Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 11:20 am
So Politico is reporting that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who also won the CPAC straw poll, has won the Maine straw poll. Sure, he won. Kudos to Rand. But the thing is, even among Republicans, he took only 26 percent of the vote compared to Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s 14 percent.
We are talking about a whopping 690 votes cast, and only one small state, so the results are hardly indicative of 2016’s Republican primaries. And as The Hill points out, Maine Republicans seem to love the Paul family, delivering a majority of the state’s 24 delegates to Rand’s father Ron in 2012.
The vote counts are as follows:
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Rand Paul: 176 votes
Ted Cruz: 98 votes
Scott Walker: 70 votes
Ben Carson: 62 votes
Chris Christie: 60 votes
Jeb Bush: 57 votes
Paul Ryan: 37 votes
Mike Huckabee: 28 votes
Condoleeza Rice: 26 votes
Marco Rubio: 21 votes
Write-ins got more votes (21) than Rick Perry (17), Rick Santorum (10), Bobby Jindal (5), and Kelly Ayotte (2).
You might notice a few things from the results: that some former rising stars on that list, like Marco Rubio, languished behind even Condoleeza Rice, and that despite Jeb Bush’s relatively moderate stance, he garnered more votes than Paul Ryan, and that, in Maine at least, nobody much likes Bobby Jindal.
Rice has been attracting some notice as a potential candidate in 2016. She was a Russia specialist, after all, and Russia is – well, being a bad neighbor. But so is China, and Condi isn’t a China specialist. But more importantly, Rice is also a vestige of the Bush years the GOP has tried so hard to forget, bringing up associations that would impact any attempt by Jeb Bush to run as well.
Ben Carson is, says Politico, already sort of running for president and he did pretty well for himself in Maine, but you know he won’t sit well with the Tea Party’s cracker demographic. And while Mike Huckabee is great at sending out deceitful emails and loves himself some rapists, he’s hardly wowing them in Maine. I don’t know that anyone talks about Marco Rubio anymore. Do they?
If we were to judge by the results in Maine, we’d have to say Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, and Bobby Jindal, might as well save their time and money. And finally, you might notice that some of these people might be in prison by 2016: Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Chris Christie of New Jersey, and Rick Perry of Texas all act more like Banana Republican strong men than American governors.
But then, a Republican politician who is not facing prison time is becoming a rarity these days. Most of all, what Maine seems to prove is that there are too many Republicans in the kitchen. A Democratic straw poll? Maybe Hilary and Joe Biden. Elizabeth Warren, over her protests might get some votes, but she steadfastly refuses to run. On the other hand, every Republican you can find wants to be president in 2016, and given their ideological woes, they are all going to have to lie, cheat, and steal to seal the deal in 2016. And you know they will.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
