Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Monday shrugged off his 10th-place finish in the Iowa straw poll this past weekend, calling such contests meaningless.
The Arizona senator, starting a two-day swing through early voting South Carolina, skipped the Iowa straw poll along with Rudy Giuliani and all-but-declared candidate Fred Thompson.
I pretty much just said the same thing in this blog BUT unlike McCain I am not running for president and so I don’t come across as a sore loser, just some cranky person.
In all seriousness McCain & Giuliani did the right thing in skipping the Iowa poll. It would have been worse news for them to actually compete and lose and at this point both are not shaping up well for Iowa. Romney has spending spending a great deal of time and money in the state and unless Giuliani makes a massive push (and McCain gets a respirator for the state) it looks like Romney could take it in the Caucus. Time will tell.
In all my honesty I haven’t a real clue if the Iowa Straw Poll does now or ever has meant much for the Republican party. In 1999 George W. Bush was able to turn it into an act of providence, in 2007 it seems like an act of desperation.
One doesn’t need a straw poll to show us that those who have money can use it to grab people. This is essentially what Mitt Romney has done shelling out an enormous amount for a win. We don’t need a straw poll to tell us that Tommy Thompson, Ron Paul & Tom Tancredo haven’t a shot of winning a general election.
I am glad for Mike Huckabee that he has won second place but in short it isn’t very significant. Someone had to be second and with John McCain, Rudy Giuliani & Fred Thompson paying no mind to the event it would have been any one of those candidates whom national America doesn’t know.
Poor Tommy Thompson, even in defeat he gets pushed to the back of the media pile. News of the former governors departure from the campaign trail was squashed today by the departure from the White House of a much bigger figure, Karl Rove.
If you haven’t heard the news yet Mr. Rove is stepping down, officially on August 31st. I honestly have to say I believe Rove is one of the most interesting figures we’ve seen in politics in the last few years. It wasn’t just that he plucked George W. Bush out of Texas politics and into the national spotlight but how for a short time in American history Rove commanded such an amazing amount of power.
The history books still need to be written and so we don’t entirely know what Rove’s role has been in some of the most interesting and divisive moments in American politics. We have clues, we have theories, all we know is that it was undoubtedly pretty big, perhaps pivotal.
You wouldn’t know it by visiting his official Web site but Republican contender Tommy Thompson is dropping out of the race for his parties nomination. Thompson was a long-shot at best. Though a former governor of Wisconsin & former Bush cabinet member Thompson drew very little support and much less media buzz for his race.
The final blow to the campaign came this weekend in the Ames Iowa Straw Poll where Thompson finished 6th with only 1009 votes.