From Salon.com regarding the stronger-than-expected showing of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in Iowa's straw poll this weekend:
Huckabee...had no buses, no broadcast advertising and 1,850 tickets.
.....
But when the votes were all counted at 8:30 [p.m.], Huckabee beat the odds, surprising the other campaigns and many in the political press corps. "Holy shit," exclaimed one reporter when the results were read -- Romney, 4,516 votes; Huckabee, 2,587 votes; Brownback, 2,192 votes; and Tancredo, 1,961 votes.
.....
If he does get traction in the form of campaign checks, Huckabee is likely to position himself as a candidate who can unite the country, even though he takes more conservative positions than the leading Republican candidates. An ordained Baptist minister, he is vocal about his religious beliefs, unassailably pro-life, a skeptic of evolution and an opponent of gay marriage. He was helped at the straw poll by supporters of Christian home-schooling, and the poll results may mean that Huckabee, at least on Saturday, won the duel with Brownback for evangelical voters, who will loom large in the upcoming caucus.
I attended the Iowa GOP straw poll in 1987. I think I voted for Vice-President George H. W. Bush, but I might have voted for Rep. Jack Kemp. I vaguely recall paper ballots were distributed by hand, I think passed down each row, inside the arena in Ames, even to us high up in the nose-bleed section: me and my generous patron of the day, Oliver (a local Iowa county GOP organizer), and his wife. My family attended the same small conservative evangelical church that Oliver did. Our pastor was a country coordinator for Jack Kemp. But, apparently Oliver was also somewhat old-school GOP. He was backing Bush, even as most evangelicals were backing Pat Robertson.
I assume my vote was counted. I was only 16, but I was handed a ballot, and I voted. I'm told that nowadays participants at least have to show an ID revealing date of birth and Iowa residency.
I remember the Pete du Pont supporters were wearing buttons that said, "Don't vote for a 'From Runner,'" which they invariably had to explain meant "somebody who runs from the issues." This apparently meant someone other than du Pont, who, apparently, one should vote for instead. Even at 16, I thought this was a colossally stupid political button. Of course, by then I think Vice-President George Bush had already referred to du Pont as "Pierre" in a debate and effectively destroyed him.
I remember eating popcorn in Bush's tent, and meeting Barbara, shaking her hand, getting my picture taken with her. As many a biographer has pointed out, she is a formidable woman. I look at the photo now: I am amazingly young and utterly ecstatic. She looks hearty--the thyroid condition had not set in--pleased, matronly without being stodgy, and even a tad short: like the disappointing statue of Eleanor Roosevelt at the FDR Memorial, which looks like a mixture of Eleanor, Barbara Bush, Dr. Ruth, and Frances Bavier--Andy Griffith's Aunt 'Bee.' (The statue of Eleanor Roosevelt, by Penelope Jencks, in Riverside Drive at West 72nd Street is a more fitting homage.)
Thanks to NPR online, we can know what happened that day in '87:
...Vice President George Bush was viewed as the front-runner. He had all the money and the key Iowa endorsements. Sen. Bob Dole, from neighboring Kansas, was hoping that his Midwest connections would help his cause. No one foresaw the victory of Pat Robertson, the televangelist. Robertson, who had already done surprisingly well in the early skirmishes in Michigan, won the straw poll with 1,293 votes, compared to 958 for Dole. Bush finished third, with 864 votes, followed by Rep. Jack Kemp of New York (520), ex-Delaware Gov. Pete du Pont (160), and former Secretary of State Alexander Haig (12). Iowa Republican officials were stunned, saying that the people who showed up for Robertson were completely new to the political process.
Surely this is the first time Mike Huckabee and Eleanor Roosevelt have appeared together in prose.
- IseFire
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