April 27, 2005
President for '08: Getting an Early Line
Patrick Ruffini is asking Republicans to make an honest assessment of some potential Republican primary two-man races to determine the "conventional wisdom." It seems prompted by recent reports that Rudy Giuliani, who would presumably fare well in the general election, has been losing ground among the generally more conservative Republican primary voters. As such, he has pitted Rudy against three other candidates: the more conservative George Allen and Bill Frist and the "maverick" John McCain (current results are here). After voting, read some of the comments, where a consensus seems to be that Ruffini has selected some pretty weak candidates to oppose Giuliani. I would have to concur.
Marc, didn't you think that including Guiliani in each pairing was a bit biased to produce Guiliani as the answer? A fairer test would have been to mix-up some of the pairings.
Posted by: Andrew at April 28, 2005 9:24 AMAndrew,
Without proof, I would venture to guess that Ruffini supports a Giuliani candidacy and was trying to see 1) how he'd stack up against others and 2) to quiet the claims that he doesn't stand a chance in the primaries. Perhaps I'm wrong, but that seems to be why he framed it that way. I agree that a first snapshot should probably be a simple vote on a list of candidates rather than that sort of selective pairing. I guess even multiple combinations of two candidates would probably provide more info for those who know how to decipher such things.