Posted on 11/29/2007 5:08:43 PM PST by traviskicks
ST. PETERSBURG -- Mitt Romney bought himself a victory in the straw poll for Republicans at a rain-shortened barbecue in Vinoy Park.
Romney got 893 votes, besting second-place Ron Paul's 534 -- despite Paul's shuttling in supporters on a rented trolley and shuttle. The campaign had a plane sporting pro-Paul slogans and a boat touting him, too.
In fact, Paul supporters dominated the crowd, which reached an estimated 1,000 people. Tickets for votes cost $20 each.
So how did Romney do it?
"I voted 20 times," Derek Gyongzois, 38, of St. Petersburg exclaimed after casting ballots.
He said he works as a volunteer for the Romney campaign (and begged a reporter not to print his 20-vote tally). Did he buy the tickets?
"I don't have that kind of money," Gyongzois said.
He wasn't the only person voting more than once. Paul supporter Mike Wagner, 57, of St. Petersburg: "This thing is rigged."
Before rain cut short the event, Paul supporters were voting multiple times, too.
"This is the best election money can buy, anywhere," said Pinellas County GOP chairman Tony DiMatteo, a Rudy Giuliani supporter. Giuliani received 39 votes, followed by Mike Huckabee's 37 and Fred Thompson's 21. John McCain had 12; Duncan Hunter, 4, Alan Keyes, 2; and Tom Tancredo, 1.
Romney takes a hit
Mitt Romney played in an organized flag football game at Flora Wylie Park in St. Petersburg with his five sons, staffers, supporters and the media.
Romney laced up his Mizuno running shoes and played for 10 to 15 minutes. Teammates included former state Republican chairman Al Cardenas and St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker. They all got pretty sweaty.
"My son Matt tackled me," Romney said. "But fortunately he didn't throw me to the ground and make me eat grass."
McCain meets teens
Sen. John McCain greeted supporters at the Parkshore Grill in St. Petersburg before the debate. A good portion of the crowd included high school students invited by the McCain campaign.
Devin Watson, a junior at Northside Christian School, said she became aware of McCain when she saw him as a guest on The Daily Show.
Kevin Burkett, a sophomore at Northside, said he likes McCain's "prowar stance" and the fact that he's a veteran.
"I think it's cowardly to cut and run," Burkett said.
McCain told the teenagers that if they don't like the way the country's run they should become politically active.
Rally stays peaceful
A mishmash of activists gathered in St. Petersburg's Pioneer Park, calling for political change and participating in a straw poll. The crowd included members of 30 organizations, including the Democratic Party from Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough counties, Veterans for Peace, the Florida Green Party, the Libertarian Club of Pinellas and the South St. Petersburg Democratic Club.
So who won? Ron Paul, whose supporters arrived in buses, crushed the field. He took 240 of the 322 votes cast. Dennis Kucinich was the closest competitor, at 26.
Down the street, more than 100 homeless men and women and their supporters rallied across from the Mahaffey Theater. Later, nearly 400 people marched down First Street S carrying placards with messages such as "Jesus was homeless, too" and "Ron Paul is my homie."
The homeless and their advocates, who had been rallying outside the Mahaffey since Sunday night, had predicted a showdown with police. But that confrontation never materialized.
Instant gratification department
According to a survey of Republican voters who watched last night's CNN/YouTube debate, the winner was ... Mike Huckabee.
The InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Research/Florida Chamber of Commerce survey, in which voters participated by calling into a toll-free phone line, gathered opinions from 341 GOP voters. The margin of error is 5.25 percent. Here are the results:
Huckabee: 44%; Giuliani: 18%; Romney: 13%; McCain: 10%; Thompson: 5%; Paul: 4%; Tancredo: 1%; no winner: 5%
DNC cancels debate
The Democratic National Committee has canceled a Dec. 10 presidential debate in Los Angeles because of a potential strike by CBS news writers.
The debate, which was to be televised by CBS, faced uncertainty after the network's news writers voted to authorize the Writers Guild of America to call a strike. After that vote, the major Democratic presidential contenders announced they would not participate in the debate if the labor dispute was not resolved.
Times staff writers Jennifer Liberto, Cristina Silva and Janet Zink contributed to this report, which includes information from the Associated Press.
[Last modified November 29, 2007, 19:36:33]
No, I wouldn't, because Paul is for all intents and purposes what people understand to be an isolationist. Yeah, he pops off on the difference between isolationism and anti-interventionism, but the common understanding that he wants to pull back American troops to the borders and within applies. As McCain said, doing that will embolden The Next Hitler (or the next Hirohito) whoever that may be, just as it did in the isolationist period post-Great War (bka World War I).
If Ron Paul wins, he will do so on a wave of support coming from non-conservatives who will surely devastate the Republican party. The Dems will have the legislature, and claim even more than they are now that they are the voice of the American people. The looney left will OWN Ron Paul because their machines that installed him. And they would figure that if they could make him, they can break him. Gridlock would be the most optimistic result; a neophyte to executive office would be under intense pressure to compromise to get something done (see Schwarzenegger, Arnold).
Get a clue.
I submit to you that if gun-grabbing, abortion-supporting, cross-dressing Guiliani wins, it will much more thoroughly devastate the Republican party than a Paul victory would.
Look at the tattered fragments of the bankrupt GOP party in California in the wake of Arnold’s election, if you don’t believe me.
Gridlock would be a far better state of affairs than the rampant growth of government cost and power over the past decade or two.
Schwarzenegger only became the populist he is now after the GOP bungled his reform campaigns, and he threw his lot in with Democrats because he couldn't beat them. Greenies and Demos that support Paul wouldn't let him get away with anything truly conservative; they would do what the MoveOnCodePinkoANSWER crowd is doing with the Democrats, which is to say "You owe us. Dance, monkey."
Also, it was not US isolationism which principally empowered Hitler, it was aggressive foreign interventionism carried out against Germany in the form of enormous, multi-billion war reparations levied as punishment for its role in World War I. Check your history books if you don’t believe me. And that’s back when a billion was real money.
When Germany missed payments in 1923, French and Belgian forces occupied the Ruhr, which led to hyperinflation and an economic collapse. Once the German economy finally recovered from that, and later from the crash on Wall Street, a reparations payment schedule was laid out stretching to 1988, as hard as that is to believe.
It wasn’t “isolationism” or “non-interventionism,” but exactly the opposite, which led to the rise of Hitler on the wave of popular support of his pledge to end reparation payments.
And that's just what happens when you elect an unprincipled flip-flopping RINO to a position of power.
mission9,
Grasshopper? Look, just because you miss my point does not give you the right to leverage yourself over me by alluding yourself to be wiser. I truly believe we both have certain skills that are superior, but I don’t beg people to let me teach them. I grant that caveat to my father.
traviskicks,
I agree, kinda. I feel like mainstream GOP is pushing new people away just because they don’t know how to control them. While I agree that it would be amazing to integrate, I doubt it will happen ever. GOP is too focused on abusing the Constitution by distorting parts of it, all in the name of conservative values.
Only the abandonment of American isolationism stopped Hitler. Or are you, like the leftists who adore Gorbachev, going to insist that Hitler let himself be defeated for the sake of the world?
Paul wants everyone to believe that the U.S. can, under his leadership, turn back the clock and go back to a foreign policy philosophy that existed before the days of trans-ocean flight, spy satellites, and ICBMs. Sorry, Ronnie -- that moment has passed, and nothing's going to bring it back. Deal with the world as it is, not the way you wish it was.
Dear Grasshopper,
Thank you for acknowledging and exemplifying my points.
You question my “right?” Let us examine the BILL OF RIGHTS:
As the Constitution says: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the PEOPLE.
(emphasis mine)
So we would conclude that I have the right, and you, the constitutional student, would agree.
Now perhaps you meant to say “you have offended me by being rude” You have no right not to be offended.
As to the GOP “abusing the Constitution by distorting parts of it” Welcome to the struggle that we have fought since before you were born.
The GOP is wide open to those of talent and skill who wish to advance the cause of Liberty. I am looking forward to your help.
Today's lesson, sometimes it is better to remain silent and let others think you a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Abandonment of American Non-interventionism created hitler. Without US involvement in WWI, either Germany would have won the war or there would have been a negotiated peace. Either way, there would have been no support in a undefeated Imperial Germany for hitler & his nazis to rise to power.
Also, would a strong, united Germany have allowed the cancer of communism to take power in Russia? I think not.
Fascists came to power in post-WWI Italy because the Italians were led to believe that the Allies screwed them out of their "just rewards" due to them by virtue of the fact that they fought on the Allied side. Would the fascists have been able to use this argument to rise to power if they were not on the winning side in WWI? I think not.
The Allies extensively used, and were very dependent on native and colonial support during WWII. Countless future "freedom fighters" learned their trade by participation in WWII. Early defeats of Allied forces by the Axis, including European and American defeats at the hands of non-European Japanese, showed the third world that colonial powers were not invincible. Most colonial possesions of the European powers gained their independence because of the lessons of WWII and the fact that the west was weakened and war-weary after "victory". Problem is, they were not ready for self-government at the time. They needed generations of people to be educated in proper governance, as well as a drawn-out period of gradual transition to native rule to have had a chance to become peaceful and prosperous independent nations.
Would a third world have had a much greater chance at becoming functioning, peaceful and prosperous independent nations if the western powers had held power in the colonies longer and transitioned to self-rule over a long period? I think so.
You, and most other Ron Paul detractors argue that in "today's world", a non-interventionallist foreign policy would lead to disaster. I say that your position had it's way for almost the entire 20th century, and that it directly resulted in the bloodiest, most violent and destructive century in the history of the human race, and that it's time to try something different.
I think that history backs up my (and Dr. Paul's) position.
“Dear Grasshopper,”
Dear Locust,
Since you can’t stop, I’ll appropriately attach a name to you based on what I have seen of you, of similar origin. Can anyone else explain why I used this name for him? I’ve tried but I get too long winded :S
Anyways, it is old news that the Pinellas County Republican Party changed the Straw Poll Rules at least 3 times to limit certain behavior and specifically told me that the Straw Poll was essentially a fundraiser for the hosting local group. This is not the complete definition of a Straw Poll. Locust, you should be the first to know this since you are all wise and crap.
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