Huckabee takes first in straw poll

Arkansas politician beats Palin, Pawlenty and Romney in GOP poll

Mike Huckabee cruised to an easy victory in a presidential straw poll taken among attendees at a social conservative conference, beating a group of four other Republican contenders by an over two-to-one margin.

Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and a 2008 presidential candidate, won with just over 28 percent of the 597 votes cast by attendees at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was the runner-up, narrowly edging out Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Alaska Gov. and Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, and House Minority Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.). The four all received about 12% of the vote.

Of the top five finishers, all but Palin addressed the conference.

In his remarks to the conference Friday, Huckabee cited scripture and said the party should resist any pressure to abandon social issues.

"There are so many people who have told us as conservatives that we should move to the center, on the sanctity of marriage or the sanctity of life,” Huckabee said, adding: “I'm not sure the center makes a whole lot of sense when it's coming from people who certainly don't have our interest, or our country's interest, at heart."

The attendees here certainly agreed with him and in the straw poll overwhelmingly named abortion as the issue most important in determining their vote; 41% of those who voted listed abortion while “protection of religious liberty,” the next closest issue, won 18%.

Romney, who spent considerable effort in his 2008 presidential bid wooing social conservatives, gave an address to the gathering that focused largely on critiquing President Obama’s fiscal and foreign policy.

In announcing the straw poll results, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins praised Huckabee for having his “finger on the pulse” of conservative voters and said the former Baptist pastor had a gift for connecting with the GOP’s cultural base.

“Those things come very natural to him,” Perkins said, alluding to Huckabee’s discussion of social issues.

But Perkins and other officials in the organization were less than exuberant in discussing the results.

Perkins allowed that Huckabee became a better candidate during the presidential campaign, before observing: “I still think he has potential.”

Tom McCluskey, a senior vice president at Family Research Council, went further, saying that many of the attendees “are looking for a new voice out there.”

Unsaid but plain to see is that Huckabee may again face the same difficulty he did in 2008, when he had trouble convincing some social conservative leaders that he was a viable presidential candidate. The former governor complained bitterly about the lack of support during and after the race, delving into the topic in his campaign memoir and pointing out that he was right on all the issues religious conservatives care most about. At this conference in 2007, just a few months before the primary began, Huckabee also bested Romney.

The biggest surprise in the results may have been in the four who were bunched up for second-place. That Romney, widely seen among party elites as the initial frontrunner for the 2012 nomination, only got one more vote than Pawlenty, a relative newcomer to the national stage, will bode well for the Minnesotan’s pre-primary campaign.

And the fact that Pence, who is as or less well-known than Pawlenty, finished so strongly may encourage him to take another trip to Iowa, where he visited earlier this year.

But the most notable finish may have been that of Palin, assumed to be the darling of social conservatives. Her fourth-place finish indicates that the sort of hyper-engaged voters who attend such Washington conferences as this may be hesitant to embrace such a polarizing candidate.

It also may say something about the importance of, to paraphrase Woody Allen, simply showing up.

“If you’re not present and you’re not communicating with people you’re not going to be in the forefront of their minds when they vote at the straw poll,” observed Perkins.

Copyright POLIT - Politico
Contact Us