What A Difference Only A Few Days Will Make
Written by YellowJacket on June 1st, 2007Fred Thompson had the conference call with 75-100 of his core supporters Tuesday, which was not publically revealed until Wednesday, as well as the news that he planned on setting up a “testing the waters” committee in a possible run for President. In a poll taken Wednesday and Thursday, Thompson already made a huge dent in the polls:
Insider Advantage is out with a national poll of the Republican field:
Giuliani 28%
F. Thompson 19%
Romney 17%
McCain 16%
Huckabee 4%
Brownback 3%
Undecided 8%
(May 30-31, N=1,000RV, MoE +/- 3.0%)
I’m getting excited. It’s also of note that the sinking of the McCain ship that has been rumored by political junkies such as ourselves is finally showing up in poll numbers as Romney overtakes him, even if only by 1 point and the MoE making it irrelevant - it’s still starting to show up.
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After the first debate Thompson participates in I would expect him to take the lead.
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McCain isn’t out of it. At least, not yet.
The eventual nominee will be helped by the crowded field, it will generate more press coverage of the Republican primary.
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I agree Alex, I won’t be upset in the slightest if Thompson trails for a while and I expect it will take a lot of work to combat the party machine that is backing Romney/Giuliani. That being said this will play out in a fairly predictable pattern. All the $$ and endorsements in the world won’t be able to save the current frontrunners once America meets Fred.
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Mike is right…after the first debate Thompson will take the lead. Most of the Romney supporters (like myself) will become instantaneous Thompson supporters (like myself) and a good chunk of McCain/Guiliani supporters will follow suit.
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I’m curious to see how much of Thompson’s support comes from Rudy’s side. I’m a conservative, and Rudy was the “most tolerable” to me among the “main three.” I’m still confused how conservatives can be confident out where in the world Romney really is on social issues, and I’m one of those who prefers a Rudy (”I’m clearly pro-choice but will put in good judges”) over wafflers.
At any rate, while my support for Rudy WITHOUT Fred is strong, I’m one of the many “displeased” Rs who will immediately jump ship to the Fred camp.
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The question is how much of the moderate Republican vote does Giuliani have. From the few polls I have seen asking people to identify themselves as conservative or moderate, Giuliani seems to have a good share of the moderate vote seeing McCain has angered a lot of moderates with his strong support of the Iraq surge. This explains the spike we saw in Giuliani’s numbers at the beginning of the year. Furthermore, Giuliani is the only of the the big three who seems to have an appeal among both conservatives and moderates for different reasons.
Thompson needs to consolidate the conservative vote and pick up some of the moderate vote if he expects to win. A divided field with the conservative vote going three or four ways coupled with a unification of the moderate vote will lead to a Giuliani victory.
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What Thompson needs to do is run a campaign commercial showing that video from April (it’s on YouTube) in which Giuliani says that there’s a constitutional right to have an abortion and that he’s in favor of taxpayer funding of abortion. And another campaign commercial highlighting Giuliani’s record of prohibiting city police from reporting illegals to the INS.
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The media love the so-called “moderate” Republican voters…but the truth is they don’t really exist in large numbers. Outside of The Northeast, one would be hard-pressed to find a single state where more than 10% of the residents are genuine moderate Republicans…even here in California where we have become a virtual Marxist state, the Republicans in the state are overwhelmingly conservative and not moderate.
The real question for the nomination is the open primary states. The media, you may recall, went into orgasm after orgasm when McCain won the Michigan primary in 2000…they made it out as if the moderate Republicans stood up and voted for McCain…but the truth was that McCain won based on support from moderate “independents” not Republicans.
The moderate Republican strength is not that strong at all…most of Rudy’s supporters are actually, and unfortunately, bona fide conservatives whom Fred Thompson may have a decent shot at picking up.
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You know what’s funny? I posted the other day with a semi-pro-Rudy statement, and then today I saw a “welcome back, b.” statement at the top of the blog. I thought you editors were having some fun with me for my “conservative yet-pro-Rudy” philosophy, as in, “welcome back to the conservative philosophy” — though, to re-state, I’m now a Fred man.
I now realize that you have a super-smart blog that remembers who logs in.