Rasmussen: Huckabee now leading Romney in Iowa

[flpoljunkie]

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics...

Iowa: Huckabee 28% Romney 25%
Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the Iowa caucus finds former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee with 28% of the vote, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney with 25% support, and everyone else far behind. National frontrunner Rudy Giuliani gets just 12% of the vote in Iowa at this time while former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson is the only other candidate in double digits at 11%

Given the margin of error, the challenges of determining the relatively small number of people who will participate in a caucus, and other factors, the race is far too close to call at this point in time. However, the fact that Romney is no longer the clear frontrunner in Iowa reflects a stunning change in the race.

Compared to our prior survey, the trend is unmistakable—Huckabee has gone up and just about everybody else has gone down. Huckabee’s 28% support represents a twelve point increase from a Rasmussen Reports poll conducted earlier in the month. Romney is down four points while Giuliani and Thompson are each down three points from the previous survey. John McCain is down two points and earns just 4% support. Ron Paul picked up a point and is now at the 5% level.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of Evangelical Christians support Hucakbee. That’s more than all the other candidates combined. Romney attracts 16% of the Evangelical vote.

Among those who have participated in the caucuses before, Huckabee attracts 30% support while Romney is at 23%. Among those who have not taken part in the caucuses before, it’s Romney 29% Huckabee 26%. A separate Rasmussen Reports article looks at some of the questions that would be raised if Huckabee wins the Iowa caucuses.

more...

[rurallib]

1. This guy scares me. Reverend Mike.

[Mz Pip]

3. Mitwit scares me more.

Mitwit is a nasty mean-spirited man. He's arrogant and slick. If Huckabee wins Iowa it will definitely knock Mitwit down a peg or two.

Even if Huckabee were the GOP candidate, I don't see him winning the presidency. I certainly hope the the American people won't be fooled into voting for a flat earther with folksie charm again. BUt we shall see. I have leatned never to underestimate the stupidity of the American people when it comes to the cult of personality.

Mz Pip

[Phoonzang]

6. I have a feeling that if the Huckster

wins the nomination we're screwed. I don't think Americans have learned not to fall for the folksie charm thing. We have very short memories. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm convinced Huckabee will be nearly impossible to beat.

[Mz Pip]

8. A lot of conservative hate him

because he raised taxes, so I suspect the support from that wing of the GOP will be lukewarm at best.

We've had 7 years of dimwitted folksie "charm". I can only hope that will no longer have the appeal it once did. It didn't work so well for this country.

Mz Pip

[Phoonzang]

17. I really hope you're right.

I just wish the primaries would hurry up and get here so we'd know one way or the other....

[Stop Cornyn]

5. He doesn't scare me AT ALL. In fact, he DELIGHTS me. The Repub machine would NEVER let Huckabee win.

If Huckabee emerges as the fundamentalists choice, he'd split the corporatist wing of the Repub Party from the dominionist wing of the Party because Club for Growth HATES Huckabee.

If Huckabee rises, it will force the Repub Party to throw the fundamentalists under the bus and will only enhance the fundamentalist resentment of the eventual candidate, whether its Romney or Giuliani.

Huckabee rising in Iowa is just like Paul rising in New Hampshire: it is a symptom of the weakness of the Repub candidates.

This is a development to be cheered, not a development to be feared.

[TwilightGardener]

9. Yep--that a religious-nut doofus like Hucky might win Iowa is a good sign--

he should have never broken into the top tier. I don't know how he even made it to the Governor's mansion, frankly. The weakness of the field is astounding. And remember, PAT ROBERTSON won the Iowa caucus--how's that for some perspective on the mind-set of Iowa GOPers?

[Clintonista2]

2. Wow, I've always thought of Huckabee as the Republican Dodd or Biden in terms of support

I didn't know he was that popular. Isn't this one of the "I don't believe in evolution" candidates?

[dmallind]

4. heck ya. nt

hkh

[Lucinda]

7. He's the one I've been watching from day one. He's gonna get stronger too.

[BeyondGeography]

10. Those Iowans

always re-writing the script...

[frazzled]

11. A very good piece on Huckabee in this week's New Yorker

By Hendrik Herzberger. Personally, Huckabee scares me least of any of the Republicans ... not because of his positions (which I mostly oppose) nor because I think he'd be easier to beat ... but because he's a kind of non-scary guy (as the article puts it, "not an angry conservative").

There is one thing he said I think is pretty damned brilliant:

Huckabee speaks calmly, in stories, parables, and extended metaphors. The foreign-policy section of his talk (what there was of it) was a leisurely account of how his children laugh at him when he tells them that his grade-school class used to “duck and cover” in fear of a Soviet nuclear attack. “Somehow, in our naïveté,” he said, “we thought that if the world is coming to an end the crosshairs of the first nuclear missile would be aimed at the Brookwood Elementary School, in Hope, Arkansas.” The section’s conclusion—and the speech’s only hint at how the speaker might deal with what he called “a very dangerous world”—was a single sentence: “I want to be the President that helps to make it so that your grandchildren laugh at you when you tell them you used to have to put your toothpaste in a plastic bag and take your shoes off to get on an airplane to go somewhere in this country.”

Then, there's what he says about education, which actually makes sense:

Like another governor from Hope who once ran for President, Candidate Huckabee reserves his real passion for matters domestic. On education, he talked not about standardized tests or back-to-basics but about something like their polar opposite. “We have to change and reform the education system so that we’re capturing both the left and the right sides of the kid’s brain,” he said. “There ought to be a new focus not just in math and science—which there needs to be—but also a balanced focus on music and art and right-side-of-the-brain activities. Otherwise, we end up with an education system that’s like a data download—a great database but no processor.”

Or immigrants:

In the question period, the candidate declined several invitations to serve up red meat. Asked about immigration, he hurried through the assurances required by the current perfervid mood among Republicans—seal the border, no amnesty—to add, “People who come to this country would rather come here legally if they had the choice. Nobody wants to break the law because it’s fun to break the law. . . . When it takes seven to twelve years to get a permit to come so you can pick lettuce, you’ll decide, ‘In seven years my family will have starved. I think what I’ll do is, I’ll just pay somebody a couple of thousand bucks to haul me across the border, and maybe I’ll never get caught.’ ” If there was demagoguery in any of this, it was the demagoguery of policy vagueness and simplistic hope, not the demagoguery of anger and fear. At least Huckabee’s stories of people in need don’t have the patronizing, self-congratulatory sound of “compassionate conservatism.” (Anyhow, Huckabee calls it “conservativism.”)

Anyway, you can read it (it's not long). He's a conservative, but not totally insane.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2007/12/03/071203...

[TwilightGardener]

13. He's not a conservative. And yes, he IS totally insane. You are not informed.

[frazzled]

18. Tell Hendrik Herzberg he's not informed ...

I love how in response to a researched, well-written article from America's preeminent weekly magazine, by one of the country's most distinguished political writers, you respond with a reply consisting of three unsubstantiated sentence fragments.

If you want to convince people of something, you'd better do more than bark out wiener-doggie arfs.

[TwilightGardener]

20. Read:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/11/13/huckabe... /

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/17324246/mat...

Also consider the fact that he thinks: We need to "take the country back for Jesus". He believes he can ignore Congress if it tells him "no" on bombing Iran. He thinks we're fighting a "theologic" war in Iraq, which makes HIM the most qualified to be President, since he's a minister. He thinks teenagers should carry concealed weapons to fight gang crime. He thinks God guides his bullets when he shoots at his prey, because God wants him to bag deer. He thinks that our aborted fetii should have grown up to pick our lettuce, and blammo!--no more illegal immigrants. He thinks weight loss is vital to our national security, as is ethanol. I'm pretty well-informed on this jackass, something that the New Yorker author apparently isn't. I can't stand people coming on DU to say, "Oh, this guy isn't so bad, for a Republican", when they don't know what they're talking about. It happens with Ron Paul, too--it seems we all have to have a crush on an "acceptable" Republican, sad to say. Huckabee is a slick, pandering wackadoodle.

[RDANGELO]

12. I think he is going to be the nominee.

He will be a tough opponent because he had a quality that Reagan had. He can talk about the supposed republican values without sounding hateful. He is a naturally likable guy.

[MaineProgressive]

14. He's the one

I also think that Huckabee will be the nominee. I also think that despite his fundamentalist leanings, he may be the least evil of the lot. There was another backwoods hick that came out of Arkansas in the early 1990's and look what happened -- he became one of the most effective presidents America has EVER had.

Don't underestimate -- or discount -- Mike Huckabee. He's a political survivor with a sense of charm that rivals Bill. No one would be wise to compare him with GWB. Completely different political animals here.

Club for Growth hates Huckabee. Can he really be all bad?!?!

[Nimrod2005]

15. I don't know why, but I like seeing this.........nt

[Beaverhausen]

16. Great article about him in Rolling Stone - "Our Favorite Right-Wing Nut Job"

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/17324246/mat...

Matt Taibbi on Mike Huckabee, Our Favorite Right-Wing Nut Job

MIKE HUCKABEE, THE LATEST IT GIRL OF THE Republican presidential race, tells a hell of a story. Let your guard down anywhere near the former Arkansas governor and he'll pod you, Body Snatchers-style — you'll wake up drooling, your brain gone, riding a back seat on the bandwagon that suddenly has him charging toward the lead in the GOP race.

It almost happened to me a few months ago at a fund-raiser in Great Falls, Virginia. I'd come to get my first up-close glimpse of the man Arkansans call Huck, about whom I knew very little — beyond the fact that he was far behind in the polls and was said to be very religious. In an impromptu address to a small crowd, Huckabee muttered some stay-the-course nonsense about Iraq and then, when he was finished, sought me out, apparently having been briefed beforehand that Rolling Stone was in the house.

"I'm glad you're here," he told me. "I finally get to tell someone who cares about Keith Richards."

Before I could respond, Huckabee plowed into a long and very entertaining story — one that included a surprisingly dead-on Pirates of the Caribbean-esque impersonation — about how Richards and Ron Wood got pulled over for reckless driving while on tour in Fordyce, Arkansas, a million and a half years ago, in 1975. Richards ended up getting a misdemeanor conviction — an injustice that stood for thirty-one years, until Huckabee, a would-be rock musician himself, stepped in and pardoned Richards last year.

"It's a long process, pardoning," Huckabee said, placing a hand on my shoulder. "It takes a lot of paperwork. And the funny thing is, people said to me afterwards, 'Governor, you'll do that for Keith Richards, but you wouldn't do that for an ordinary person.' And my answer to that is always, 'Hey, if you can play guitar like Keith Richards, I'll consider pardoning you, too.'?"

****************************

more at the link

[AlinPA]

19. All this talk about right wing evangelicals and fundamentalists not having

any influence? Hmmmmm They control the republican party.

[polichick]

21. Huckabee's big idea is to put a Bible in the hand of every American...

...and a gun in the other hand ~ that's some scary shit!

[AtomicKitten]

22. I have long thought it will be a Mittens/BibleBoy ticket.

Even more cause to shudder is the fact that the Dem vs. Republic match-up appears to be too close for comfort for all our candidates. How can that possibly be after the last seven years?