There you go again, Tom, calling people Idiots. I thought Christian teachings led you to accept different points of view without rancor or judgement.
Tell me, out of Mike Brown or Chertoff, both failures and each now ripping the other apart, which is the better appointment by President GEORGE W. BUSH? How about Paul O'Neill. Good pick? Or not? Richard Clarke? George Tenant? (Bush didn't have to keep him?).
And just for fun, look at the troops down in Tennessee. Frist is unelectable, but the more time spent on nonsensical straw polls will just rip the Republicans apart. Look how they are abandoning GWB and supposedly moving back to republican principles of limited government, etc.
Thread lemmings can't understand just what a travesty Bush's presidency is, but even his own party is tryint to distance itself from his "legacy".
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Frist Wins Straw poll By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
Sat Mar 11, 11:06 PM ET
MEMPHIS, Tennessee (Reuters) - More than 20 months before any real votes are cast, Republican Senate leader Bill Frist of Tennessee won a straw poll on Saturday of party activists choosing their early favorite in the 2008 White House race.
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Frist, who packed the home-state crowd with supporters wearing blue "Frist is my leader" buttons, won nearly 37 percent of the 1,427 votes cast by delegates to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference.
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was second with 14.4 percent, while Sen. George Allen (news, bio, voting record) of Virginia finished tied for third with President George W. Bush, whose name was added to the ballot by 10.3 percent of the delegates at the urging of Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record).
The poll results, while meaning little in the long run, could give the top two finishers, Frist and Romney, a boost in recognition heading into the 2008 campaign.
The win for Frist followed a tough year in which he became the target of a federal probe of his stock sales and was criticized for his Senate leadership.
Frist and Romney were among six possible presidential candidates who spoke to the gathering of nearly 2,000 activists from 26 states in what served as an unofficial kickoff to the 2008 race. All registered delegates were eligible to vote in the poll, sponsored by political tip sheet The Hotline.
The potential candidates who attended the convention were Frist, Romney, Allen, McCain, Sen. Sam Brownback (news, bio, voting record) of Kansas and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
McCain, in a show of support for Bush that rivals said was an acknowledgment he would not perform well in the poll, told his supporters to write in Bush's name. McCain, who lost to Bush in the race for the 2000 Republican nomination, still managed to win 4.6 percent of the vote.
Huckabee was next with 3.8 percent, followed by New York Gov. George Pataki at 2.7 percent, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- another write-in -- with 2.2 percent and Brownback at 1.5 percent.
Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Karen Finney said it was "shocking" that Republicans backed Frist in the poll and called him "the poster child for the Republican culture of corruption and incompetence."
WIDE-OPEN RACE
With Bush in his final term and Vice President Dick Cheney not running for president, the White House race in 2008 is wide open for Republicans and Democrats.
Public opinion polls show McCain and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who did not attend the conference, are the most popular and well-known of the possible Republican White House contenders.
Most potential White House hopefuls played down the importance of the straw poll, although Frist said on Saturday that "I guess I hope I do pretty well" given the voting was in his home state.
More than 50 percent of the voters in the poll were from Tennessee, and 82 percent of Frist's support came from that state, according to Hotline.
With Bush's approval ratings at the lowest point of his presidency, Republicans are uneasy about the political climate heading into the 2006 congressional election in which their control of the House and Senate is up for grabs.
During their speeches over the weekend, the presidential hopefuls told the Republican faithful to focus on the core conservative principles they said helped bring the party to power.
Republicans, they said, needed to return to their core philosophy of limited government, low taxes, fiscal responsibility and conservative values.
"We are a party of real ideas but we are also the party of idealism," said Huckabee.
All the potential presidential candidates expressed support for Bush, but emphasized their unhappiness with runaway government spending and what they said were attacks by the courts on social values like marriage and the sanctity of life.
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Oh, and Tom...I know I'm stupid and and idiot. No need to again repeat your limited set of responses.
Mike Brown or Chertoff? Gosh, what a choice. |
