Straw Poll Picks Pence for Pres!!

At this week’s Val­ues Vot­er Sum­mit in Wash­ing­ton the win­ner of the straw poll for Pres­i­dent in 2012 was Mike Pence!!

This is just as I was begin­ning to think that Pence was more inter­est­ed in being Major­i­ty Leader in the House than being President.

Note that the win­ner of the Vice Pres­i­dent straw poll was also Pence, so the win goes to the sec­ond place Palin!

Yup. That’s a tick­et we can live with! Pence/​Palin!!

More Hoosier Pride

I came across this in Sun­day’s Jour­nal Gazette. It seems Indi­ana Gov­er­nor Mitch Daniels, fre­quent­ly men­tioned as a pos­si­ble 2012 pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, took a bite out of his shoe. A recent cer­e­mo­ni­al bill signing

was punc­tu­at­ed by tears and emo­tion as fam­i­ly and friends of an Ohio woman who was killed in Allen Coun­ty gath­ered to watch Daniels sign a bill spurred by her case.

After ini­tial­ly behav­ing appro­pri­ate­ly for the occa­sion and sign­ing the bill, Daniels says to the Ohioans:

Any­time you all want to move to Indi­ana, low­er your tax­es, you’re welcome.

More com­pas­sion­ate con­ser­vatism I guess.

Taking The Easy Way

Giv­en what Sarah Palin has been up to since I last com­ment­ed on her, I have to con­clude that she resigned as gov­er­nor to either cash in or to run for pres­i­dent. If she left to cash in, then I guess she’s not doing too bad a job of it.

But if she does indeed plan to run for pres­i­dent, then I do not believe she is going about things in a help­ful way. In a post at Frum­Fo­rum, Danielle Crit­ten­den describes a Palin appear­ance at a char­i­ty fundrais­er in Cana­da. Her appear­ance fee appar­ent­ly was between $100,000 and $200,000, so that is def­i­nite­ly cash­ing in.* Beyond the hefty fee, Crit­ten­den describes how every­thing was arranged to lim­it Pal­in’s expo­sure to unscript­ed or unan­tic­i­pat­ed situations.

I am not pay­ing enough atten­tion to Palin to know if this is how her appear­ances are nor­mal­ly han­dled. Assum­ing that it is, then this is poor train­ing for a pres­i­den­tial run. Her cozy perch at Fox News is also no help. Now is exact­ly when she should be mak­ing as many appear­ances as pos­si­ble and expos­ing her­self to unscript­ed sit­u­a­tions fre­quent­ly so she can com­pile some expe­ri­ence deal­ing with them. One does not get elect­ed to the pres­i­den­cy with­out an abil­i­ty to ad lib a wide vari­ety of situations.

Sure, if she fol­lowed this advice, she might com­pile a resume of gaffs. But the gaffs would be ancient his­to­ry by the time 2012 came around.

* Long ago I read some­where a com­ment that when­ev­er an esti­mate var­ied by 100% or more, one could infer that there was real­ly no clue as to the actu­al num­ber and the esti­mate was worse than worth­less. So who knows how much she was actu­al­ly paid!

It Doesn’t Hurt…

…as long as I only pat my low­er back. Click the Mike Pence tag for my ear­li­er posts on this subject.

Mike Pence has not made any announce­ments that he is run­ning for pres­i­dent. But now he is in the top five!!!

The recent Val­ues Vot­er Sum­mit includ­ed a straw poll for 2012 and

For­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney, Min­neso­ta Gov. Tim Paw­len­ty, for­mer Alas­ka Gov. Sarah Palin and Indi­ana Rep. Mike Pence each won rough­ly 12 per­cent of the 597 votes cast.

Huck­abee won with 29%.

The momen­tum builds.…

:)

More Pence for Pres

I first blogged that Indi­ana con­gress­man Mike Pence was con­sid­er­ing run­ning for Pres­i­dent in 2012 on June 17.

Con­gres­sion­al Quar­ter­ly picked up on my post­ed the idea on July 13 (as I already not­ed).

And now The New Repub­lic also posts the idea (though with the caveat that he was not like­ly to win).

I notice today that Pence’s blog has now been com­plete­ly tak­en down. “This web­site has been dis­abled

Pence For President?

Is Mike Pence think­ing about run­ning for Pres­i­dent? I first asked this ques­tion on June 17. Now CQ Pol­i­tics thinks so, too.

House Repub­li­can Con­fer­ence Chair­man Mike Pence of Indi­ana recent­ly added his name to that list [of poten­tial can­di­dates for pres­i­dent for 2012] by sched­ul­ing a trip to Iowa start­ing July 25 — just before the final week of the hec­tic July session.

Remem­ber, you read it here first!!

Hat tip to TPMDC.