And the winner is Frist, the home state favorite

The man from Hope (Arkansas)
Huckabee made a powerful impression in his speech Saturday.

“Let the Democrats say what they will about the war on terrorism, I'd still rather fight the war in Baghdad than Boston any day of the week," the Arkansas governor declared.

Activists seemed on the edge of their seats during Huckabee's speech as the Baptist minister, speaking without notes, wove in his life story. All of the activists MSNBC’s David Shuster interviewed afterwards who’d never before seen Huckabee in person said they thought his address was the best of the contenders’ speeches in its style and delivery.

The Arkansas governor told reporters that it would be “disingenuous” to suggest the GOP presidential hopefuls weren’t trying to win the straw poll. "We look like complete fabricators" to insist that politicos and reporters came to Memphis to focus on the 2006 midterm elections, he said. Still, Huckabee insisted that he did not see this balloting as a referendum on his potential candidacy. But he joked, "If I do real well, I'm sure I'll say this is the most important thing that ever happened.”

Huckabee won 3.8 percent of teh vote and came in behind McCain.

'Not even an intra-squad scrimmage'
Allen, who campaigned in Memphis Friday and Saturday, had played down the significance of the straw poll.

“This is not even an intra-squad scrimmage,” he told reporters Friday. “This is a pick up game. … It really doesn’t matter.”

If energy and oratorical volume mattered, Allen brought far more to Saturday’s round of speech-making than did Frist.

“Good morning!” Allen boomed as he started his speech, and launched into a populist denunciation of Congress and what he called “a meddling nanny government.”

He railed against illegal immigration, shouting that “securing our borders is the first principle of immigration reform.” He got a whooping round of cheers when he said, “You do not reward illegal behavior with amnesty!”

He called for home-grown and domestically-based sources of energy -- “rather than having to worry about the whims of some Iranian mullah.” (He gave a populist pronunciation to the word EYE-ranian.)

Frist takes credit
In his speech a few hours later, Frist claimed credit for ending Senate Democrats’ filibusters of Bush’s judicial nominees, which had blocked ten of them in 2003 and 2004. Frist said Democrats dropped the filibusters after he threatened with the “nuclear option,” a Senate rules change.

“Because we acted, we are one step closer to an America where activist judges can’t seize

VIDEO Sen. Frist wins GOP straw poll March 11: Senate Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) won the first major GOP straw poll among 2008 Presidential contenders.   Chris Matthew's Hardball team analyzes the full results. Hardball

your private party and hand it off to a developer; because we acted, we are one step closer to an America where activist judges can’t declare that a 14-year old girl can go into a clinic and have an abortion without her parents’ consent, because we acted, we are one step closer to an America where activist judges can’t take it upon themselves to redefine the institution of marriage,” he told the crowd.

His speech was notable for its lack of references to Iraq, Iran, Americans’ dependence on foreign energy suppliers or an issue Frist had often made his signature issue in the past, the menace of avian flu. He did at very end of his speech say, “God bless our troops overseas.”

The straw poll was organized and the ballots counted by National Journal’s Hotline.

Not on the ballot were two Republican long-shot possibilities that have caused some chatter in recent months: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and anti-illegal immigration crusader, Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado.

Tancredo has already made one exploratory trip to Iowa, which holds its first-in-the-nation caucuses in January of 2008.

A small cadre of Rice supporters was active at the Memphis event, passing out buttons and bumper stickers, doing media interviews, and protesting the absence of Rice’s name from the printed ballot.

But Hotline editor-in-chief Chuck Todd said the publication had chosen to list on the ballot only those would-be presidential hopefuls who had been invited to Memphis by the Republican organizers of the Memphis conclave.

Another prominent Republican, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, was invited to speak at Memphis, but chose to pass up the event. It is not yet clear whether Giuliani will seek the 2008 nomination of his party but his name came up frequently in delegates’ discussions of the party’s chances in 2008.

MSNBC’s David Shuster contributed to this story

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