On March 6th, Ron Paul suspended his efforts to become the Republican candidate for President, but his supporters didn’t all get the memo. In the most recent Republican primaries, Ron Paul has been pulling a noticeable portion of votes, despite a lack of active campaigning
Primary Date State Percent of Vote McCain/Paul
3-Jun New Mexico 86 14
3-Jun South Dakota 70 17
27-May Idaho 70 24
20-May Kentucky 72 7
20-May Oregon 85 15
13-May W. Virginia 76 5
6-May Indiana 78 8
6-May N. Carolina 74 8
22-Apr Pennsylvania 73 16
While, the focus has been on the struggle between Clinton and Obama supporters, McCain not only is attached to a party with a low approval rating, but lacks the ability to draw cohesive support from his party. McCain is not an option for roughly a quarter of the Republican party if the numbers above are anything to go by. There are continued rumblings that Ron Paul supporters are going to make a splash at the Republican convention this fall. (Paul finds Obama’s foreign policy stance to be “slightly” better than McCain and believes Obama could take the White House in November). The Evangelicals that helped put Bush into office twice, are not only doubting McCain, but are beginning to question the Republican party itself. Young Evangelicals want to disassociate religion with social issues.
They say they are tired of the culture wars. They say they do not want the test of their faith to be the fight against gay rights. They say they want to broaden the traditional evangelical anti-abortion agenda to include care for the poor, the environment, immigrants and people with H.I.V., according to experts on younger evangelicals and the young people themselves.
So while the media circus focuses on Hilary’s refusal to give up her candidacy and what Obama is or isn’t doing about it, McCain has big problems in his own back yard. While McCain works to pick up some Clinton supporters who’d rather spite themselves and vote for a candidate that goes against much of what Clinton stands for than vote for Obama, he better at least try to staunch the hemorrhaging from his own party.
No related posts.
John McCain is the one we have and he was picked by the American people!
http://goodtimepolitics.com/2008/06/04/he-said-of-obama-he-has-closed-all-doors-to-peace/
I think you are right about a couple things but i have a reason as to why. Tim and I have discussed the media’s role in picking the candidates, McCain is the media’s “maverick”. The media called the party’s nominee months ago and really did not give coverage of the other candidates like Romney and Huckabee (both much better choices). The same can be said about Obama and Hillary, like it or not, the media picked them as the favorites because of race and gender! It is absolutely the case that the media and the public want to see a glass ceiling broken despite obvious consequences.
The democrat party should have picked Biden and/or Dodd as their candidates, both pretty good on the issues and with some great stances (I can say that as a conservative) but they never stood a chance because of the race/gender cards out there.
Essentially the media has picked the maverick, the woman (not anymore though) and the minority and they are all bad choices to certain degrees. The old “if it bleeds it leads” has turned to “if it causes talk, we’ll walk that walk”
Zak, I would really like to see Paul’s people make a push at the convention. I think that it is the only thing that the Republicans have going for them and I think some of what he represents, just like Kucinich on the Dem side needs to be out and a continuing part of the discussion.
wow, chris. i never thought i’d see the day where we’d sort of agree on something!
Chris, you may be right about the media picking up on the candidates that would create the most buzz for the media but I KNOW you are definitely wrong if you think that the voters are actually paying attention to the media anymore. The voters want a change in the status quo and they sense via Paul and Kucinich and Obama that they can get it if they keep ignoring the media except for its entertainment value and vote for whom and what they really want. The media did not write nor give Obama’s speech at the 2004 convention. The media doesn’t write nor give them now. The media is just a pack of dogs looking for its next meal, its next book deal, and it wouldn’t in its collective wisdom recognize the real deal if it sat down next to them and barked.