Iowa straw poll wins rarely lead to big time

Republican presidential candidates, from left, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum; former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty; Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas; Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich.; businessman Herman Cain; Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. pose for a group photo at the Republican Party's Straw Poll in Ames, Iowa, Saturday, Aug. 13, 2011.

/ AP

This post originally appeared on Slate.

It was a big day in Iowa for people who will not be president. Michele Bachmann crushed at the Ames straw poll, and Ron Paul came in a strong second. If history is any guide, that means neither candidate will make it to the White House. The man who many Republicans think will win the nomination was half a country away. In South Carolina, Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced that he is running for president.

The two poles of energy in the Republican race highlighted the tension that faces the party: between sending a message to Washington and sending a candidate who can win an election. All parties face this tension, but it is particularly acute for the Republican Party at the moment. President Barack Obama is weak, which means a Republican candidate could appeal to independents who have soured on Obama. At the same time, Tea Party activists--who give the party its power and energy and who have reshaped politics in Washington--alienate those same independent voters.

Michele Bachmann is the perfect message candidate. It doesn't matter to her supporters that she has no executive experience and that she has no notable accomplishments in Washington. These were two of Tim Pawlenty's attack lines in Thursday's debate, but what becomes clear talking to her supporters is that want "someone who can say stop," as Thomas Nicholls put it to me. "She is the one saying stop the loudest." When you see government as a rampaging elephant, you want a candidate who can shoot the elephant dead, not someone who can manage to ride the elephant better.

Michele Bachmann wins Iowa Straw Poll
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Bachmann is a very good first-time candidate. At campaign stops, her message is focused, and her connection with the audience is genuine. Her organization was equally honed. The line to get inside her tent stretched nearly to Minnesota. Inside, between country music acts, an organizer asked who had voted, and a sea of fingers pointed toward the ceiling, each marked with a blue dot that signified they had.

But the challenge for Bachmann was on display inside her tent. A couple stood at the back of the room with their 9-year-old daughter. When I asked the woman, Tara, why she was supporting Bachmann, she pointed to her adopted daughter. "If it weren't for her birth mother, I wouldn't be her parent," she said, explaining her pro-life connection to the candidate.

She shared a deep value connection with the candidate, as did her husband, who summed up Bachmann this way: "She makes her claim, and she stands her ground." Still, unasked, they raised the issue of her electability. "She can be polarizing electorally. She has a Palin-esque quality that can turn people off." When I asked about Rick Perry, they were open to switching, because he shares Bachmann's values, too. "If he were here, maybe we'd be at his tent."

Ron Paul's near-victory was as expected as Bachmann's first-place finish. His supporters are passionate. If voting for the straw poll required walking the last mile to the voting booth, they'd have done it on their hands. But while Paul improved over his fifth-place finish from 2007, he is still too controversial to win the nomination.

If winning the straw poll means nothing about your eventual chances in the Iowa caucuses or in the general election, why is everyone likely to write off Tim Pawlenty after his third-place finish? Pawlenty needed a result that would help him persuade people he is asking for campaign donations that he can connect with voters when he makes a concerted effort. He got 2,293 votes, half the Bachmann total. It was a weak finish for a candidate who worked the state so hard.

Palin defends Michele Bachmann, jabs Rick Perry
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When Lamar Alexander came in third in the Iowa straw poll in 1996, it was better than people thought he could do, and it gave him a boost. When he came in fifth in 1999, his campaign was over, because he'd invested so much in the state. Which version of the Alexander history will Pawlenty follow? That will depend on those who might have been willing to write checks to fund his campaign. Without their support, he won't have the resources to compete against the better-funded Perry and the intensely loved Bachmann and Paul.

The main candidates competing to win the straw poll had big fancy tents, musical acts, and free barbecue. Ron Paul had a slide for kids called the "sliding dollar." (Geddit?) On the edge of this, Rick Perry's supporters watched their man on flat-screen televisions and wore T-shirts with his slogan "Let's Get America Working Again." Though he was a write-in candidate at the poll, Perry got 718 votes, besting Mitt Romney, who got 567, even though he, unlike Perry, was on the ballot, a sign that Perry's late-starting organization effort paid off.

Those vote totals are small compared to the votes Paul and Bachmann got, but no sign can be too small for insiders trying to figure out how Rick Perry changes the alignment in the Republican race. Perry is considered a strong candidate because he can raise money, and because he combines Tea Party appeal with prospects among the GOP establishment. A veteran of New Hampshire politics says that the party officials and insiders who are anxious to jump to Perry are not Tea Party types but Republicans who backed George W. Bush and his father.

Perry is, "the complete picture," to repeat the clich? I've heard from insiders too many times. But is he really? This takes us back to the tension within the Republican Party. Perry may be a great primary candidate, but will he be a good general election candidate? That is the key issue Romney will raise for the next several months. Romney will argue that Perry is too Tea Party to win in a general election. Also, is the country ready for another Texas governor? Perry may be very different from George Bush. Their camps dislike each other, but when he talks, the echoes of our most unpopular recent president abound.

But before Perry can get to the general election, he will face a series of challenges. The first is that he is a vessel for voter expectations. He's everything to everyone. That can lead to disappointment if the reality doesn't live up to the dream. When I asked the New Hampshire veteran what quality of Perry's had people rushing to him, he said, "That's the funny thing, they don't know much about him."

In September, there will be three GOP debates--three chances for Perry to look less than advertised. Reporters will start looking at his Texas record and his dealings in the back-room world of Texas politics. He'll have to respond to these stories on the national level for the first time with less time to recover than if he'd started his campaign earlier. And he'll have to learn how to adjust his considerable talents as a Texas politician to the small rooms of Iowa and New Hampshire, which require a different touch. He'll start in Iowa Sunday with a stop at the Iowa state fair, where his opponents spent the week being wowed by this year's culinary delight: fried butter. Old hat for Perry. They served that at the Texas state fair two years ago.

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[fcs25]

Typical biased article by a left wing Democrat loon.Well I have news for you...your man Obama will not be re-elected and will be remembered in history as worst than Jimmy Carter and a complete incompetent fool.

[descendant_1776]

nah, more like a complete incompetent buffoon !!!

[simpleconservative]

Just a few things wrong with the articles assumptions. Tea party candidates do not alienate Independent voters as a majority. Someone with no executive experience replacing someone else with no executive experience is not far fetched given that we actually elected Obama last time. The difference in her thought process is what will count!

[nearl451]

"Fried butter on a stick".

Frankly, that describes both (1) the lack of importance that this political vote means to the nation (or the GOP) and (2) the state of obesity in the nation.

It's a long tradition of damned silliness.

[Fatesrider]

Nancy-Im-A-Piglosi:

I believe that a divorce - removing you and your ideology from the United States - is perfect. But you forget that your ideology is what destroyed our nation. It's why we live in a recession. It's why we lost our AAA credit rating. It's why the United States went from a powerhouse to a weakling.

Your incessant bickering, "my way or the highway", "God told me to do this and so should you so I'm gonna make you", "if you tell me I should put away my guns one more time, I'll shoot you" and "painting gun-sights on the pictures of rival politicians" mentality has ruined the United States of America. Because of this, the injured party (that's all of the rest of us - you're a minority) gets to dictate the terms.

Here's your settlement:

You can keep the Midwest. It's going to pot faster than you can get the gas out of the ground because of your favoritism toward decidedly dangerous, toxic practices, so you pretty much deserve it. You may remove all environmental regulations at your leisure, but be prepared to pay for damages to neighboring countries (like the United States). You may not carry a gun anywhere outside of your territory, but we encourage all of you, even the kids, to carry guns that are loaded for bear at all times because we know some nutjob in there will go on a rampage and we want to make sure you see the folly of arming everyone.

The rest of the world reserves the right to nuke you out of existence if you start a single war, police action or international incident.

You can keep the racism, religious bigotry and intolerance, the gay-bashing, the corporate welfare, the religious political agendas, the erosion of privacy and civil rights in favor of "security", the paranoia, the fear mongering and everyone in the country under the IQ of 100 (This is pretty much your entire voter base) which is the legacy of your ideology.

You know, all the things you promote, believe in and demand on a daily basis.

Hell, we'll even help you build a 500 foot tall wall all around your land, provide free firearms and plenty of ammo just as long as none of you ever come out and try to screw the country up again.

The rest of us will keep the name, the good reputation, the liberty, freedom and civil rights you've tried to take away from us. We'll keep the cleaner air, promoting clean ways of doing business and powering a better America, getting off big oil's terrorist-funding, environmentally hazardous teat. OUR government will get meaningful, moderate legislation passed now because the left doesn't ahve to take a polarizing response to the right-wing's stance. Partisan politics will be a thing of the past.

Government will do its job not because it will keep a politician in power or because a PAC has paid one to do it, but because it's actually the best thing for the country. We will be using something your vocabulary expunged twelve years ago: Moderation.

We will have cooperation, compromise, getting the best we can without political grandstanding that brings the banks of the world to its knees. Without your malignant influence, we will cease to have the kind of polarized government that can't get anything done.

We will be rid of the Party of No and be better for it if for no other reason than we can actually get something accomplished other than political stagnation and gamesmanship.

I would get down on my knees and thank a wise and loving God if we could do this and remove the right wing from right of center all the way out to the Timothy McVeigh's and abortion clinic bombers (you know, the Tea Party radicals) and crate you off to a gigantic walled conservative paradise where you can suffer with whatever ghastly thing you want to inflict on yourselves.

You may think this is a liberal rant. You'd be wrong. Liberals are incompetent to run the country, but conservatives are inherently violent, dangerous and destructive and can't run the country (as is evidenced by the destruction your side has caused us).

No, this is a voice from the middle who sees both sides for what they are - incompetent fools on the left, rabid dogs on the right. Neither of them are interested in running the country. Both are only interested in keeping themselves in power. But without the malignant choice on the right, the moderates (people like me, who believe in a strong country, clean air, healthy, well educated citizens which promotes a partnership with industry and business and has some faith that the checks and balances built into our system of government were put there not to be abused, but to keep our country CENTERED) will rise and work it out and do it right.

And that's something neither side can say they've done in a hell of a long time in this country.

[CuriousServant]

"When you see government as a rampaging elephant, you want a candidate who can shoot the elephant dead, not someone who can manage to ride the elephant better."

Poor choice of an analogy when discussing the GOP.

[tsigili]

Precisely why I suggest, that despite Iowa's desire to get attention, Iowa is largely, just a side show.

[RobAla]

I don't know that Michele Bachmann is electable for President, but she might make an interesting VP for someone. I hate to say it, but I am not sure America is ready for a female President. I would have voted for Condi Rice in a heartbeat in 2008, but she did not run.

[nojoy01]

"Iowa straw poll wins rarely lead to big time"
---------------------------------------------------------------
This headline looks to be an attempt to tell the faithful, mainstream GOP, "don't panic, odds are she won't make it, and neither will Ron Paul"

[Jaylah54]

The straw poll in Ames has nothing to do with elections and everything to do with a big freak-show fundraising event for the GOP. Most of the people at the even weren't even Iowans. (Candidates pay huge busloads of out-of-state people to come in and make it look like they have more followers than they really do.)

As of the 2010 Census, the city of Ames population was 58,965. There are over 3 million people living in Iowa. Yet there were only 16,982 total votes cast at the straw poll.

Speaking as an Ames resident, we're all sure glad to get those side-show freaks out of town.

Here is what troubles me about Michele Bachmann (other than the fact that she obviously doesn't understand the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which should preclude her from holding any elected office):

Everybody that is even slightly informed about how federal government finances work knows that the debt ceiling has nothing to do with a "blank check" for President Obama or any other president. It has to do with paying the bills for stuff that Congress (including Michele Bachmann and her pet pork projects) has *already* spent. (The US President can't spend any money by himself. Money is spent by Congress.)

However, Michele keeps blithering on about that "blank check to President Obama."

Which leaves two possibilities:

1) Michele is actually so ignorant that she doesn't know how the US government pays its bills.

2) She *does* know but assumes enough Americans don't that she can continue to tell lies and nobody will know.

Whether she actually knows or not, she obviously *does* know that she's got an incredibly weak candidacy. Why else would she keep trotting out the same old lie even when it's publically been denounced as completely false by several independent fact-checking organizations?

Check out her truth-telling record at PolitiFact:
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/michele-bachmann/

Do you REALLY want a woman that plays this fast and loose with facts as POTUS?

[Moon_Base]

The only thing I get out of this story is the how bitter the author must be. It is like he or she went into a closet and just yelled their lungs out and wrote it down.