Mitt Romney leads the Republican field in the Des Moines Register’s final pre-Iowa caucuses poll released Saturday night.
The Register’s highly anticipated survey, which was accurate in predicting both the Democratic and Republican caucus winners in 2008, shows Romney holding the support of 24 percent of respondents. Ron Paul is in second place at 22 percent, while Rick Santorum has ascended into third with 15 percent.
However, Santorum appears to have all of the late momentum on his side, having surged significantly in the final two days of the four-day polling period. If considered separately, he is at 21 percent in that period, while Romney remained atop the pack at 24 percent during the second half of the poll’s sample.
A whopping 41 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers said they are open to changing their minds.
[…]Perhaps the last significant wild card before Tuesday is the potential endorsement of Iowa Rep. Steve King, who told RealClearPolitics in an interview just hours before the Register’s poll was released that there was about a 50/50 chance he would get behind a candidate at the last minute.
“With big decisions, at some point your intellect is overcome by your instincts — at least mine is,” King said. “If I make a bold decision in the next few days, it will be one of conviction, and I will be eager to advocate for that position and defend it against all critics, if I happen to have any, and I’m sure I will.”
The endorsement of King, perhaps Iowa’s most influential conservative voice, has for months been heavily sought by the Republican candidates.
Until recently, the five-term congressman has hinted that he was unlikely to back anyone publicly, but he suggested to RCP on Saturday that he may change his mind given the recent polling gains by Ron Paul, whose foreign policy King said is “so alarming to me.”
Just before the Register poll was released, King gave his sense of where the Iowa horse race stands.
“If I had to pick them, I’d say this: Romney, Santorum, Paul, in that order — then I think likely Gingrich,” he said. “I do think Romney’s strong enough to win here in Iowa, and I do think Paul’s support is drifting away from him — people are coming to grips with what that would really mean. And the third component of this is the ascendancy of Rick Santorum. Is his ascendancy a sharp enough incline to catch up with Ron Paul and Mitt Romney?”
King said that the final poll conducted by Iowa’s largest newspaper “would be a factor” in his decision, since he wanted to get behind someone who had discernible momentum.
In 2008, King endorsed Fred Thompson, whose campaign quickly fizzled after he finished third in the Hawkeye State.
I was for Fred Thompson in 2008. If I were Steve King, I would be endorsing Rick Santorum now. So, I am predicting an endorsement of Rick Santorum by Steve King today, and a second-place finish for Rick Santorum on Tuesday in the Iowa caucuses. Santorum is the most conservative of the top 3 candidates. Gingrich is also a conservative, but he is not in the top 3 in Iowa.
The CNN/Opinion Research poll released this week showed Santorum moving into third place in Iowa at 16 percent.
[…]The poll showed Santorum taking 22 percent of born-again Christians, moving him into first place among that group. And if he can make other born-agains believe that he’s the one viable alternative to Romney and Paul, then maybe he can create enough of a rallying effect to unite evangelicals behind his campaign.
“That bandwagon effect at the end can be very powerful in moving numbers dramatically in the last five days,” said former Iowa Republican Party chairman Steve Grubbs, pointing to Huckabee’s win.
There’s also the fact that many voters are receptive to Santorum; other polling has suggested he is a popular second-choice pick.
That suggests voters want to vote for Santorum, but perhaps didn’t see him as someone who could actually win. But if they now see him as a viable option, maybe they move into his camp.
“So it means he still has upside — beyond evangelicals but certainly including them,” said Nick Ryan, the founder of the pro-Santorum super PAC that is current running a quarter-million dollars worth of ads in the Hawkeye State.
The problem, though, is that Santorum is running against two other lower-tier candidates — Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann — who have significant appeal to evangelicals as well. And they aren’t so far behind Santorum (they take 11 percent and 9 percent, respectively) that they wouldn’t also appear to be viable options.
[…]For either Perry or Bachmann, finishing behind Santorum in Iowa likely means the end of their campaign, and that means that Santorum is going to have to work at stealing their supporters.
But at least for now, it appears that he has a genuine opportunity to steal votes from a large pool of voters that doesn’t like either of the two frontrunners.
And given the topsy-turvy nature of the race in Iowa, it isn’t out of the question to think he he could pick up enough votes to win.
After a poll Wednesday showed Santorum suddenly moving into third position in Iowa, a Rasmussen Reports survey released Thursday showed the same line-up. The poll showed Mitt Romney and Ron Paul in a dead heat, with 23 and 22 percent respectively, and Santorum in third with 16 percent.
In a troubling sign for Newt Gingrich, the same survey showed the ex-House speaker tied for fourth with Rick Perry.
The polls nationally and in Iowa have been notoriously fickle this season, and the shape of the race just five days out is no guarantee of any particular outcome on caucus day. Also, national polling continues to show Santorum in the low single digits, leading only former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.
Just to be clear, if you are a pure social conservative, there here is the candidate ranking for you:
Rick Santorum (Persuasive, Good positions, legislative record, voting record)
Ron Paul (effectively pro-abortion, effectively pro-gay-marriage)
Mitt Romney (Record is pro-abortion, pro-gay-rights)
Santorum gets the edge over Bachmann because he is more persuasive on abortion and marriage – he actually tries to convince people who don’t agree with him. They both take the right positions and have good records of activism, but Santorum is a social conservative apologist. Social conservatives should not vote for anyone other than Bachmann or Santorum. Perry would be the lowest I would go when everything is factored in.
The female bodybuilder who once ran a bicycle business with latest Herman Cain accuser Ginger White says the Atlanta woman never mentioned the Republican presidential candidate, who she says was her lover for 13 years.
“His name has never come up,” said Kimberly Vay, who told ABC News that she and White were former business partners.
But Vay, who filed and won a libel lawsuit against White, refused to comment directly when asked whether she considers White’s accusations about Cain credible. “When you see the details of my lawsuit,” said Vay, “they will speak for themselves.” She then referred ABC News to her attorney.
According to Vay’s suit, which was filed in June 2011, White and Vay were partners in a fitness coaching business called No Limit Cycling, and held spinning classes inside the Martin Luther King Recreation Center, which is owned by the City of Atlanta. In November 2010, claimed Vay, White asked to end their partnership, with White continuing to operate No Limit Cycling, and Vay agreed.
On December 9, according to the complaint, White sent a “defamatory” note to a master email list of the company’s clients and to city officials. The email said that White’s business had “come tumbling down [on] the day I invited Kim Vay into my life and my business” and that Vay had turned her “dream” into a “nightmare.” According to the complaint, the email alleged that Vay, a competitive bodybuilder, injected veterinary drugs into her system prior to contests,” and also said that Vay preferred to date black men but had made derogatory comments about black women’s hair.
Vay’s complaint termed the allegation about drug use “false, malicious, defamatory” and “reckless,” and therefore libelous.
Both women retained attorneys, according to Vay’s account, and reached an out-of-court settlement in April 2011. In June, Vay filed suit, claiming that White had failed to live up to the settlement and that she was entitled to sue for libel. Vay’s attorney Kurt Martin told ABC News that White had failed to honor the financial agreement that had settled the case.
Here’s a bit more about Ginger White from the NY Daily News.
Excerpt:
The Atlanta woman who says she was Herman Cain’s mistress for 13 years is a down-on-her-luck single mom who once sued a former employer for sexual harassment.
Ginger White surfaced in bombshell fashion on Monday, telling an Atlanta TV station that she’s “not proud” of what she described as long-running sexual shenanigans with the married GOP White House contender.
“I didn’t want to come out this way,” she said in an interview with Atlanta’s FOX affiliate WAGA-TV that put Cain on the defensive even before it was aired.
White described herself in the interview as a jobless former businesswoman. She is middle-aged, has two children and was evicted from her Atlanta home earlier this month, according to a background check done by the TV station.
WAGA reporters also found records showing she has been hit with several eviction notices in DeKalb County, Ga., over the past six years.
She filed for bankruptcy 23 years ago, the station reported. In 2001, she also filed a sexual harassment suit, which was later settled, according to the station.
Her former business partner, Kimberly Vay, once sued her and accused her of stalking, the station reported.
Vay, who did not respond to calls for comment Monday, also sought an order of protection against White, charging that she was bombarded with emails and texts “threatening [a\] lawsuit” and defaming her character.
A judge ruled in favor of Vay in a libel suit she had filed against White, the station reported.
It’s not surprising to me that a woman like this would make such accusations – she is getting a lot of attention, and possibly is being paid off by another candidate. There might even be a nice book deal for her.
The 20-year-old woman who claims teen idol Justin Bieber is the father of her child originally told her ex-boyfriend that he — and not Bieber — was the baby-daddy, the New York Post reported Friday.
“She came back here from California telling me she was pregnant with my child and I said this is impossible, you’ve been in California two months and back here for only a week,” said Las Vegas resident John Terranova, 19, about his ex-girlfriend Mariah Yeater, 20, who has sued Bieber for support for the son she later bore.
“After I told her that’s not my kid, you’ve only been here for a week, then she told me, ‘No, I got pregnant before I left by you,” Terranova told The Post. “But it didn’t make sense because she had a doctor’s note saying she wasn’t pregnant enough for that to be possible. It didn’t add up.”
Terranova said he had dated Yeater for nearly four years after meeting her at a Las Vegas high school that caters to students who had been thrown out of other schools. He said he broke up with her after he learned she had cheated on him.
Terranova scoffed at Yeater’s claim that it was the then-16-year-old Bieber who impregnated her in October 2010 during a 30-second sex session after the singer performed in Los Angeles.
“I know it’s not Justin Bieber,” Terranova said. “She just wants money. It’s a scam.”
His girlfriend Lacy Jensen, who herself is pregnant now, agreed.
“Poor kid. He’s worked so hard for his career and to deal with this. She just wants to get her name out there,” said Jensen.
“She’s a gold digger and just wants someone to take care of her,” Jensen said. “She was a really big party animal who got around a lot. She was a big slut. She’s scandalous.”
Yeater was arrested for battery last December for allegedly slapping Terranova in a jealous rage after she returned from her sojourn in California to find him dating a new girlfriend, Jensen.
I see no reason to think that White’s claims have any more validity than Yeater’s claims. It seems plausible to me that both women are making false claims for the same reason – they want fame and money.
Do women ever make false claims about sexual matters? Its more common than you might think. Studies show that false allegations are made about 20-40% of the time, depending on the study. These sorts of false accusations are usually made in order to 1) get attention or money, by trying to appear as an innocent victim, 2) in order to get an alibi for something the woman has done wrong (see below), or 3) to get revenge on someone who has mistreated the woman, as with the Duke lacrosse scandal.
The Hofstra freshman who had a raunchy restroom romp and then cried rape made up the twisted tale because she didn’t want her schoolmates — particularly her new boyfriend — to think she was easy, the beau told The Post yesterday.
“I think she needs a psychologist. She probably felt like, ‘They’ll think I’m a slut,’ ” her boyfriend, who asked not to be identified, told The Post.
Danmell Ndonye, 18, who had accused five men of gang rape, admitted the truth only when prosecutors confronted her after learning of a cellphone video that captured the whole sordid episode and showed she had willingly participated, officials said.
She created her outlandish tale when her boyfriend, a Hofstra student who’s been dating her since the semester began a few weeks ago, demanded to know where she had disappeared after a wild frat party early Sunday.
The two had been dancing together at the Alpha Kappa Alpha mixer at the school’s on-campus club, Hofstra USA, but got separated when a fight broke out.
The boyfriend said he called her repeatedly, but she didn’t answer her cellphone, so he went to her seventh-floor dorm room at Estabrook Hall. Moments later she appeared.
“As I was about to leave, she comes up and she has no shoes on, she is holding them in her hands. She looked like she just finished hot sex,” he said. “I said, ‘Where were you? What were you doing?’ She told me, ‘Nothing.’ I said, ‘What do you mean, nothing?’ “
Ndonye then dropped a bombshell.
“I said, ‘Don’t lie to me, what’s going on?’ And she said, ‘Oh, I just got raped,’ ” he said.
“It didn’t seem real to me. She was calm,” he continued. “Then she started crying and saying, ‘I was raped.’ She lied to me. I think she was embarrassed. I said to her, ‘You have to call public safety.’ She hesitated. It seemed like she didn’t want to.”
She then tried to backpedal.
“Oh, you know, no, it’s OK,” she told him, but he was incredulous.
“How could it be OK that you just got raped?” the boyfriend said.
So she relented — and a four-day nightmare began for four innocent men: Stalin Felipe, 19, his stepbrother, Kevin Taveras, 20, Jesus Ortiz, 19, and 21-year-old Rondell Bedward, a Hofstra senior who had invited the others to the party.
Cops also hunted for a fifth man, who has not been publicly identified.
False allegations of abuse are routinely used in divorce custody hearings. They virtually never go to trial.
In the absence of ANY evidence, why think that these anonymous charges against a black conservative who is leading in national polls are anything but greed and attention-whoring? Surely, we need to see some charges laid against Cain that where brought forward in a real criminal trial, so we can see the evidence. Otherwise, it just seems to me like another case of false paternity claims and false sexual allegations. We need to see real criminal charges, with real evidence and real witnesses from a real trial, before we can draw any conclusions.
My previous post analyzed the media bias evident in how this story is being covered.