Ron Paul has ended Mitt Romney’s three-year run as conservatives’ favorite for president, taking 31 percent of the vote in the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual straw poll.
Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas known for his libertarian views, ran for president in 2008 but was never a serious contender for the GOP nomination.
Romney, former Massachusetts governor and also a 2008 GOP candidate, has won the last three presidential straw polls at the annual conference. This year, he came in second, with 22 percent.
Sarah Palin, who didn’t attend the conference, was a distant third in the straw poll, with 7 percent, followed by Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota governor, and Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana.
The straw poll is not binding ---- and not necessarily a good forecaster, given that in 2008, John McCain went on to take the party’s nomination over Romney.
Results of this year’s poll were announced just as the crowd prepared for the conference’s keynote speaker, Fox News host Glenn Beck.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
There is no clear consensus as to what the proper Republican platform should be.
Over 2/3 of the voters still identify with neocon ideology.
Perhaps it the libertarian philosophy is starting to gain some support or perhaps these are new voters…?[/quote]
This should make it VERY interesting to see who emerges as a GOP Presidential front-runner.
I should also mention that the Governors of Virginia and Louisiana have been called “rising stars”…but I see the two of them not even making it out of the GOP primaries.
Any thoughts on those two? (Bob Jindal and Bob McDonnell)
Or will it all not really matter, and boil down to “Anybody but Obama”?
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
Also, Romney’s standing among Conservatives is also still baffling to me.
I don’t want to sound like a broken record…but the Religious Right will never support his nomination.
Mufasa[/quote]
If the religious right wants a voice, they have to back away from any ‘religious dogma to become law’ mentality. The right is more liberty oriented, but the hard right has liberty issues. All the crap about family values and stuff, it’s all nice, but none of it should be law.
Lower the drinking age back to 18, legalize drugs purchase, things of that nature.
I don’t care if the who the religious right supports, but I don’t see Ron Paul being much of a factor either. It’s still 3 years away, a lot can happen.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
There is no clear consensus as to what the proper Republican platform should be.
Over 2/3 of the voters still identify with neocon ideology.
Perhaps it the libertarian philosophy is starting to gain some support or perhaps these are new voters…?[/quote]
If they are smart, they will look at the libertarian and tea party movements and adopt their core principals and trumpet them. If they want to win they need to quit living in the '80’s. Reagan was fine then, we need something else now.
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
Or will it all not really matter, and boil down to “Anybody but Obama”?
[/quote]
My prediction for the Republicans is that the intellectual revolution will not go beyond the primaries unless someone principled wins it…two more years to get it moving.
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
Or will it all not really matter, and boil down to “Anybody but Obama”?
[/quote]
My prediction for the Republicans is that the intellectual revolution will not go beyond the primaries unless someone principled wins it…two more years to get it moving.[/quote]
As a crazy, wookie-suit-wearing Ron Paul supporter, I’m glad there were enough people at CPAC who even knew who Dr. Paul is to vote for him, considering the way he got basically ignored in the last election. That said, it seems really unlikely that he would make it past the primaries if he decided to run, and on the outside chance he somehow made it into the Whitehouse, I’m sure things would get ugly.
Once he started hacking away at entitlement programs and began trying to tear down 100+ year old institutions and generally trying to get the .gov to live within it’s means, the mainstream Republicans would backpedal and team with the Democrats against him for fear of losing votes. After he was gone, the Republicans would do the Time Warp (it’s just a jump to the left) and we’d be in worse shape than before.
Paul’s best bet for taking advantage of this is to go out and find a real, Constitutional-Conservative candidate, and begin throwing as much support behind him/her as he can muster. But it will have to be someone with a verifiable record, not some recent convert like McStain.
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
Or will it all not really matter, and boil down to “Anybody but Obama”?
[/quote]
My prediction for the Republicans is that the intellectual revolution will not go beyond the primaries unless someone principled wins it…two more years to get it moving.[/quote]
LIFT:
Can you expound on this a little more?
Mufasa[/quote]
Ultimately I think nothing is going to change in the Republican party until people’s minds are changed philosophically. That is what I mean by “intellectual revolution”.
What I mean by being “principled” is that person has a set of core principles that are easily understood with reference to some framework (for example, constitutionalism or libertarianism).
For the revolution within the Republican party to continue in (what I think is) a positive direction its going to require a hardcore principled individual to carry it forward. Part of the reason why I believe it seems to be coming unraveled is for that very same reason. At least with Ron Paul we understand that he wants to follow the Constitution to a T and he has given 11 terms in congress to show us how he might behave in regard to it.
None of those turkeys standing on stage with him can say that about themselves.