NRO’s Campaign Spot was listening to Sean Hannity’s radio show, a practice that would lead many of us to drive spikes into our own ears, and heard this:
On the Sean Hannity radio program, pollster John Zogby said that Texas Congressman Ron Paul could end up surprising the field – and “embarass a lot of the frontrunners” by wildly exceeding expectations taking 15 to 18 percent in the New Hampshire primary.
An incredulous Hannity asked, “You don’t see any chance he wins this thing, do you?” Zogby said no.
So you have Huckabee as the insurgent second-place threat in Iowa. You have Ron Paul poised to surprise in New Hampshire. Rudy Giuliani will be laying low until February 5. While the expectations game can take unpredictable turns, the one constant in all this seems likely to be Mitt Romney, who has been slow and steady right from the beginning. You think he minds sharing the spotlight with the novelty acts, if by mid-January he’s the only one of the frontrunners to be running at the actual front?
2 Responses to “Zogby: Paul Could Get 18% in NH”
Ron Paul fans always croon that the outlandish things he stands for is evidence that he’s a man of principle. The principle is the original constitution. Honoring Rosa Parks? Nay vote. Not in the constitution.
Paul follows the original Constitution. I like the part of the Constitution that lays out rules for Shrimp marketing campaigns.
http://online.wsj.com/article/…..712…
[W.S.J:
Texas Congressman Ron Paul — libertarian gadfly and current Republican Presidential hopeful — has made a name for himself as a critic of overspending. But it seems even he can’t resist the political allure of earmarks.
After reporters started asking questions, the Congressman disclosed his requests this year for about $400 million worth of federal funding for no fewer than 65 earmarks. They include such urgent national wartime priorities as an $8 million request for the marketing of wild American shrimp and $2.3 million to fund shrimp-fishing research.
When we called Mr. Paul’s office for an explanation, his spokesperson offered up something worthy of pork legends Tom DeLay or Senator Robert C. Byrd: “Reducing earmarks does not reduce government spending, and it does not prohibit spending upon those things that are earmarked,” the spokesman said. “What people who push earmark reform are doing is they are particularly misleading the public — and I have to presume it’s not by accident.”
On the other hand, good libertarians should want to start cutting somewhere. The problem with earmarking is that each year the habit grows by leaps and bounds so that it now represents real money. It is also a gateway to political corruption — a la Duke Cunningham, and other Congressmen currently under investigation for trading favors for earmarks.
Mr. Paul is one of Congress’s better fiscal conservatives. So the fact that even he feels obliged to grab multiple earmarks is all the more reason to keep fighting for transparency in the earmark process, as well as for the line-item veto, which would give Presidents a chance to impose some spending discipline from outside Congress.]
Close the Department of Education – not in the Constitution.
Neither is the word Abortion or anything about marriage but Paul wants conservative federal laws to decide those issues.
Open your eyes.
Something to say?
While I am an adamant supporter of Ron Paul’s message, what I am more strongly supporting is that people supporting any candidate start paying more attention to the actual voting percentages compared to the polls. This could very well be the election year that puts the final nail in the phone-poll coffin.
I’d love to see Paul end up with 18% in New Hampshire, but not just to give Paul a strong second place finish. Even better than Paul coming in second (or Hannity-forbid, first), would be the absolute destruction of mandates the polls used to give. This will help ANY candidate: top tier, fringe, contrarian, third party, whatever, to scoff any pollster’s opinion on a future election.
To paraphrase Gandhi: “First we ignore the polls, then we ridicule the PAC-raised money, then we fight the old media’s support for dictators, then we vote our conscience.”
Left by A.B. Dada
November 14, 2007 at 10:50am