WINNERS
The Herminator: After the beat down he administered in Florida and the contested poll in Michigan, Herman Cain gained even more momentum early this week. This time Cain struck gold with the Republican Federation of Women. He won their straw poll with almost 50% of the vote. Perry and Mitt finished 2nd and 3rd respectively but way behind The Herminator. Actually those two were in a statistical dead heat at 14% +/- 2%.
Chris Christie: When was the last time someone got so much attention for saying he was not going to do something so many want him to do. He’s been saying it for almost a year now. Web sites are devoted to playing montages of all the times he has said he’s not running. He had to cap off this denial with a 2hr press conference the past Tuesday. He’s also the first politician I have ever heard answer the Vice President question honestly. When asked he replied his personality and style would most likely keep him from being selected. He just made Herman Cain’s VP short list.
Mitt Romney: See above paragraph about Chris Christie. Also with all of Perry’s troubles, which will be detailed in the losers section, Mitt’s stock has risen. As Chuck Todd of NBC put it, The establishment of the Republican Party will now fall in like with Mitt. They won’t love him until he beats Obama.
LOSERS
Rick Perry: His stock is plummeting as quickly as it soared. He can’t convince people that letting children of illegal immigrants go to State Universities in Texas at the in-resident rate and government mandated vaccinations for young girls are good ideas. Those issues are no longer his biggest problem.
A hunting camp his family has been leasing for a long time goes by the name Niggerhead. Now Perry’s family didn’t name it that. The word was painted on a big rock at the entrance of the camp. Perry’s father painted over the word but it’s still visible. The big stink among many stinks here is the fact that Perry knew all this before he ran for Governor of Texas and never thought it an issue. That, to me, shows a lack of political insight. Of course this was going to be an issue, manufactured or otherwise. This is politics, truth and logic come in 9th and 10th on a top 5 list.
Make no mistake, this issue is killing him in the polls. He has dropped way off in finances as well. Christie’s financial backers have signed on to Mitt’s team not Perry’s as a lot of people thought, so this thing does have long term legs. I for one don’t see the issue. Perry’s family didn’t name the camp Niggerhead. They don’t own the camp they just lease it and then tried to remove the name. I mean short of dynamiting the rock what was his father supposed to do. This is a silly as the birth certificate issue. Rick Perry has done more for minorities in the state of Texas than the its last two Governors. The beating he is taking over his immigration policy alone should tell you something. I don’t know the guy but a dude who lets illegal aliens go to his state universities doesn’t seem like a racist to me. Then again I’m white and not in-charge of what GOP voters think. Remember these are the folks who booed a soldier serving in Iraq during a nationally televised debate. Dave Weigel’s article on the hunting camp issue.
Michelle Bachman: Michelle, Michelle, where have you gone? She is a non-factor. Pundits predicted she would be gone by Christmas of this year, I said Thanksgiving of this year, let the games begin. Her funds have all but dried up. What’s more telling is the straw poll Herman Cain won. Bachman, the only woman in the field and the supposed only true conservative darling of the tea party, got shellacked in the Repub. Federation of Women straw poll. She got 5. No, not 5 percent of the vote, she got 5 total votes which is 1.4% of all votes cast. Picture the Charlie Brown Halloween episode. Cain got 3 extra large Kit Kat bars, Bachman – got a rock. Unfortunately for her it wasn’t even a very big rock. Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown NFoW Straw Poll Results
Making matters worse for Bachman: Florida, Nevada, and South Carolina are moving their primary election days to January. Iowa will now be the 4th primary instead of the first. If she had any chance to stay relevant, even for a little while, Iowa would have been it. It’s her home state, she probably would have finished 2nd or at least 3rd and that would have been enough to keep the money coming until the New Hampshire primary. The NH primary now drops to fifth in the batting order anyway so say goodbye Congresswomen Bachman, we hardly knew ye.
Sarah Palin: My first mention of the half Governor of Alaska. It looks like it will be the last. She finally said she would not run for President. With the Florida primary moving to January the filing deadline to get on the ballot in Florida was Oct 31st so she had to make a decision. She is not being lauded as Gov Christie is. Part of that is the beating she takes daily from the media; the same media she craves so much by the way. But a lot of it, I think, has to do with how she did it and how she said it.
On Greta Wire, Greta Van Susteren’s show on Fox, Palin said the title of President is just that, a title and would shackle her and she didn’t want to be weighed down and kept from doing what she wanted to do by having to be President. So focusing on why being President would be such a negative for her versus Christie talking about the positives of remaining Governor of NJ to finish what he started is, what I believe to be, a stark contrast in character. The best summation I saw about the Announcement, was the comment that “a person more than half the country can’t stand announced she’s not running for a job she had no chance of getting.”
Social networking isn’t Sarah’s flair either. Some 58 minutes after Twitter started trending about Palin’s announcement, it was announced that Steve Jobs died. The twitter-verse exploded with tweets about Steve Jobs rightfully so. I’m typing this on my 24 inch screen all-in-one Mac while my 2yr old son Frank is dancing and playing guitar (using his golf club) to Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer blasting from his mothers iPod. The only one in the political circles on twitter not tweeting about Jobs, you guessed it, Sarah Palin. Her camp kept tweeting videos of Palin speeches and appearances without even a simple explanation as to the intent. That is just another in a long line of examples that show Palin and her camp really aren’t in touch with the general populace. Her unfavorable stats in polls showed that and most likely led to her decision not to run.
Oh and Howard Fineman, the director of political reporting for The Huffinton Post, kept tweeting blank pictures of his pocket, but he was sitting on his phone so he gets a pass.
Frank's Place 