After running so many posts today about Newt Gingrich going down in more polls than a class of phone company trainees, here is news about a poll he has WON:
Newt Gingrich might have dropped to third in Iowa — and he and Romney might be neck-and-neck in the latest CNN poll, but, among thousands of Tea Party activists from across the country, Gingrich retains a clear lead.
Tea Party Patriots — the nation’s largest Tea Party organization — last night hosted a Presidential Tele Forum with Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. (The other candidates were invited to participate, but declined because of scheduling conflicts, said Jenny Beth Martin, the co-founder and national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots.) Each candidate had 10 minutes to respond to questions from local Tea Party coordinators. After the question-and-answer portion, the call organizers asked listeners to vote for one candidate as their preferred nominee.
About 23,000 Tea Party activists joined the call and a significant portion of them voted in the straw poll, according to a news release. Of those who voted, 31 percent selected Newt Gingrich as their No. 1, 28 percent selected Michele Bachmann, 20 percent selected Mitt Romney and 16 percent selected Rick Santorum. The three non-participating candidates polled very poorly: Ron Paul garnered 3 percent of the vote, Rick Perry 2 percent and Jon Huntsman 0.3 percent.
Gingrich’s win here actually magnifies his problem: he is turning into one more candidate Of the Base, By the Base and For the Base — or rather of the Tea Party part of the base. He shows no signs at this point of being someone who can construct a coalition by bringing people on board — just signs of someone who knows how to push hot buttons and get a response from those who always respond to those hot buttons. And some of the hot buttons he is pushing — such as his right as President to ignore Supreme Court warnings and even have judges he doesn’t like jailed — set off alarm bells to many voters who are not Of the Base but might otherwise vote Republican.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.