And the 2010 HARRY Award goes to…
posted at 2:00 pm on December 5, 2010 by Patrick Ishmael
A big thanks to everyone that participated in this First Annual HARRY balloting. In 24 hours, over 4000 readers cast their ballots for the best and worst of the 2010 political season. So, who’s the Hot Air Readership Republican of the Year?
Like any good awards ceremony, we’ll start off with the minor categories.
Hot Air Story of the Year
Beating out its nearest competitor by more than a three-to-one margin, the blog post “Video: Chris Christie destroys reporter for calling him confrontational“ takes home the inaugural HASY Trophy, snatching up 40% of the vote in the six-way race. This year’s runner-up is “Dingell: It will take a while for ObamaCare to ‘control the people’.” Rounding out the top 3 — “Dem congressman: If Guam gets too overpopulated, it might tip over.” (Be sure to search the Archives yourself for some of the other oldie-but-goodies.)
Favorite Topic of the Year
What pushed readers’ buttons? It looks like anything and everything Chris Christie was welcome content, with posts relating to the current New Jersey governor capturing the only majority answer for the question (51%). Christie was more popular than posts on The economy and even Sarah Palin. Following Opinion pieces and Campaign coverage, Ed’s Obamateurisms clearly struck the right chord with visitors to Hot Air, rounding out the clearly popular categories. Not so popular? Posts about Christine O’Donnell, Robots, and Religion.
Preferred Vice Presidential Candidate of Hot Air Readers
Taking the prize for Best Politician Hopefully in a Supporting Role, Florida Senator-elect Marco Rubio topped the vice presidential list by a squeaker over crowd favorite Chris Christie, 564 votes to 523 votes. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal came in a close third with 517 votes. Taking fourth, fifth, and sixth were Congressman Paul Ryan, former Governor Sarah Palin, and Florida Congressman-elect Allen West, in that order. (Note Palin and West; we’ll get back to them in a moment.)
And now, performance art.
Moving on.
In the category of Least Liked Topic We Specifically Polled Anyway, readers by a resounding 67% to 16% favored Christine O’Donnell over Mike Castle in their 2010 Delaware primary match-up. As for supporting a rematch with her as the nominee in 2014, readers were… less enthusiastic.
Hot Air readers are decidedly opposed to Republican candidates for President attending Politico’s Spring debate, generally preferring that the candidates refrain from participating in such an event until the end of the year.
So, back to the candidates themselves: When they cast their votes, what qualities were Hot Air readers looking for in their preferred candidate for President?
Preferred Presidential Candidate of Hot Air Readers
And the winner for Best Politician in a Hopefully Leading Role is Sarah Palin, beating Chris Christie handily and in a substantial reversal from the last poll we took at Hot Air on the topic. Paul Ryan, Bobby Jindal, and Mitt Romney round out the list at three, four and five.
Worth noting here is that while the “most popular President-VP ticket” would seem to be Palin-Rubio based on the results, that pairing was not the most common pairing explicitly given by Hot Air readers.
I’ve prepared a chart to help explain this. Down the left hand column is the preferred President of readers, with the highlighted box signaling which VP candidate was paired with him or her most frequently. So, Palin supporters chose Allen West most often as their VP choice. In contrast, the most popular pairing where Rubio was the VP on a ticket was when Chris Christie was the choice for President. Interesting stuff to me.
A look back at those we lost this year
Assuming there were that many, of course. Personally, I think the following groups won more Republican seats than they “lost,” but Hot Air readers have a decidedly more mixed, and basically negative, opinion of these organizations: the NRCC and NRSC.
Readers may not have liked these organizations, but they did like at least one person. A lot. In fact, so much so that this person is…
The Hot Air Readership Republican of the Year
And the HARRY goes to…
Sarah Palin. It wasn’t particularly close, either. Lots of voters commented that while they couldn’t vote for her for President, she was undoubtedly the biggest Republican mover and shaker of 2010. When I argued last year that the then-former governor Palin ought to “run for Congress” in 2010, I believed that she would play an enormously important role in winning back Republican seats. I noted at the time,
[W]hile Palin’s resignation certainly risks her own personal ambitions for higher office, it also opens up her hand to do the some of the free-wheeling, unfiltered campaigning she couldn’t do last year, with the prime beneficiary the center-right cause. If Palin wants to strengthen her political future, I can’t think of a better way to do it.
Obviously, not all of the 63 seats I predicted Republicans would take were directly a result of her interventions, but Palin drove much of the political conversation over the last 18 months. That’s not an easy feat for a typical politician, but Sarah Palin is not your typical politician. Whatever you think of the Mama Grizzly, you have got to respect her tenaciousness.
She got my vote, and clearly a lot — and I mean a lot – of Hot Air readers cast their ballots likewise.
That concludes this First Annual HARRY Awards ceremony. Hope you enjoyed it. I’m on Twitter. And I’ll leave you with this diddy as a parting tribute to the most endangered among us:
Until next post.
This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.
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It really is mind boggling that the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, has so little respect for his office that he would actually try blame his ineffectiveness on a private citizen who simply broadcast his opinions. Pathetic!
chazmaz on May 14, 2013 at 9:31 PM
If Rush does live in Obama’s head, could he at least tell us what Obama was doing on the night of the Benghazi attack?
monalisa on May 14, 2013 at 9:37 PM
Dittos all.
Could be they identified the enemy and it is us.
Julian Bond had an interesting description of the Tea Party tonight.
Interesting times.
seesalrun2 on May 14, 2013 at 9:45 PM
Or maybe Obama is angry that he can’t forcibly nationalize the broadcast spectrum in total a la Hugo Chavez. Which is why he gets into these p***ing matches with Rush and Fox News.
Myron Falwell on May 14, 2013 at 9:47 PM
Good for Rush finding this new apartment. I hear there is plenty of empty space up in there; he should be able to get some good practice in on that golf swing of his.
Gingotts on May 14, 2013 at 9:53 PM
God bless Rush Limbaugh.
TitularHead on May 14, 2013 at 10:04 PM
What he does every night, watching Sportscenter of course. That’s such common knowledge that lobbyists have started advertising on ESPN just to get to him.
slickwillie2001 on May 14, 2013 at 10:25 PM
It can’t cost too much, there’s nothing there.
mmcnamer1 on May 14, 2013 at 10:26 PM
Even a thimble has space for a gnat, Mr.Limbaugh.
All the mockery of shout radio combined has not done one whit to halt his socialist agenda, or even really to hold the GOP’s feet to the fire until they were worth a hoot. So make your jokes about rent-free life…they’ve got the power and we don’t.
MelonCollie on May 14, 2013 at 11:11 PM
MMM-MMM-MMM!
Sir Loin on May 15, 2013 at 2:29 AM
Exactly right. You know when I essentially gave up on the American people and knew in my gut that this country had gone too far down the path of ignorance and facism? When there was no back-lash, no rising up against the incredible attacks on Sarah Palin and her children. And then this President who called Americans “the enemy” and those of us who defended the Constitution and criticised the press and the federal government for acting like a 3rd World dictator became “extremests”. The filth spewed by Hollywood became the “norm”. Veterans and people who opposed the likes of that butcher Gosnell were put on the terrorist “watch” lists and low-life, pedophiles were allowed to sexually abuse children in public while their parents looked on at our airports.
Now we learn that 7 muslims—chemists—were found at Boston’s water source and while Obama is busy persecuting Billy Graham, these innocent “researchers” are allowed to go their merry way. Why aren’t every one of them in jail awaiting a direct plane to their homeland? Why the hell are they in this county in the first place?
I’m very tired of the awful, souless country we’re passing on to the next generation. Degenerates in Hollywood glorify drug abuse, incivility, and ignorance and they are the pied pipers who shoulder the most immoral man who has ever sat in the Oval Office to lead us all over the cliff. I went to Lowes last week looking for stuff for a remodel in my house. I couldn’t read the freaking packages. I needed an interpreter because everything was in Spanish. I’d like to know why these people are here? They hate us. They want to turn us into Mexico and they burn our flag and insult and ignore our laws and we want more of them? And why are we allowing “students” from Muslim countries? Can anyone, anywhere point to any progress in bringing any Muslim country out of the 6th century? The only thing these “educated” Muslims do is provide technical expertise to blow us all up.
OK. Good grief. I haven’t been involved in any politics since the election because I was intimidated. I used to poo poo “conspiracy” theorists. And for six years I’ve watched the fruition of every, single theory out there. One of the same so-called “nuts” who predicted persecution and prosecution and camps for conservatives and Republicans is now telling us that Google is joining with the Bilderburgs for total power and thought control. Even last year, I would have dismissed this. Now? After the confirmation that the IRS is Obama’s personal SS, I’m paying attention. Now wonder these people want everyone’s guns and ammo.
Portia46 on May 15, 2013 at 9:14 AM
Rush also has the bad taste to not have attended Columbia or Harvard.
TimBuk3 on May 15, 2013 at 9:28 AM
Now THAT, I couldn’t care less about.
Ivy League schools have hopelessly fallen from vaunted institutions of higher learning to left-wing indoctrination centers…and places where all kinds of rich-brat capers go on and get covered up by daddy’s money.
MelonCollie on May 15, 2013 at 9:31 AM
Rush is now the most powerful man on earth…he dictates our policies, he dictates what the president can and cannot do…amazing that a radio talk show host, without one single vote, dictates the policy, foreign and domestic of the United States.
Truly, in this country, you can be anything you want, even president without being president…
right2bright on May 15, 2013 at 10:03 AM
Oblamo must recognize Rush as the Big Community Organizer on the right. It’s really the only thing prezzy is good at and he does like to clear the field of any competition.
Kissmygrits on May 15, 2013 at 10:33 AM
Limbaugh: “I live rent-free” in President Obama’s head
There should be PLENTY of room with nothing else occupying Obummers head space…much like our troll nonpartisan!
EEprom on May 15, 2013 at 10:38 AM
SCoaMF, forever the beta male to Rush’s alpha.
MNHawk on May 15, 2013 at 11:35 AM
Rush, you better not be paying any rent for living in Obama’s head: it’s an unfurnished sewer of a place.
PD Quig on May 15, 2013 at 12:45 PM
Rent free, baby! Freaking legend.
Decoski on May 15, 2013 at 6:15 PM
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