Over the course of the past week, Erick Erickson has been running a tournament-style poll for who the RedState faithful want to see as the 2012 GOP Presidential nominee. Yesterday saw the final round end, and, believe it or not, Sarah Palin did not finish first. Allow me to recap the brackets before I tell you who knocked off Palin (which is why I bit.ly’ed the link; it would otherwise have told you who won the poll):
Round 1
– Herman Cain beat Donald Trump in The Businessmen matchup
– David Petraeus beat Jeb Bush in The Wild Cards matchup
– John Bolton beat John Thune in The Johns matchup
– Mike Pence beat Mike Huckabee in The Mikes matchup
– Tim Pawlenty beat Mitt Romney in The Northern Governors matchup
– Haley Barbour beat Rick Perry in The Southern Governors matchup
– Sarah Palin beat Mitch Daniels in The Other Governors matchup
– Rick Santorum beat Newt Gingrich in The Former Politicos matchup
Round 2
– Herman Cain beat David Petraeus in the Business v. Wild Card matchup
– Mike Pence beat John Bolton in the John v. Mike matchup
– Haley Barbour beat Tim Pawlenty in the North v. South matchup
– Sarah Palin beat Rick Santorum in the Other v. Former matchup
Semi-finals
– Herman Cain beat Mike Pence
– Sarah Palin beat Haley Barbour
And now, the final – Herman Cain knocked off Sarah Palin, 8,900-8,100. I am surprised, even though I have met Cain and was flat-out impressed by him, much like the rest of blog row at the 2010 Defending the American Dream Summit. There are that Cain’s entry into the race will happen on Friday; he already snagged Mark Block away from Americans for Prosperity’s Wisconsin chapter after Block turned it from a 300-member group in 2007 into a 90,000+-member group now.
FWIW, the lady in this house deems Palin ‘not ready,’ despite the fact that she REALLY likes what Sarah has to say in general terms.
It will be interesting to see early primaries. Palin polls well among doctrinaire conservatives, but the LSM has been largely successful in kneecapping her, and especially among pedestrian voters.
I sometimes forget that many, many people aren’t up on current events in the same way the blog/talk radio/news junkies are. The pedestrian voter goes to work all day and maybe catches a bit of the spoon-fed tripe issued by the liberal media.
We The People turned WI blood red in the past election, but it is important to remember we are the exception and not the rule. Low-information voters all believe Palin is some kind of dolt…
Herman Cain seems like a real contender if he survives the primaries. I’m confident he’d fare much better in the general than Palin, but one must survive stage one in order to face stage two.
Best wishes to all.