Fred Thompson Wins, Ron Paul Second in South Carolina Straw Poll

Fred Thompson Wins Georgetown County Straw Poll

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 28, 2007
Contact: Tom Swatzel (843) 357-1673

PAWLEYS ISLAND, SC--Former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson convincingly won the Georgetown County Republican Party presidential primary straw poll today with 46% of the votes, while second and third place finishers Congressman Ron Paul and Governor Mitt Romney had 18% and 17% respectively.

Georgetown County Republican Party Chairman Tom Swatzel said, "Senator Fred Thompson and his committee are to be congratulated for their efforts today. It's clear his supporters are well organized and motivated."

Congressman Gresham Barrett represented Thompson at the event.

Swatzel said that there were 223 total votes cast and that overall the event was attended by about 250 people. "For our first ever straw poll, I am pleased with the turn out. It was an enthusiastic crowd that was the essence of grassroots politics at its best," he said.

All eleven of the active presidential campaigns recognized on the state Republican Party web site- plus Thompson, who is expected to formally announce his candidacy soon- were invited to participate the event, which was held in the Waccamaw High School auditorium in Pawleys Island.

The overall results are as follows:

Fred Thompson 102
Ron Paul 40
Mitt Romney 37

Duncan Hunter 15
Rudy Giuliani 13
John McCain 7
Sam Brownback 6
Newt Gingrich 2
Daniel Gilbert 1

Who would you suggest as an alternative to Fred?

I like this question so will just jump in:

Fred is still a cypher to me, one I want to learn more about, but nonetheless a cypher. He has some good rhetoric and some bad votes (and some good ones). He is like GWB 6+ years ago - a man with a slim record but who looks better than the rest.

I need to mine his votes further. Men who change once they get in Washington are not the kind I want to vote for. I will also look at Hunter more, and Ron Paul. Hunter needs to convince me he is not a spendocrat and that he can be discerning when it comes to military spending especially.

Ron Paul is a much-needed tonic to the Republican "where-else-you-gonna go?" hubris. As a party, the Republicans throw social conservatives a bone some of the time, fiscal conservatives hardly at all, and Constitutional conservatives/small-governement voters once in a blue moon. They are the Nixon country club set but they put a cross or Reagan bobblehead on the limo as the hood ornament when it's expedient.

And Ron Paul may even be right on foreign policy. I say might because I am still trying to get facts, not hearsay or alarmist rumblings, on the threat posed by Iran to the USA. If the USA truly wants to taper off Muslim terrorism (aimed at Americans and not, well, other Muslims), we need to learn to not need Arab oil. As long as we instrumentally play country against country and people against people in the name of geo-politics, they are going to sniff it out and resent it, and of course use it to stir the pot against us for centuries.

This does not address the larger "death by democracy" issue in which non-breeding Westerners fear the takeover of their culture by rapidly-breeding Muslims. Westerners have their fate in their own hands and will ultimately live or die according to how much they value the gift of life - ie children and procreation and the unborn - as parents and societies blessed with some of the most abundant riches and liberties on earth. As a society we can't say "we won't breed but we need to import a slave class" and then be shocked when that class starts to take over. It's sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind. It's solution can come form one of two directions, it seems to me.

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