From: AdmrlLocke@aol.com Sent: Monday, August 16, 1999 2:38 AM To: undisclosed-recipients: ; Subject: GrammNet: Iowa Straw Poll Results & Analysis GrammNet Issue 8/16/99 Dear Friend, First I'd like to take a moment to thank those of you in Iowa who joined us at the Iowa Presidential Straw Poll, held in Ames, Iowa last Saturday, August 14th. You were the ones responsible for the Steve Forbes triumph--a triumph you could see in his face Sunday morning when he gave a splendid interview despite heavy grilling by the pundits on This Week Without David Brinkley (as I call it). In case you haven't seen them yet, here are the results of the Straw Poll: 1. Bush 7418 31% 2. Forbes 4921 21% 3. Dole 3410 14% 4. Bauer 2414 9% 5. Buchanan 1719 7% 6. Alexander 1428 6% 7. Keyes 1101 4.6% 8. Quayle 916 3.8% 9. Hatch 558 2.3% 10. McCain 83 .3% 11. Kasich 9 0% 12. Smith 8 0% I was quite surprised at how poorly Bauer did. A weak fourth place was bad enough, but he didn't even get into double-digits. In the week before the Straw Poll, many commentators were saying that he was going to have surprising strength. It was surprising--surprisingly low. I really thought he was going to be nipping at Dole's heals instead of 5 points behind her. Bauer spent a good deal of money on ads and campaign staff--including a friend of mine--to do a mere 2 points better than Buchanan, who barely campaigned at all this time. After all that effort--my friend is a smart, tireless worker--including a church-by-church campaign of the sort that won the Straw Poll for Pat Robertson in 1988 and Buchanan in 1996, Bauer got only half of Buchanan's 1995 Straw Poll total of 18 percent, failing to even crack the double-digit mark. Bauer's weakness reinforced the impression I had leading up to the Straw Poll that Bauer just hasn't been getting anywhere. I did change my mind after being there as to my prediction that Buchanan would beat Bauer--I noticed more Bauer people than Buchanan people--but I was still surprised at Bauer's poor showing. No candidate has won the Republican nomination without placing in the top three in the Iowa Straw Poll, and social conservative who can't win even 10% of the vote in socially conservative Iowa has no business being in the race at all. I don't expect him to drop out though. On the contrary, according to last evening's Associated Press report, Bauer has now targeted Forbes for attacks. I'm sure that George W. Bush is delighted. What Bauer and many of his supporters--including, alas my friend--simply don't understand is that while Bauer appeals to social conservatives, he just has no appeal for economic conservatives. The only candidate who can beat Bush is a candidate who appeals to both sorts of conservatives, the way that Forbes does. Mr. Bauer, as someone who has written with praise for you in past newspaper columns, I urge you to leave the race and rally your supporters to Steve Forbes. Another surprise was Dole's relatively weak third place. Until a week before the Straw Poll, I was predicting Dole would place second, just ahead of Forbes. But in the final week Forbes surged ahead, so I went expecting him to barely beat her. After all, she appeals strongly to young liberal women, and the Straw Poll was held on the campus of Iowa State University, where Dole assiduously organized the sororities to come vote for her. And come they did, but they just weren't joined by enough other Iowans to allow Dole's vote total come close to Forbes'. She may be able to organize the sororities to come vote for her at the Iowa Caucus too, but I predict that she has peaked at the Straw Poll. What didn't surprise but still amazes was liberal media coverage of the results. Leading up to the Straw Poll the liberal media had tended to discount the meaning of the poll and claim that it was just vote-buying (a socialist claim which, sadly, some sour-grapes Republicans adopted when they couldn't draw enough supporters to do well). But when it became clear that Bush rather than Forbes had placed first, liberal media outlets claimed that Bush "cemented his front-runner status" or "won convincingly in Iowa" and other such contradictions of their earlier claims of irrelevance for the Straw Poll. You may recall that Bush bragged in advance that he'd get at least 50% of the Straw Poll vote. After the speeches Saturday night he was predicting he'd get 11,000-12,000 votes. Yet Bush got only 7419 votes representing only 31% of the voters, or two-thirds and six-tenths of what he predicted he'd get. (Imagine earning only two-third or six-tenths of your income next month--what a loss that would be!) How could any liberal media claim that such fractional performance was a victory? The answer is clear: Bush is the favored candidate of most of the liberal media. If they can continue to paint him as the inevitable candidate they will, either by claiming false victories for him or by attacking the legitimacy of anything which they can't spin as a victory. We saw them do the same thing with Bob Dole in 1995-6, so it should come as no surprise to GrammNet readers: ever since 1980, when media liberals wrongly thought they could let Ronald Reagan speak and people would know him for mad, they've made sure to ignore or attack real Reaganesque conservatives like Jack Kemp, Phil Gramm and now Steve Forbes, while playing up moderate, Big-Government Republicans with names like Bush and Dole. The liberal media now always try to anoint the biggest-government Republican they think can win our nomination. Beware of the liberal media's choice for GOP nominee. There's a REASON they choose the one they choose. A much bigger surprise than the weak showings by Dole and Bauer is the fact that Bauer, Buchanan and Keyes combined didn't get as many votes as Forbes did. I'm sure that some supporters of the three will still argue still that one of them could win, but the poor showing demonstrates clearly that Forbes is the only conservative who can challenge Bush. If just half of the supporters of Bauer, Buchanan and Keyes switched to Forbes, Forbes would have beaten Bush by 500. Throw in half the Quayle folks, and Forbes would have soundly trounced Bush. The Straw Poll results provide a clear lesson: if conservatives splinter, Bush wins; if conservatives rally around Forbes, he'll beat Bush. In GrammNet and my columns during 1995-6 I warned repeatedly that if conservatives splintered among several candidates instead of uniting behind Phil Gramm they'd hand the nomination to Dole; splinter and hand the nomination to Dole is just what they did. As Rush Limbaugh would say, "SEE, I TOLD YOU SO!" At the time, some supporters of other candidates admitted that their favorites couldn't win, but insisted they'd vote for the losing candidates anyway "to send a message." They did send a message, loud and clear: we, the conservatives of the Republican Party, want to perpetually commit political suicide by nominating the most moderate, Big-Government Republican the liberal media can find. The question now isn't whether conservatives can beat Bush. We can. The question is whether we will beat Bush by uniting behind Forbes, or nominate Bush by splintering again. Have we learned the lesson of 1996? I pray that we have. Sincerely, David B. Levenstam, CPA, MT, MA Forbes in 2000! GrammNet is an independent newsletter, not affiliated with Senator Gramm. To subscribe to GrammNet, email me at AdmrlLocke@aol.com, with a message to the effect that you'd like to subscribe. GrammNet back issues available at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3390/ Steve Forbes web page (Forbes 2000) at http://www.forbes2000.com