{"id":383590,"date":"2010-03-03T09:43:46","date_gmt":"2010-03-03T14:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=78169"},"modified":"2010-03-03T09:43:46","modified_gmt":"2010-03-03T14:43:46","slug":"ron-paul-crushes-three-tea-party-foes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/383590","title":{"rendered":"Ron Paul Crushes Three Tea Party Foes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The much-discussed primary challenge that Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) faced from three Tea Party activists ended with a whimper last night. Paul <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chron.com\/apps\/ElectionPub\/local.mpl?action=results&amp;nextview=LOCALMATRIX&amp;area=all&amp;select=Statewide&amp;crit=Statewide&amp;conav=1&amp;crittype=COUNTY&amp;colct=\">won 80.8 percent<\/a> of the vote against Tim Graney (9.7 percent), John Gay (5.3 percent), and Gerald Wall (4.2 percent).<\/p>\n<p>Hours before the polls closed, here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/0310\/33725_Page2.html\">how Politico handicapped it<\/a>:<span id=\"more-78169\"><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The question is whether he\u2019ll win the nomination outright with more than 50 percent or be forced into a runoff. If a Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll victor like Paul \u2014 who has built a career out of trying to shrink the size and scope of government \u2014 is held to a modest mid-50s winning percentage, it might serve as a flashing sign of caution for other GOP incumbents facing tea party-oriented challengers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, so much for that. There was even more hype about a possible Paul embarrassment in 2008, when a pro-war city councilman challenged him and convinced some conservative bloggers that Paul was beatable. Paul <a href=\"http:\/\/reason.com\/archives\/2008\/03\/05\/ron-paul-is-back\">crushed him<\/a> by 40 points. For all of the whining about his alleged unpopularity in the district, Paul has a fantastic operation there.<\/p>\n<p>Jonathan Martin <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/0310\/33821.html\">has more <\/a>on the inability of Tea Party candidates to live up to the hype.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The much-discussed primary challenge that Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) faced from three Tea Party activists ended with a whimper last night. Paul won 80.8 percent of the vote against Tim Graney (9.7 percent), John Gay (5.3 percent), and Gerald Wall (4.2 percent). Hours before the polls closed, here&#8217;s how Politico handicapped it: The question is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4313"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}