GOP Candidate Update (Except for Ron Paul)

There’s so much Ron Paul news today, I’m going to make that a separate post.

First up, there are some very interesting questions being raised about the anti-Mormon push poll calls in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Mark Hemingway suggested that Romney push polled himself and shows an intricate web of connections from Romney to the company that allegedly made the calls. The problem with this being that nearly every campaign has ties to the same company. The Romney campaign denies the allegations of push polling against their own candidate. Erick at Red State identifies two of the people who’ve complained as being on Mitt Romney’s payroll, points out that the calls lasted 20 minutes and suggests that it might be the result of hypersensitivity:

Now, and here’s the wild speculation on my part, what if legitimate polling was being done by the Romney campaign or a third party group or a Democrat who really doesn’t care, to find out why the Romney campaign has reached an apparent ceiling in Iowa and New Hampshire and, out of an abundance of caution, wanted to see if “the Mormon factor” is actually having an impact? Because of the nature of the questions, some Mitt supporters thought they were being push polled, and the whole thing blew up.

A wild theory, I admit, but when you consider the length of time these calls lasted, they do seem to be extremely extensive to be a real push poll, which are usually as fast as they are dirty.

That’s a little more reasonable than Mitt doing it himself, but I don’t know if I buy it. Without a tape of the call, it’s very hard to tell the call’s tenor. My own personal theories that I’ll throw into the mix is that if it was a push poll, it was done either by a group that’s anti-Mormon that doesn’t have to file an FEC report, or it was done by supporters not associated with the campaign that wanted to blunt the issue. If it was done by one of Mitt’s opponents, we’ll find out when the next FEC spending reports are released, but because of that I’m betting against it. In addition, push polls are usually more commonly done right before an election, not several months out.

Yesterday, was Mike Huckabee’s big day. His supporters provided their answer to Ron Paul’s November 5th effort. November 20th is Children’s Day so the focus was to raise funds for “our children”. Huckabee took in $225k, $183K more than his daily average coming into November 20th. The bad side for Huckabee is that Paul supporters upstaged him by raising $250k after a fundraising plea from Campaign HQ for more funds to buy TV advertising at the end of November, to be played in December. Still $225K for Huckabee will go a long way, and it’s a reminder of what the grassroots can do and with only 2 weeks preparation.

Finally, Fred Thompson basically set Iowa as the key to his campaign. He says he needs to finish “better than fourth” (i.e. in the top 3). And he’s exactly right. Failing to do that with polls showing him sixth in New Hampshire, will lead to the whole thing caving in. (Hat Tip: Hot Air.) Later in the day, he backed off from the statement, but I think he got it right the first time. I will say that I hope Fred does finish 3rd, because that puts Giuliani in peril. If Rudy finishes 4th in Iowa and 4th in New Hampshire, I will be a very happy man.