David Weigel at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, Saturday, 11:45am:
[…] Nancy French’s Evangelicals for Mitt has been offering around 200 tickets for free, for anyone who wants to come and support Mitt Romney. At the party before Sean Hannity’s live taping of his TV show, French’s group handed out 800 copies of their man’s book, “No Apology,” and countless piggy banks. It’s hard to say how many of the people grabbing those favors will back Romney — one woman I spoke to, clutching two piggy banks, snorted when I asked if she’d vote for Romney.
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“These are for my grandkids,” she said.
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… [W]hile the outcome won’t matter in the long run, there’s a big difference between the narrative of a Paul victory, say, a Palin victory. Few, however, expect Romney to pull it out.
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“Evangelicals for Mitt,” laughed one GOP strategist who wasn’t backing any particular candidate. “You notice that their signs mention everything except religion.”
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David Weigel at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, Saturday, 7:01pm:
In a surprise, Mitt Romney edged out Ron Paul to win the SRLC straw poll by a single vote.
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Romney took 439 votes (24 percent) to Paul’s 438 votes (also 24 percent), a result that disappointed a Paul-heavy crowd that had stuck around to watch the results. Sarah Palin came in third with 330 votes (18 percent), and Newt Gingrich came in fourth with 321 votes (18 percent); Mike Huckabee, who did not attend the event, scored 4 percent. Total ballots cast: 1,806.
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Romney, who also did not attend the conference, benefited from a grassroots effort from Evangelicals for Mitt, a group run by David and Nancy French — who’d helped Romney score a second-place finish at the 2006 SRLC. They’d purchased around 200 tickets, 800 copies of Romney’s book “No Apology,” and 2000 piggy banks with the Evangelicals for Mitt logo. Before the vote, French soft-peddled the meaning of the exercise, stressing that it was “not binding.” After the vote, French held court near the press boxes as his small team hugged and high-fived.
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“Is that not incredible?” French said into a cell phone. “Our guy wasn’t even here!”
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When I spoke to French, he stuck by his “not binding” comment, then basked in his victory. “We just wanted to show that Mitt has friends down here.”
Remember how offended the Repubs got when Michael Steele suggested their votes could be bought for “tchotchkes”? Looks like Mitt’s Minions gambled, correctly, that just enough of their votes could be bought with re-giftable doorstoppers and piggy banks for the kiddies.
Willard Romney will be the death of me yet. A Romney/Palin or Palin/Romney ticket, barring total societal breakdown, would be crushed by the Obama 2012 team like a grape beneath a juggernaut, but I’m not at all sure my blood pressure could survive 18 months of toxic smarm poured over a word-salad of equal parts MBA-jargon and Talibangelical-tongues.
These are the days of miracle and wonders… a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires and babies…
