Last Call

It's interesting to note after all the noise at CPAC this year that the folks in attendance seem to think the road to the White House would be best traveled by...Ron Paul?

Texas Rep. Ron Paul won the straw poll of conservative activists Saturday as their top choice for the 2012 presidential nomination, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney finished a strong second — but among the newer faces, no one showed much strength.


Paul was the first choice of the 3,742 voters at the Conservative Political Action Conference with 30 percent. Romney got 23 percent. Paul and Romney also finished one-two in last year’s poll, with almost identical percentages.

In 2007, Romney won the straw poll, followed by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Arizona Sen. John McCain, the eventual nominee, never a favorite of conservative activists, was fifth.

Perhaps just as significantly, the vote this year among other hopefuls was fractured, even after more than a dozen potential candidates paraded to the podium over three days to make their cases to a convention that drew more than 11,000 people from around the country.

While Romney got a boost, the splintered vote among other candidates was a signal that “there’s no gelling around a candidate,” said CPAC Chairman David Keene. The key message, he said, is that “all of these potential candidates are seen as conservatives. People sort of like all of them.”

Other results as first choices: Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, 6 percent; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who did not attend the conference, 6 percent; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 5 percent; Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, 4 percent; former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, 4 percent, and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, 4 percent.

2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who did not attend, got 3 percent. At 2 percent each were former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who also did not attend, former National Restaurant Association head Herman Cain, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and South Dakota Sen. John Thune.

Folks, let me explain something to you.  If Ron Paul is walking away with the number one position in a CPAC straw poll, the GOP doesn't have any idea how much trouble they are in going into 2012.

Granted, Paul is infinitely more dangerous than Sarah Palin.  Unlike Palin, I actually agree with about a third of what Ron Paul has to say, that we should get the hell out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and slash billions from defense spending, and that in the last decade both Bush and Obama have severely damaged our civil liberties in the name of a meaningless Warren Terrah.  To his credit, Paul has been on the right side of those arguments for years now.

It's the other two-thirds of his platform that makes me think he's off his rocker.

Seriously?  "Opt out of America?"  What kind of scam is that?  Last time I checked, wasn't the problem with the "cult" around Obama's idealism the notion that he didn't like his country and he thought America was the bad guy?

Paul really is a dyed in the wool libertarian, the real deal, but it's almost like he resents the government he wants to lead.