Saturday, August 11, 2007

HORSERACE

T-Minus One [More] Hour To Ames Results

In about one hour*, we get the results of the straw poll.

And as a commenter on this thread notes, Ames is significant not for who wins, per se, but by who gets knocked out.

We have a field of nine GOP candidates, and it will become ten when Fred Thompson enters. (I'm not counting John Cox.)

Tommy Thompson has said he expects to finish high or he's out of the race. Unless he has a large number of supporters at Ames who are strikingly quiet and not visible to observers, he'll be asked about his earlier pledges starting this evening...

If Duncan Hunter finishes near the bottom of the pack in this contest, he will hear calls that it's time for the widely-respected, but rarely-first-choice Congressman to hang it up and wait for a call to serve as Secretary of Defense in some future Republican administration.

I've liked Huckabee's debate performances, but if he can't make a splash in an Ames straw poll, it's hard to see him catching fire anywhere else. We've heard the rumors that Brownback broke the bank on his Ames effort; a disappointment here might leave him financially strapped for the rest of the way. (And if he can't grab a big chunk of Republican voters from a Midwestern farming state with a lot of social conservatives, where else can he get them?)

Tom Tancredo has been labeled a one-issue candidate since he started the race, and while he's got a bit more depth than that, he's not much more than an asterisk anywhere else. It's either make a splash here, or start getting even less attention... Next time George Stephanopolous won't ask him a question until forty minutes into the debate.

What's really at stake in Ames? Well, if a candidate performs badly enough, those invitations to future debates might end up getting "lost in the mail"... We've had four debates. Everybody's had a chance to make their case. If you can't generate some numbers at Ames, the press and race watchers will start concluding you can't generate numbers anywhere...

UPDATE: Byron York is on the scene, and here's his latest report.

 * Scratch that. The results are at 7 p.m. local, not 8 p.m., and I've got to run. Check the Corner.

08/11 05:59 PMShare