polidork potion

Hey blogateers, I don't know (for sure) about (all of) you but I suspect that we're not all that different in having spent the vast majority of our adult lives ensconced in the commie ivory tower and hence lack any deep connection to our more rouge hued fellow Americans. If so, then perhaps you've also been wondering about the GOP presidential noms for 2008.

It seems like all the big names in the Republican party (Guliani, McCain, Romney, etc.) are uniformly pro-choice in their views and (in at least a few cases) anti-war in their guts. Thus, these guys just didn't make sense to me as presidential nominees, considering the direction the party has been taking in recent years. That’s when I stumbled across this.

It seems this Patrick Ruffini dude has decided to conduct a straw poll of possible candidates in the 2008 Republican primaries. He allowed voters to choose one favorite from a list of likely candidates (Main Ballot) and another from a list of unlikely candidates (Fantasy Ballot). Here are the results so far:

Total Votes: 12476

Main Ballot: (only likely candidates)
Giuliani   3873 (31%)
Allen      2544 (20.4%)
Gingrich   1823 (14.6%)
Romney     1199 (9.6%)
McCain      950 (7.6%)
Tancredo    595 (4.8%)
Undecided   457 (3.7%)
Brownback   363 (2.9%)
Frist       238 (1.9%)
Huckabee    231 (1.9%)
Hagel       143 (1.1%)
Pataki       60 (0.5%)

Fantasy Ballot: (likely and unlikely candidates)
Rice       4953 (39.7%)
Cheney     1791 (14.4%)
J. Bush    1150 (9.2%)
Thompson   1036 (8.3%)
Giuliani    942 (7.6%)
Allen       680 (5.5%)
McCain      473 (3.8%)
Gingrich    438 (3.5%)
Tancredo    296 (2.4%)
Romney      295 (2.4%)
Hagel       109 (0.9%)
Brownback   102 (0.8%)
Undecided    74 (0.6%)
Huckabee     63 (0.5%)
Frist        57 (0.5%)
Pataki       17 (0.1%)

The first thing that struck me about this was that apparently people are as unhappy with the likely candidates as I expected. None of the likely candidates even made the top 4 in the fantasy list. The next thought I had was, "who the heck is George Allen?" With the exceptions of Allen and Gingrich, I had guessed the top few likely candidates, and I am willing to discount Newt as a cranks vote. He has certainly grown in popularity lately, but I don't see him overcoming his past and being electable in the minds of voters. So that left Allen. You can learn more about him here and here. But the short short version is that, of the probable candidates in the Republican stable, he's the only one who's ideologically pure (both socially & fiscally) and who seems popular enough to have a shot at the nomination. Keep your ears open over the next few years, I suspect you may be hearing more about him...