Spark It Up!!!: Why Duncan Hunter Lost

We had a chance, I thought, a small chance, of winning this thing. I thought we had great issues to appeal to the conservative core of the Republican Party, and so we went out there and gave it everything we had, and we needed to strike a flame in this campaign, and we didn't. We didn't get the traction that we needed. Obviously, we were very short of money, but I have absolutely no complaints.

I won the Arizona straw poll. I won the Texas straw poll. And we weren't able to leverage that into anywhere near the news coverage that we needed. You know, that came a month after the Iowa straw poll, and I learned one thing in Iowa: I took a position early on that I wasn't going to pay the $35 a vote for the delegates to the Iowa straw poll. That's a major mistake because the Iowa delegates expect to have their ways paid to the Iowa straw poll. I got 174 delegates from somebody else's band to come vote for me. But you do have to go to that straw poll with your own delegates. And you gotta pay for them, or they're not going to be there. And so that was a nice statement of principle that ended up resulting in 174 votes at a time when I needed in excess of a thousand votes there.

We tied McCain and Giuliani at the top in the first big straw poll held in South Carolina. But we didn't have enough funds to leverage that showing. It was a good showing, but that meant just a brief glimmer on the major networks, and then it was gone.

You've got to have a structure in place to raise money. In the end, raising money's a lot of hard work, and I simply did not have the contacts. It's very difficult to develop contacts when you're also being a member of Congress, and you got a day job. LINK

It is all about the $$$ and the MSM giving you air time. Instead we are told on day two who can or cannot win. Remember? At first it was Rudy, then Mitt, then Fred Thompson held out to sign on and conservatives waited...Then he signed up, collected $$$, and dropped out.

Is there any wonder we are rallying for John McCains VP pick? She is the closest thing to a conservative that we have and the only candidate that has executive experience. She is not perfect, but she is a fighter and she damn sure cleaned up her state leaving some corrupt Repubs and Dems hating her.

She is the only candidate that is fresh and has accomplished change, some of it at the expense of her own party. That is admirable my friends no matter what party you support. She is not a Washington insider like the rest. That reason alone gains her my support. She is the only candidate that is a reformer. She is the only candidate that truly embodies what the people want - Change. Obama Biden offer the same old same.