Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Moose GOP 2016 Straw Poll: The Purple Pond teaParty Presidential Preference Poll

Heck, why not? A Moose Straw Poll is probably at least as good a predictor as the Iowa Straw Poll which has not successfully picked the eventual nominee since 2000.

According to The Hill, there are 20 candidates who have thrown their hats near the ring … ready to nudge them in given even the slightest encouragement.

Get ready for the largest GOP presidential field in recent history.

As many as 20 Republicans are taking a serious look at running for the White House in 2016. A handful of candidates have moved aggressively into the field, and others are expected to ramp up in the coming weeks, with several announcements expected in April.

According to the article, the field of declared candidates for the last election cycle never exceeded 10 and the largest group at a debate was 9 (in 2011).

The list is below the fold …

The Hill 20

Jeb Bush

Scott Walker

Rand Paul

Marco Rubio

Chris Christie

Ben Carson

Mike Huckabee

Ted Cruz

Rick Perry

Lindsey Graham

John Kasich

Bobby Jindal

Rick Santorum

Carly Fiorina

John Bolton

Peter King

George Pataki

Jim Gilmore

Bob Ehrlich

Mark Everson

I think that Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and Sarah Palin should be added to the list to lend gravitas. And who can forget the freshmen Senate phenoms, Tom Cotton and Joni Ernst? Plus Mitt … if the establishment candidate falters, can he be enticed back into the fray?

Let the polling begin.

Note: To simulate the chaos of the current GOP 2016 presidential field, you can vote for as many candidates as you want!  

[poll id=”

186

“]


20 comments

  1. Houston Chronicle: Ted Cruz to announce presidential bid Monday

    Sen. Ted Cruz plans to announce Monday that he will run for president of the United States, accelerating his already rapid three-year rise from a tea party insurgent in Texas into a divisive political force in Washington.

    Cruz will launch a presidential bid outright rather than form an exploratory committee, said senior advisers with direct knowledge of his plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement had not been made yet. They say he is done exploring and is now ready to become the first Republican presidential candidate.

    The senator is scheduled to speak Monday at a convocation ceremony at Liberty University in Virginia, where he is expected to declare his campaign for the presidency.

    What better qualification to seek the GOP presidential nomination than being recognized as a “divisive political force”??

  2. DeniseVelez

    names…so picked Pataki – who is a right of center Republican but not a loon.

    Loons of course will never choose him – so he has no chance of being the nominee

  3. princesspat

    Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz to launch presidential bid

    While in New Hampshire, Cruz told voters his daughter, Caroline, had given him permission to join the presidential race in the hopes that the family puppy would get to play on the White House lawn instead of near their Houston high-rise condo.

    “If you win, that means Snowflake will finally get a backyard to pee in,” Cruz said his daughter told him.

    So presidential…..I can see the bumper sticker now!

    All the Bush Family’s Horses…

    We ought to remember that Ted Cruz isn’t a former pizza executive, backbench representative from Minnesota, or even a disgraced former Speaker of the House. He is one of two U.S. senators from the largest red state in the country, the same state that gave us Lyndon Johnson and both Bush presidents. How he behaves and what he says helps define the Republican Party to the nation and the world. This will be more true than ever now that he’ll be a presidential candidate.

    That most of his Republican colleagues in the Senate despise him and disagree with his critiques means that there will be a lot of pushback. It’s not only the Republican Establishment, but a much broader segment of the Republican base that doesn’t want Cruz to speak for them. This should quickly become evident even on Fox News, and it’s going to take existing wedges on the right and pry them wide open.

    I can see Jeb prevailing as a kind of champion against Cruz, but there will be a Humpty Dumpty effect even if Jeb is successful.

  4. bfitzinAR

    even in the positions they are in, much less one of more power.  My only hope right now is that the one’s who are currently in elected positions will spend so much time on the campaign trail they won’t be in Washington (or wherever) to cause trouble.  As a former social science teacher I truly hate saying this, but the fewer R votes in Congress, the easier it will be for the Dems to stop (or at least delay) the fascist takeover of America.

  5. Diana in NoVa

    right here in Virginia and caused me to go to a lawyer?

    I told the lawyer I wanted our family trust and pourover will to include a provision that if I become a human vegetable hooked up to tubes and wires and only nominally alive, I want my husband or other loved ones to be able to pull the plug. Added that I didn’t want any wild-eyed Republican governor making that decision for my family.

    Gilmore is a person of absolutely no accomplishments. Unfortunately, like many Rethugs, he had a three-word campaign platform that won him the governor’s seat: No Car Tax.

    The Rethug who was my Congress critter for 30 years had a platform that said: HOV-2. That meant your car only had to have two people in it to use the high-speed lanes on I-66 to get to work. It started with HOV-4, and people were putting life-size inflatable dolls in the back seat to get the required number.

    You’d have to live in the Washington, DC area to know how much HOV-2 appealed to voters. Democrats, alas, don’t seem to have the knack for these simplistic campaigns.

  6. The Borowitz Report

    A disturbed Canadian man wants to try to get into the White House, according to reports.

    The man, who was born in Calgary before drifting to Texas, has been spotted in Washington, D.C. in recent years exhibiting erratic behavior, sources said.[…]

    More recently, he was heard ranting about a plan to dismantle large components of the federal government, such as the Internal Revenue Service and the nation’s health-care program.

    Despite a record of such bizarre episodes and unhinged utterances, observers expressed little concern about his plans to get into the White House, calling them “delusional.”

Comments are closed.