 What makes Buchanan different from the other candidates?
For these three, the post-game spin contest is crucial. Here's a playback of their takes on the straw poll results and a look ahead at their playbook of messages for the remainder of the race. On Meet the Press , Face the Nation , and Late Edition , she boasted that she had cracked "the top three." Pundits bought the three-winners line, treating Ames as a horse race ("win, place, and show") and noting that "no one's ever won the Republican nomination without finishing in the top three" at Ames. Newspapers, cramped for space, confined their headlines to Bush, Forbes, and Dole. Though Dole's 14 percent was closer to Bauer's 9 than to Forbes' 21, she earned a "solid third" and a place among the leaders by crossing the "double-digit" threshold. As Fox News' Carl Cameron put it: "The other seven candidates could not crack double digits." The Boston Globe called Dole "the winner of this contest-within-the-contest." At a news conference, an aide introduced Dole as the straw poll's "real winner." In every TV interview, Dole claimed to have been "outspent by millions of dollars." Her spokesman told reporters that "on a dollar-per-vote basis, Elizabeth Dole trounced George Bush and Steve Forbes." Dismissive coverage of Dole before the straw poll played to her advantage, as everyone marveled at her "surprisingly" strong third.
 He had different politics than the others
 He had less financial backing than most of them (he had almost no financial backing at all)  He had different politics than the others  He was more moderate than the others  He cared about meeting with Americans in person during his campaigning more than the rest of them did