Ron Paul holding strong in Iowa

[mavs>spurs]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/28/iowa-caucus-2012-ron-paul-poll_n_1172411.html?icid=maing-grid7|aim|dl20|sec3_lnk2%26pLid%3D123431 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/28/iowa-caucus-2012-ron-paul-poll_n_1172411.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Caim%7Cdl20%7Csec3_lnk2%26pLid%3D123431)

Ron Paul Holding Iowa Lead In New PPP Poll

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/449682/thumbs/r-RON-PAUL-POLLS-large570.jpg
WASHINGTON -- The first new poll (http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2011/12/paul-maintains-his-lead.html) of likely Republican caucusgoers in Iowa (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elections/state/IA/?chart=12IAPresRepPR&chart_mode=new) since the Christmas holiday shows little change. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) continues to run slightly ahead of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (24 to 20 percent), followed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (13 percent), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) (11 percent), Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Sen. Rick Santorum (10 percent each), former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (4 percent) and former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer (2 percent).
The automated poll, conducted by the Democratic Party-affiliated firm Public Policy Polling (PPP), was conducted on Monday and Tuesday and shows little or no change in vote preferences compared to its last survey, conducted 10 days earlier. That poll showed Paul leading Romney by three points (23 to 20 percent), with Gingrich in third (14 percent).

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2011-12-28-Blumenthal-recentPPPIA.png
PPP's surveys, like the others, have shown support for Newt Gingrich rising from the single digits to a high of 27 percent in early December and then falling back to 13 percent on the current survey. In early December, PPP found Gingrich's personal rating peaking at 62 percent favorable, 31 percent unfavorable. Four weeks of pounding by negative ads (http://marion.patch.com/articles/political-tv-ad-spending-surging-in-iowa) have helped reverse that to 37 percent favorable, 54 percent unfavorable on the current survey.
Meanwhile, Ron Paul's support comes from what the PPP analysis (http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2011/12/paul-maintains-his-lead.html) describes as "a coalition of voters that's pretty unusual for a Republican in the state." Romney leads with traditional caucus-goers and Republicans, while Paul's lead depends on a 39-to-12 percent advantage among likely caucus-goers who say they are independents or Democrats and a 35-to-11 percent lead among voters under 45 years of age.
"The independent/young voter combo worked for Barack Obama in securing an unexpectedly large victory on the Democratic side in 2008," the PPP analysts write, "and it may be Paul's winning equation in 2012." PPP also finds that Paul's supporters are "more passionate" than Romney's, as Paul's lead over Romney is slightly larger (28 to 21 percent) among voters who say their minds are completely made up.
The biggest uncertainty about polling in Iowa this election cycle (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/27/iowa-caucus-polls-ron-paul-mitt-romney_n_1170954.html?ref=@pollster) will be whether the passion of Paul's younger and independent supporters that has been captured in the poll will translate into turnout on caucus night.
Meanwhile, the PPP poll shows no uptick in support for any of the candidates running at the back of the pack, although Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum are all within range of a third place finish. Santorum has the highest personal rating (56 percent favorable, 29 percent unfavorable) and is the most frequent second choice for president (at 14 percent). As such, the PPP analysis concludes that Santorum is the one candidate with "potential to grow his support in the final week."
The PPP poll was conducted on Monday and Tuesday among 565 registered voters who said they plan to vote in the Republican caucuses. Like many of the firms polling in Iowa this year, PPP uses an automated, recorded voice methodology which reaches landline telephones only.

[scott]

lol Newt

[Nbadan]

I think that nominating Ron Paul would lead to one of the easiest victory for President Obama...

http://s3-ak.buzzfed.com/static/imagebuzz/web05/2011/12/27/20/photo-of-ron-paul-palling-around-with-neo-nazis-17480-1325034927-8.jpg


Ron Paul was recently photographed with Don Black, director of the white nationalist Web site Stormfront, and his son, Derick. Paul has has been endorsed by several extremist groups, and has said that while he disowns them, he won't disavow their support.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/pajaroentertainmentltd/photo-of-ron-paul-palling-around-with-neo-nazis-31ii

[Nbadan]

Paul doesn't disown extremists views because he has extremists views...


In May, Mr. Paul reiterated in an interview with Chris Matthews of MSNBC that he would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawing segregation. He said that he supported its intent, but that parts of it violated his longstanding belief that government should not dictate how property owners behave. He has been featured in videos of the John Birch Society, which campaigned against the Civil Rights Act, warning, for instance, that the United Nations threatens American sovereignty.

In the mid-1990s, between his two stints as a Texas congressman, Mr. Paul produced a newsletter called The Ron Paul Survival Report, which only months before the Oklahoma City bombings encouraged militias to seek out and expel federal agents in their midst. That edition was titled “Why Militias Scare the Striped Pants Off Big Government.”

An earlier edition of another newsletter he produced, The Ron Paul Political Report, concluded that the need for citizens to arm themselves was only natural, given carjackings by “urban youth who play whites like pianos.” The report, with no byline but written in the first person, said: “I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self-defense. For the animals are coming.”

Mike Holmes, former editor of The American Libertarian, who has known Mr. Paul from libertarian circles since the 1970s, contended that the newsletters did not “rise to the level of hate speech.” He added: “It goes more to the level of social commentary. There was no use of any ‘N’-words. It amounted to the style of foul-mouthed punks trying to get inside the gang of paleoconservatives.”

Those newsletters have drawn new scrutiny through Mr. Paul’s two recent presidential campaigns. The New Republic posted several of them online in 2008 and again recently, including a lament about “The Disappearing White Majority.” The conservative Weekly Standard ran an article highlighting the newsletters last week.

Mr. Paul has long repudiated the newsletters, contending that they were written by the staff of his company, Ron Paul & Associates, while he was tending to his obstetrician’s practice and that he did not see some of them until 10 years later. “I disavow those positions,” he said in the interview. “They’re not my positions, and anybody who knows me, they’ve never heard a word of it.”

But production of the newsletters was partly overseen by Lew Rockwell, a libertarian activist who has been a close political aide and adviser to Mr. Paul over the course of decades. At the same time that he was a director for Mr. Paul’s company, Mr. Rockwell called on libertarians to reach out to “cultural and moral traditionalists,” who “reject not only affirmative action, set-asides and quotas, but the 1964 Civil Rights Act and all subsequent laws that force property owners to act against their will.”

Mr. Rockwell and Mr. Paul came to know each other as followers of the free-market Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek, who argued against socialism and centralized economic planning, a spokesman for Mr. Paul said. They joined with the libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard in the 1970s and 1980s during the early attempts to forge libertarianism into a national party.

Mr. Rockwell was listed in business filings as a director of Ron Paul & Associates from its founding in 1984 through its dissolution in 2001, and was a paid Paul campaign consultant through at least 2002, according to federal campaign records. He was Mr. Paul’s chief of staff during the congressman’s first period in Congress, which began in the 1970s, and championed his successful bid in 1988 for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination.

During that nominating battle, a flier produced by Mr. Paul’s opponents accused him of gay-baiting by reporting in one of his newsletters that the government was “lying” about the threat of AIDS and that the virus could be transmitted through “saliva, tears, sweat.” It said that some “AIDS carriers — perhaps out of a pathological hatred — continue to give blood.”

Mr. Paul said Friday “that was never my view at all,” and again blamed his staff. Still, that same year he was quoted in The Houston Post as saying that schools should be free to bar children with AIDS and that the government should stop financing AIDS research and education.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/us/politics/ron-paul-disowns-extremists-views-but-doesnt-disavow-the-support.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1325144495-MZoQVlCl5RcaRudLB7gkLw

[Nbadan]

dupe

[mavs>spurs]

actually, the polls show quite the opposite. Ron is the only republican candidate who CAN beat obama.

[Nbadan]

Check out realclearpolitics....no GOP candidate can beat Obama....

[Wild Cobra]

lol Newt
I think Newt would be the only candidate guaranteed to lose against Obama.

[boutons_deux]

IOWA = 1% of USA total, much less than 1% counting Repug voters only, and meaningless outside of the campaign-ad-grabbing media and the Repug professionals.

[boutons_deux]

Inside the Iowa caucus poll numbers: Good news for Romney, bad for Gingrich

Days before the Iowa caucus, the latest CNN/Time/ORC poll has Romney ahead of Paul, with Gingrich falling way behind his earlier strong standing and now trailing Santorum.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/President/2011/1228/Inside-the-Iowa-caucus-poll-numbers-Good-news-for-Romney-bad-for-Gingrich?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+feeds%2Fcsm+%28Christian+Scie nce+Monitor+|+All+Stories%29

========

So who will be the Repugs' next "anybody-but-Romney"? :lol

[JoeChalupa]

Paul is losing ground in Iowa and Romney can take it an run and Santorum is creeping up but he'll fade after Iowa as will Bachman.

[boutons_deux]

Marginalizing Ron Paul

It is official now. The Ron Paul campaign, despite surging in the Iowa polls, is not worthy of serious consideration, according to a New York Times editorial; “Ron Paul long ago disqualified himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard, cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

That last item, along with the decade-old racist comments in the newsletters Paul published, is certainly worthy of criticism. But not as an alternative to seriously engaging the substance of Paul’s current campaign—his devastating critique of crony capitalism and his equally trenchant challenge to imperial wars and the assault on our civil liberties that they engender.

Paul is being denigrated as a presidential contender even though on the vital issues of the economy, war and peace, and civil liberties, he has made the most sense of the Republican candidates. And by what standard of logic is it “claptrap” for Paul to attempt to hold the Fed accountable for its destructive policies? That’s the giveaway reference to the raw nerve that his favorable prospects in the Iowa caucuses have exposed. Too much anti-Wall Street populism in the heartland can be a truly scary thing to the intellectual parasites residing in the belly of the beast that controls American capitalism.

It is hypocritical that Paul is now depicted as the archenemy of non-white minorities when it was his nemesis, the Federal Reserve, that enabled the banking swindle that wiped out 53 percent of the median wealth of African-Americans and 66 percent for Latinos, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Fed sits at the center of the rot and bears the major responsibility for tolerating the runaway mortgage-backed securities scam that is at the core of our economic crisis. After the meltdown it was the Fed that led ultra secret machinations to bail out the banks while ignoring the plight of the their exploited customers.

To his credit, Paul marshaled bipartisan support to pass a bill requiring the first-ever public audit of the Federal Reserve. That audit is how readers of the Times first learned of the Fed’s trillions of dollars in secret loans and aid given to the banks as a reward for screwing over the public.

As for the Times’ complaint that Paul seeks to unreasonably cut the federal budget by one-third, it should be noted that his is a rare voice in challenging irrationally high military spending. At a time when the president has signed off on a Cold War-level defense budget and his potential opponents in the Republican field want to waste even more on high-tech weapons to fight a sophisticated enemy that doesn’t exist, Paul has emerged as the only serious peace candidate. As The Wall Street Journal reported, Paul last week warned an Iowa audience, “Watch out for the military-industrial complex—they always have an enemy. Nobody is going to invade us. We don’t need any more [weapons systems.]”


http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/marginalizing_ron_paul_20111229/

[ChuckD]

An irrelevant candidate leads the polls for the primary in a no longer relevant state.

[CosmicCowboy]

An irrelevant candidate leads the polls for the primary in a no longer relevant state.

Pretty much sums it up....

[Nbadan]

I think it's very relevant that Gingrich or Romney can't win over a fringe candidate...

[SA210]

Does that poll take into account Democratic voters that would vote for Ron Paul?

[ChumpDumper]

Does that poll take into account Democratic voters that would vote for Ron Paul?I wouldn't doubt that at all.

[Wild Cobra]

I think it's very relevant that Gingrich or Romney can't win over a fringe candidate...

Since when is Paul a fringe candidate? He has always been more a republican than the sell out RINO's. He just tells people what's on his mind instead of what is popular or politically correct. He's awesome in that regard. He can be a great leader.

[boutons_deux]

"Since when is Paul a fringe candidate?"

since forever, and always.

[CosmicCowboy]

Check out realclearpolitics....no GOP candidate can beat Obama....

:lmao

Nbadan doesn't drink the koolaid...he has a drip IV...

[TheSullyMonster]

Does that poll take into account Democratic voters that would vote for Ron Paul?

:downspin:

Yeah, there is a lot of overlap between democrat and libertarian ideologies.:toast

[PublicOption]

https://secure.ronpaul2012.com/

[PublicOption]

I think it's very relevant that Gingrich or Romney can't win over a fringe candidate...


Paul is only fringe because you losers let the media define your thoughts. :nope

[PublicOption]

"Since when is Paul a fringe candidate?"

since forever, and always.


The establishment wins if you believe that.

Paul is only fringe because you losers let the media define your thoughts. :nope

[Vici]

I'm one of those "Obama voters" that would vote for Paul.

[Vici]

:downspin:

Yeah, there is a lot of overlap between democrat and libertarian ideologies.:toast

You'd be surprised

[JoeChalupa]

Paul had dropped and he could have nipped the whole newsletter fiasco in the bud but no, now he is reaping what he sowed. Santorum just may finish ahead of Paul tonight and give Romney a run for his millions.

[boutons_deux]

you assholes know that about 150K extreme-right wing/religious Taleban voters max are expected to vote today?

150K out of 300M+ Human-Americans.

What a farce (it's actually nothing but money-grubbing by MSM for political ads).

[ChumpDumper]

At least we'll stop getting sound bites of fat Iowans sitting in diners saying stuff like "I like Santorum. He say things."

[Spurminator]

Yet what is and isn’t part of the mainstream is something that political campaigns determine. And the truth is that Paul’s vision reveals—with candor and specificity—what the G.O.P.’s rhetorical hostility to government would mean if it were rigorously put into practice. A minimal state, without welfare provisions for the unemployed. A quarter of a million federal workers—as a first installment—joining those unemployed. Foreign policy and national defense reduced to a few ballistic-missile submarines. The civil-rights legislation of the nineteen-sixties repealed as so much unwarranted government intrusion. As for the financial crisis, Paul would have countenanced no regulation that might have prevented it, no government stabilization of the financial system after it happened, and no special help for working people hurt by it. This is where the logic of government-shrinking leads.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/01/09/120109taco_talk_lemann#ixzz1iQLAnqRD