GOP presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) ran away with the National Federation of Republican Assemblies Straw Poll on Saturday in Des Moines, garnering 82 percent of the vote among Iowans.
Bachmann’s campaign is increasingly appealing to social conservatives to shore up her low poll numbers.
The campaign hires include Matt Whitaker, formerly Gov. Pawlenty’s Iowa chairman.
The campaign team chosen by Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann reflect her religious faith and far-right political positions, but may turn off moderate and mainstream voters.
The first Iowa poll to account for Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s announcement that he’s running for president has found that he’s knocked former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann from the top of the pile.
“That [Michele] Bachmann and [Ron] Paul finished at the top in the straw poll, it certainly seems to give a boost to the status of the tea party and its issues, but that doesn’t really result in the notion that some combination of social conservatives and tea party activists have taken over the Republican party (in Iowa),” says Tim Hagle, a political scientist and Republican pundit at the University of Iowa.
At a campaign stop in Iowa on Friday, a member of the audience grilled Tim Pawlenty on his views about rights for LGBT people. Gabe Aderhold, a senior at Edina High School, asked Pawlenty why he has “not had the courage to stand for me and my friends. You are discriminating against me and it hurts.” Pawlenty said he will never be at the point “where I’ll say that every domestic relationship is the same as traditional marriage.”
It’s once again the time in American politics when all eyes turn to Iowa, and nearly every political pundit in the nation pauses long enough on his/her trek into flyover country to wonder why.
AMES, Iowa — Tensions reached their apex Thursday night during the Fox News/Washington Examiner GOP presidential debate, sending Republican enthusiasm through the roof with less than 48 hours until the Ames Straw Poll gates open Saturday.
MSNBC reports that Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and her husband Marcus attended a church service in Des Moines, Iowa, over the weekend that included an ex-gay presentation. Bachmann, who built her political career in Minnesota fighting against rights for LGBT people, has blown off reporters’ questions about her views on LGBT rights and about evidence that her husband’s counseling clinic which performs “ex-gay” therapy.
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