fair
Students for Life of America_Western Montana Fair
Gaston County, NC
Source:
http://ok4ronpaul.ashlux.com/wiki/index.php?title=2008_Presidential_GOP_straw_poll_results
Surprise,surprise..!
“Only registered Republicans who’ve attended one of the last four Texas Republican conventions can vote in the straw poll”. That naturally prevents potential Ron Paul delegates from voting, since most of them probably never bothered to vote in previous polls.
What a sham.
TVFOH, I am a die hard Paul supporter and even I can get tired of the whiny tone:) However, I do sympathize with the very real problem of how to appropriately bring any one of the dozens of things wrong with the political process to peoples attention, let alone sway people to actually DO anything to fix them. This is grass roots, which means that there is a lot of passion out there and not a lot of PR experience. What I see when I notice a bout of whining by previously energized and upbeat Paulies is the sudden re-realization of exactly how resilient the status quo is, and how much more work is ahead of them. I would suggest TVFOH, that if you are only able to appreciate content through the sparkling white bonded teeth of an ivy league journalism graduate who knows how to annihilate any annoying unsanctioned personal feelings from his or her speech, perhaps you should stick to the MSM and leave the rest of the internet to the people who are not afraid to deal with other peoples real life, messy, and uncensored feelings. In other words, lighten up. Only an idiot throws away a million bucks because it was delivered in ugly wrapping paper.
TVOFH it’s clearly obvious the media neglects him he ranks the highest if you combine all of his straw poll victories. When was the last time he got any media play for winning a straw poll? The answer is never just like your sick of the whinning im sick of being walked on like some sheep in a herd. We have woken up and the message is spreading through word of mouth the question remains who really runs America the people or the media come this primary will find out!
Legalize the constitution vote Ron Paul.
I was there (as one of the 300 or more guest tickets we had)
In the phone polling done by the Spooner team, we knew we had under 300 delegates. Friday, everywhere you looked there were Ron Paul Delegates and Ron Paul Guests. Unfortunately, myself and other took this to mean we had it wrapped up.
Saturday was another story. There were droves of people showing up in the morning and registering. They were not Ron Paul fans, they were Hunter (who had been campaigning in Texas for 2 weeks) and Fred Heads who also have a strong republican grass root fans.
We got 217 delegates from GOP fateful, we should be proud of that. I listened to every speech (no matter how hard a few of them were to listen too)
Really, right before voting began is when the war hawk people took the podium. Actually most of the speakers said the same things as Dr. Paul always does.
Hugh Cort is the only candidate I could not stand listening too. I am not surprised he only got 3 votes. He was even more NeoCon than the NeoCons could stand.
A Fred Head and Hunter fan both made my day as I left. Both commended us on our good showing and wondered why we didn’t get more votes. (I explained we got as many guest passes as we could)
BTW, when I talked to Hunter on Friday (I thanked him for coming and not blowing off Texas like the other candidates) He was very friendly and even commented that he respected Ron Paul and that he was a good man. He also agreed with me that it was disrespectful of the other Candidates to not show up.
I’m the de-facto general coodinator of the grassroots in DFW and I can’t agree with the claim that the closed vote was just meant to rig it against Paul. People can believe that if they want, but the fact is there were something like 17,000 eligible delegates for this, some 3,000 registered (we were told), and yet there were barely 1,000 votes cast. At least 30% of the delegates the call TX program reached were undecided. We know at least one delegate voted for Fred because there was no “none of the above” option and he thought Fred was the closest because he wasn’t declared.
There is no close-knit cabal. The Republican Party of Texas is in shambles and the vast majority of the party didn’t even show up. Duncan won because he spent two weeks on the ground talking in the GOP clubs, holding open conference calls, working the floor, etc. Ron as usual didn’t really spend anything on a non-binding poll with no real value and still placed above the so-called front runners.
Paulites: Please, please, please quit whining.
There’s no getting away from the fact that this was a devastating defeat for Ron Paul in his own state, by the people who know him best.
There were no neocon “tricks,” it was just a poll of REPUBLICANS (not liberal-tarians).
The fact that he couldn’t flood the poll with busloads of his out-of-state supporters really hurt him this time, and probably gave this straw poll a bit more credibility – at least in picking the second-tier winners, since the big guys were no-shows.
Given the set up by those who control the GOP and their fear to death of Ron Paul, it is not bad that he got in third place. Ron Paul is attracting plenty of young people and not so young people who previously had no much experience with the political machinery. It is learning curve and we must master the detail of the whole political machinery and become more professional and efficient. We must expect all type of trickery by those who hold power at present and just try to be one step ahead of them and take all types of precautions. If the crooked politicians invent all types of roadblocks and say that inscriptions for the straw poll must be by 10am, then we must be there by 9am to make sure that they do not invent any excuse.
Reading other comments here, it is obvious that the neocons have already infiltrated some of their agents here and are trying to confuse and demoralize the Ron Paul liberation army.
Jeremy Blosser may be right to a point. It probably wasn’t specifically designed to exclude Ron Paul. However, they certainly used the rules to harm Ron Paul. However, that is politics. They always used the rules to help get the results they want.
There is no justification for denying a bus load of Ron Paul’s delegates entry simply because they were a few minutes late. They certainly would have bent the rules if that bus load of delegates had been their favorites.
Nevertheless, they cannot be happy that so few people voted. They certainly didn’t set up the rules for that to happen. Jeremy Blosser stated, “The Republican Party of Texas is in shambles and the vast majority of the party didn’t even show up.” That statement speaks volumes and indicates just how dissatisfied the ordinary Republican is with the party and the candidates.
With so few votes in a Republican state the size of Texas, the straw poll does not mean much. In my opinion all the only line polls and straw polls do not mean much. The important thing is the only Republican candidate with lots of strongly committed supports is Ron Paul. This means at the precinct meetings when it comes time to select delegates it will be mostly Ron Paul supporters that attend. Of course the neo-con party hacks will be there too but they may be outnumbered three to one by Ron Paul supporters. That will make it easy for most of the delegates to be Ron Paul delegates. That will go a long ways to ensure Ron Paul has better than a fair chance to get the Republican nomination.
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Seems some R.P. votes were denied?
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Interesting …
1) how was the straw poll set up in the past? Same criteria about the “past delegates” and such …
2) do you have a link to where the Governor actually says that there’s not a Texan in the race?
Karen,
1 – I believe this was the first straw poll for Texas.
2 – The link is in the post. It has been confirmed by many that that is what Gov. Perry said in the message that was played to the delegates.
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