CPAC Straw Poll: Ron Paul wins with 31%! Romney 27%, Palin 7%, Pawlenty 6%, Pence 5%, Huckabee 4%. http://bit.ly/9ko04R
CPAC Straw Poll: Ron Paul wins with 31%! Romney 27%, Palin 7%, Pawlenty 6%, Pence 5%, Huckabee 4%. http://bit.ly/9ko04R
Worth about as much as an Olympic medal made out of Styrofoam.
Mike – sadly, it’s about as much of a recommendation as the most recent Nobel Peace prize !
Aren’t there legit people at CPAC? Well Glenn Beck was the keynote speaker this year, and Limbaugh was last year, so I guess I really am asking a question. This event seems to be treated as a legitimate gathering of GOP leadership, so if Ron Paul won the straw vote, and make no mistake I wanted him to win the presidency in 2008 above all the others, doesn’t this prove that the fringe just took over the party? And by “fringe” I don’t mean Republican fringe, I mean the entire fringe.
One other question for anyone in the know, because this isn’t talked about in public anymore, but isn’t the US military scheduled to be out of Iraq in 5 months, by August? Is this even happening or are we pretending because Obama is president it doesn’t matter?
CPAC is a strong minority within the GOP, and with the split of votes for the more mainstream conservatives, it’s not surprising that a die-hard, libertarian-minded subset was able to muster the win with less than one-third of the votes.
Plus, with the Iraq war winding down, the isolationist element of Ron Paul libertarianism is easier to overlook and “forgive” in favor of the rest of his libertarian message.
While there are aspects of libertarianism I find highly questionable (e.g., the disproportionate focus on drug legalization; and the isolationist, quasi-anti-military veins), overall I’m a happier Republican if libertarians increasingly abandon the Democratic and Libertarian parties and instead form a prominent, influential minority within the GOP.