GOP presidential hopefuls Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich triumphed at a Tea Party Patriot straw poll over the weekend, with Gingrich pulling ahead for the victory with 31 percent of the vote.
More than 23,000 tea-party activists tuned in to a tele-forum to hear Tea Party Patriot co-founder Jenny Beth Martin grill four of the Republican candidates.
“An overwhelming number of activists from around the nation showed they are serious about electing a candidate who advances tea-party principles,” said Martin.
In a straw poll that followed the question-and-answer session featuring each candidate, Gingrich received 31 percent of the vote, while Bachmann received 28 percent. According to data released by the Tea Party Patriots, the margin of error was 1.59 percent, making the poll results very tight.
Two other candidates also participated in the event, Mitt Romney, who received 20 percent of the vote, and Rick Santorum, who received 16 percent.
Sitting out the forum were Ron Paul, Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman. Paul and Perry still received 3 percent and 2 percent of the vote, respectively.
A second question was posed to the tea-party activists regarding their enthusiasm level for the various candidates, should they receive the Republican nomination.
Bachmann came out on top, with 36 percent saying that they would be “extremely enthusiastic” in supporting her, while 35 percent responded in kind for Gingrich.
Audio of the entire forum can be found at the Tea Party Patriots website.
Martin asked each candidate questions like, “How will you achieve repeal of Obamacare?” and, “Will you support a full, annual audit of the Federal Reserve, and make its results public?”
Each candidate provided full answers to the same questions, all with their own version of fixes to the myriad of problems the Tea Party Patriots put forward as priorities.
In one question regarding the burden of federal regulations being a major barrier to job creation, Gingrich promised to repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, while Mitt Romney compared burdensome regulations to taxation.
“Regulations are at least as hard on free enterprise as taxation,” Romney said.
To that same question, Bachmann answered, “We’ll pass a ‘Mother-of-all-repeal bills’ to get rid of these job killing regulations.”
Jenny Beth Martin, who leads what is billed as “the largest tea-party organization,” also said, “Just as in 2010, candidates like Newt Gingrich will need to show they will be fiscally responsible and protect the Constitution in the White House.”
