The congressman corralled just 17 percent of the votes cast, trailing California’s Duncan Hunter with 41 percent.
This outcome says Texas Republicans aren’t terribly concerned about viability. Otherwise, one of the national front-runners like Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney would have beaten these long-shots. But if they were willing to “waste” their votes on Hunter, why didn’t most back a fellow Texan? The truth is that Ron Paul, the angry prophet, has little honor in his own land. He’s about to lose his congressional seat.
They also point out the problems for his next reelection chances in his home state:
Zoom ahead to this election cycle, almost four years later. Recent polling by another Texas Republican pollster confirms that Paul’s electorate doesn’t appreciate the increasingly leftish libertarian bent of Paul’s voting record. In the eyes of voters, Paul is now also wrong to oppose the Patriot Act, off base on energy policy that affects Texas enormously, and to be faulted for knee-jerk opposition to the fight against terror in the Middle East.
The difference this time is that Paul’s critics have a bona fide challenger lined up: Chris Peden, a mainline social conservative who has distinguished himself opposing the tax hijinks of local elected officials. If Paul files to run for both Congress and the presidency by the Jan. 2 deadline, he’ll likely lose to Peden on March 4. That’ll be OK, though. Dr. Paul can just move to New Hampshire where the libertarian Free State Project might try and elect him their first governor, leveraging the boost in name ID and image that his presidential bid will have wrought. Good riddance.
The author of that piece is David Hill and is the director of Hill Research Consultants, a Texas-based firm that has polled for GOP candidates and causes since 1988.
Coming in behind California's, Duncan Hunter by 24% shows that the good state of Texas has had it with Paul shenanigans and there is a window of opportunity for Texans to boot him out at his next election.
Follow up with some more interesting figures and facts about Ron Paul here.
(NOTE TO COMMENTERS: This post is about his reelection chances in the next election for his "Congressional" seat. This is not about the 2008 Presidential elections and any comments that do not stick to the topic of his Congressional seat and that specific election and tries to hijack this thread to discuss the 2008 presidential elections, will be deleted or edited with no warning. THIS IS THE ONLY WARNING.)
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