TWS Straw Poll: A GOP Elite Eight, Heading toward a Final Four? (Cruz, Fiorina, Kasich & Rubio?)

The Weekly Standard ^ | September 7, 2015 | William Kristol

[2ndDivisionVet]

The results of the latest straw poll of WEEKLY STANDARD readers are in. It's not a scientific poll, of course—but since the respondents are very perceptive WEEKLY STANDARD readers, I'm going to claim (why not?) that the results are a suggestive leading indicator of where the GOP race may be going.

We asked for first, second, and third place choices. Here are the first place results:

Marco Rubio 21%
Donald Trump 15%
Ted Cruz 15%
Carly Fiorina 12%
Ben Carson 11%
Scott Walker 9%
John Kasich 7%
Jeb Bush 4%

No one else had more than 1.5 percent of the first place votes.

Now here are the percentage of the ballots on which the candidate is mentioned for first, second, or third place:

Carly Fiorina 52%
Marco Rubio 46%
Ben Carson 44%
Ted Cruz 40%
Scott Walker 29%
Donald Trump 25%
John Kasich 20%
Jeb Bush 14%

All others in mid-to-low single digits.

What to conclude?

1. An Elite Eight seems to have emerged. Someone else could come from far behind or enter the race late—but at this point it would seem likely one of these eight contenders listed above will be the nominee.

2. Scott Walker, who's led past TWS straw polls, has had a very bad few weeks. Can he recover?

3. John Kasich has a shot to join or replace Jeb Bush as the establishment candidate unafraid to make the case for nominating someone with governing experience.

4. Ben Carson has had a well-publicized and impressive move up. But Carly Fiorina has also rocketed up in our straw polls, and Ted Cruz has been gaining pretty consistently as well.

5. If you tend to think, as I do, that ultimately neither Trump nor Carson will be nominated, and if you assume no comeback for Walker or Bush, you get a Final Four of Rubio, Fiorina, Cruz, and Kasich. Which seems plausible.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Discuss.

[JoSixChip]

Wait, what? Is this is the end of Trump, for the nth time?

[Bobalu]

Rubio? Seriously?

"The Weekly Standard" is actually "The Weakly Standard"

[Jim Robinson]

Where’s the beef?

[brothers4thID]

I will be more interested in polls ( all all types) after the “endorsement season” of November- January has wrapped up. Iowa numbers could swing very quickly depending on who Rep. King endorses. Endorsements by leading Southern evangelicals could also cause a huge “disturbance in the Force”.

Right now polling sizes are either too small or the surveys are on-line straw polls that have no scientific basis and can be easily manipulated.

[Yosemitest]

William Kristol is another LIBERAL that is TRYINGto make everyone believe that he's a "conservative".
But he's 'full of it'.

The word "neocons" is ONLY used by LIBERALS, trying to insult Conservatives.
The is no such thing as a "NEW" Conservative.
Conservatives ARE Conservative, plain and simple.

But read this"

Liberals, Conservatives, and Neocons — Learn the Difference!
March 12, 2014

Almost everybody is confused about the word "neoconservative" and its shortened form, "neocon."
I find that liberals/Democrats seem to use it as a sort of disrespectful form of "conservative,"
and probably have no idea the the words have distinct meanings.
On the other hand, I know of some conservatives who define it as "new conservatives,"
meaning people who were formerly something else, but have converted to conservatism.
Both are wrong.
As near as I can tell, "neo-" doesn't apply to any other word that way —
formerly not X, but having become X.
No, "neo-" almost always refers to an ideology that is different from the root word in a significant way.
Neoconfederates are not people who want to secede and become a separate country.
They want the ideals of the Confederacy to be applied to modern politics, more or less, but not all of them.
Neoliberal is a more vague term,
but it specifically applies to people who may have SOME of the attributes of liberals,
but who contradict liberalism in their advocacy of free trade and privatization
and other ideas usually thought of as conservative.
And, finally, neoconservatives are mostly those moderate cold war LIBERALS who defected to the Republican party when the Democrats got totally flaky with McGovern and his ilk.
Their ultimate origin, however, is not the Democratic party but the Trotskyite movement.



Jack Kerwick elaborates.

Read this:

Most "Conservatives" Are Secretly Neoconservatives
12 March, 2014, by Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.

A colleague of mine has drawn my attention to a Washington Post blog post — “Why Most Conservatives Are Secretly Liberals” — by a Professor John Sides, a political scientist at Georgetown University.

Sides agrees with fellow political scientists Christopher Ellis and James Stimson, co-authors of Ideology in America.
Ellis and Stimson CONTEND that
America is, at bottom, a “center-left nation,”
for while “30 percent” of self-described “liberals” are consistent in endorsing “liberal” policy prescriptions,
the same sort of consistency can be ascribed to only “15 percent” of “conservatives.”
And another “30 percent” of “conservatives” actually advance “liberal” positions.

In short, Americans may TALK the talk of “conservatism,” but they WALK the walk of “liberalism.”
That is, they favor Big Government.

Sides, Ellis, and Stimson, it seems clear to me, are “liberals.”
It doesn’t require much reading between the lines to discern this.
That they associate “liberals,” and “liberals” ALONE, with such virtues as “consistency” and such lofty ideals as “a cleaner environment” and “a stronger safety net” is enough to bear this out.
Yet in peddling the ridiculous, patently absurd notion that
“conservatives” see the media as PROMOTING “conservatism,”
the verdict regarding their “liberalism” is seen for the NO-BRAINER that it is.

There is, though, another CLUE that unveils Sides’, Ellis’, and Stimson’s ideological PREJUDICES:
They equate the term “liberalism” with a robust affirmation of Big Government.
They treat “liberalism” synonymously with its modern, “Welfare-Statist” incarnation.
There is no mention here of the fact that, originally, “liberalism” referred to
a vision that attached supreme value to individual liberty,
a vision in which government played, and had to play, a minimal role in the lives of its citizens.
And there is no mention of the fact that, if “liberalism” is now “an ugly word,”
it is because the very same socialists who made “socialism” an ugly word hijacked “liberalism” when it enjoyed a favorable reception
and visited upon it the same fate that they secured for “socialism.”

In other words, if Sides himself wanted to be bluntly honest, he’d have to admit that “liberals” are secretly socialists.

Still, though their premises are bogus, Sides and his colleagues draw the correct conclusion that
most “conservatives” are NOTHING OF THE KIND.
The truth of the matter is that
the vast majority of contemporary “conservatives” are neoconservatives.

Now, “neoconservatism” is a term that hasn’t the best reputation.
It has ALWAYS BEEN CONTROVERSIAL,
and most of its proponents have DISAVOWED IT to the point of, preposterously, condemning it as an “anti-Semitic” SLUR.
But George W. Bush and his party inflicted potentially irrevocable damage upon the label.
“Conservatism” is a more marketable label.

Nevertheless, the reality is that neoconservatism is indeed a distinct school of political thought.
Beyond this, it is fundamentally different in kind from classical conservatism.
Irving Kristol, the so-called “Godfather” of neoconservatism, an appellation that he readily endorsed, ADMITS this in noting both
that neoconservatism exists
and that “conservative” “can be misleading” when used to describe it.

Neoconservatism, you see, is THE INVENTION OF LEFTISTS like Kristol himself.
When the Democratic Party began veering too far to the Left in the 1960s, Kristol and more moderate leftists began turning toward the Republican Party.
So as TO DISTINGUISH THEMSELVES FROM traditional conservatives, they coined the term “neoconservatism.”

Neoconservatives, Kristol asserts, are “not at all hostile to the idea of a welfare state” —
even if they reject the “vast and energetic bureaucracies” created by the Great Society.
Neoconservatives ENDORSE “social security, unemployment insurance,” and “some kind of family assistance plan,” among other measures.
But what’s most interesting, particularly at a time when ObamaCare has DIVIDED the country, is that Kristol reminds us that
neoconservatives SUPPORT “some form of national health insurance.”

In all truthfulness, however, neither a degree in political science nor an IQ above four is required to know that
neoconservatism has always championed Big Government
for it is its foreign policy vision more than anything else that distinguishes it from its competitors.
For neoconservatives, America is “exceptional” in being, as Kristol puts it, “a creedal nation,”
the only nation in all of human history to have been founded upon an “ideology” of equality, of “natural rights.”
The U.S.A., then, has a responsibility to promote this ideology throughout the world.

And it is by way of a potentially boundless military — i.e. Big Government — that this “ideological patriotism” is to be executed.

Had the foregoing political scientists been looking in the right places, they would BE FORCED TO CONCLUDE that most “conservatives” are secretly neoconservatives.

So, you see that those WHO THEY CALL "neoconservatives", are really nothing more than the old moderate side of the DemocRATS.
It's just THAT SIMPLE .

[Reno89519]

Such convoluted BS. All this is is another attempt to twist things to dump Trump from the top. Seriously, does anyone think Cruz, Fiorina, Kasich, and Rubio will be the final four standing?! Not likely.

[Gaffer]

I’ve long thought that “neocon” was a word used by liberals and establishment RINOs as a epithet for conservatives.

As for Kristol, he’s gonna keep pulling trash out his butt until the election proves him wrong. He and his Sunday panel ilk can keep on spitting that bile and venom - it’s doing them a fat lot of good. I’ve pretty much stopped watching any Sunday panel show as well as Fox.

[Yosemitest]

I've tuned them out, also.
Occasionally, I'll watch Hannity, but I mostly get my news from Glenn Beck, Rush, Anncoulter.com, and www.breitbart.com..
Anybody else simply isn't worth my time.

[harpu]

'Discuss' what?

That Kristol (supporter of the GOPe) is trying to wish Trump away?!?

[harpu]

"Seriously, does anyone think Cruz, Fiorina, Kasich, and Rubio will be the final four standing?! Not likely."

It's a good list for Trump's VP selection but nothing more!

[harpu]

"I’ve pretty much stopped watching any Sunday panel show as well as Fox."

AMEN!

I'll go back to FOX when 'allaboutme' Kelly is gone!

[rrrod]

interesting.....not sure where to go with this.

[Iscool]

A joke poll...

[BigEdLB]

This may well be the reading audience of the magazine, but where else does any poll show Rubio with a quarter of the vote?

[BigEdLB]

Good point. This is an online poll from TWS website. Ron Paul isn’t running or he’d have 50%

[redfreedom]

It’s a meaningless poll of subscribers to the Weekly Standard. It represents their wishful thinking. The Weekly Standard readers are not representative of the general public.

Just another mindless attempt to sway opinion.

My opinion can only be swayed by someone with better ideas than Trump to fix America. This does not include scRubio or RINOette Fiorina.

[jospehm20]

I do not think there is one. Amnesty shills are just not very popular with anybody but the CoC cronies at the moment.

[rrrod]

Rubio, even after coming out against the amnesty plan that failed, still carries the AMNESTY baggage. A lot here on FR dont like him no matter what. He is Hispanic and Catholic so thats a double hit for some but I still think he may be VP.
Time will tell.

[LS]

You should see NRO. I call them “The Four Horsemen of the Anti-Trump Apocalypse,” Jim Geraghty, Jonah Goldberg, Jay Cost, Guy Benson (the latter may not write for NRObut should he’s such an echo).