A new Quinnipiac poll of Iowa is out, and it shows Jeb Bush losing to, well, pretty much everyone:
Only 5% of likely Iowa GOP caucus-goers told Quinnipiac University pollsters that they planned to vote for Bush, placing him No. 7 in the field of declared or potential 2016 candidates.
Even worse for Bush: He may not have as much room to grow over the next year as other candidates do. One-quarter of Republicans said they definitely could not support Bush, the lowest ceiling of support of any candidate in the Hawkeye State, and 45% said Bush was “not conservative enough.”
The top Republican in Iowa is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who garnered support from 21% of those surveyed. Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee are tightly packed for second place, each earned between 13% and 11% support. Neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who unveiled his campaign on Monday, tallied 7% of the vote.
Jeb Bush losing to Scott Walker, Ran Paul, and Ted Cruz isn’t a surprise; Bush losing to Ben Carson, a political neophyte who has no chance to win the nomination, is.
When you dig further, Bush’s basic unpopularity rating comes to the fore: “Negative 39 – 45 percent favorability rating for Bush, and 36 percent saying he’s about right on issues, while 45 percent say he’s not conservative enough.”
Polls this early are essentially meaningless (remember when Howard Dean was going to win Iowa?), but the fact Bush is polling so poorly this early suggests both that he’s deeply unpopular with the base, and that he has yet to build an effective political operation in Iowa. Remember, George W. Bush won the Iowa caucuses handily over Steve Forbes in 2000 (McCain didn’t even pull 5%).
So far, Jeb Bush is running considerably behind expectations.
Happy Cinco de Mayo! My efforts to move the LinkSwarm back to it’s usual Friday position by posting early have failed, so I’m trying to get it there by letting it drift back one day later each time…
“Canadian Partnership Shielded Identities of Donors to Clinton Foundation.” Just in case you missed that. Because trying to keep up with all the sleazy bribery angles of the Clinton Foundation is like trying to drink from the firehose…
“Hillary may want to talk about inequality, but is there any better example of a couple who gorged at the trough of Wall Street and foreign autocrats, chose not to follow the rules, never could stop chasing more and more money and (in Hillary Clinton’s case) went to extraordinary lengths to destroy “personal” e-mails that might have pulled back the curtain on all that?” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Hillary hires Scott Hogan, an organizer of the failed “Everytown” gun-grabber astroturf to run her “Grassroots” campaign. Hopefully he’ll bring Hillary the same outstanding success he brought to gun control…
Russian stooges in Ukraine: “Soviet terror famine? No, that was all just a big misunderstanding!” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Lefty lawyer Laurence Tribe calls Obama’s “force everyone to use green energy without congressional approval” plan unconstitutional. “After studying the only legal basis offered for the EPA’s proposed rule, I concluded that the agency is asserting executive power far beyond its lawful authority.”
Drug cartel violence heats up in Mexico: “Gunmen shot down a Mexican military helicopter Friday in the western state of Jalisco, killing three soldiers, and set fire to buses, blocked roads, and attacked banks and gas stations in a sharp escalation of violence against the government.” This is evidently the handiwork of the New Generation drug cartel.
When the Social Justice Warriors started attacking the company Protein World over their “Beach Ready” ad campaign, Protein World didn’t cave, they fought back. Result: They earned an additional $1 million in four days.
Not understanding that the Presidency is not an entry level job, and that the Republican field was already packed, Ben Carson joins the Presidential race.
Ditto Carly Fiorina, whose tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard was not an unqualified success, and whose 2010 California Senate race lost to Barbara Boxer by 16 points.
Think UK Muslim child rape stories couldn’t possibly get any more creepy or depressing? A gang in Croydon targeted Down Syndrome girls. (Hat tip: JihadWatch.)
Speaking of Democrats and the Senate, there are bruising primary battles heating up up between the party’s corrupt wing and the party’s insane wing. (Sure, National Journal uses the words “pragmatic liberal” and “progressive,” but we all know what they mean.) (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Different jobs, different perks. If you work at a high tech start-up, you may get free snacks and catered meals. If you work at the DEA, you might get orgies with prostitutes paid for by drug lords.
Cruz had a very strong social media team for his 2012 Senate race, so this move isn’t a big surprise. Now we’ll see if it, and his early jump, can get him any separation in a very crowded field…
Shockingly, A.) It’s pretty evenhanded, and B.) It doesn’t suck.
On the other hand, Too Many Cooks was four months ago. It shouldn’t take more than a week to crank this out. Even if they did take a day to get the perfect font match…
Paul came in first with 25.7%, while Scott Walker came in second with 21.4% of the vote, and Ted Cruz came in third with 11.5% of the vote, just edging out Dr. Ben Carson at 11.4%. (Carson is 2016’s Herman Cain: The attractive outsider with no real chance of winning. The presidency is not an entry level job…)
Does this mean Rand Paul is the GOP front runner? Not really, since that total is down four points from his father Ron Paul’s showing in 2011. Ron Paul would go on to pick up a smattering of delegates and place first in the U.S. Virgin islands primaries, which did not catapult him to the nomination. Mitt Romney placed second in the CPAC poll before going on to win the nomination.
Now, I happen to believe that Rand Paul is a much more viable GOP candidate than Ron Paul was (though not as viable as Scott Walker or Ted Cruz), but the Rand Paul’s CPAC win shows no sign of him breaking out of Ron Paul’s ideological base, which is not enough for him to win more than (at most) three or four primaries.
Based on polls in Iowa and elsewhere, Scott Walker should probably be considered the font-runner, and the CPAC result doesn’t change that.