Value Voters Straw Poll

Huckabee Makes Hay

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) There was a very important straw poll taken today. In fact it was the second largest straw poll taken to date for the upcoming presidential election. Although the actual poll numbers below may show something different. The real winner in my mind in in the mind of many here at the Washington Briefing 2007 Values Voter Summit was former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

STRAW POLL RESULTS

#1 Governor Mitt Romney 1595 total votes
#2 Governor Mike Huckabee 1565 total votes
#3 Representative Ron Paul 865 total votes
#4 Fred Thompson 564 total votes

See complete results here.

THE POLL PROCESS

The way the poll was set up, I believe that Mitt Romney's and Representative Ron Paul's political machine and Internet savvy bought them their place in the final results. First, the poll allowed people to vote either online or in person. The only requirement was that a person had to be a member of the Family Research Center (FRC). Second, for any contribution, even as little as $1, a person could cast a vote for their favorite candidate and identify their key issue. There were 2,600 in person attendees at the Briefing. 600 of those attendees cast their vote online between August and today at 1:00 PM. The rest of the total 5776 ballots were cast online. Again, only FRC members could vote.

A controversy occurred over the fact that the online voters, who did not actually attend the event may have merely joined to skew the election for their candidate. This could, in the case of Ron Paul be that his "true believers" committed to join the FRC to make sure that their candidate did well. In the case of Mitt Romney, I suspect the same thing and maybe even that people were paid to vote. I personally saw some evidence of how active Romney was when two of his workers, two computer geeks were busy late into the evening working in the Washington Hilton Hotel's self-service Business Center apparently working on some handouts for Saturday's (today's) event. Also, it was noteworthy that a number of what appeared to be "faithful" left as soon as their candidates left the podium after speaking.

I am convinced that the former Massachusetts Governor is a slick politician whose "principles" are guided by what he things they need to be to get elected, not by personal conviction. In the case of Ron Paul I think he has intensely loyal and supportive followers, however, I don't think many are Values Voters. Therefore, I think that Mike Huckabee emerged from the lower tier candidate in second place just as he did in the Iowa straw poll. In both cases he was "beaten" by Romney bought voters and not on principle. He won the Values Vote. This finish, I hope, will propel him past John McCain and Fred Thompson into the top tier where he will be Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney's main competition for the the nomination.

NOW WHAT?

Mike Huckabee is now the best hope for conservatives and true Christian Values Voters in the upcoming primaries. With Senator Sam Brownback dropping out of the race Thursday, and with the other excellent second tier conservatives not faring very well in the poll, we need to get behind Mike Huckabee with our financial and volunteer support and do everything we can to defeat the Romney, Giuliani and Clinton-Obama political machines.