CPAC Straw Poll: It's A Wide-Open Race
The CPAC straw poll results are in showing that there is no clear favorite among the assembled conservative activists for the 2012 Republican nomination:
Mitt Romney 20%
Bobby Jindal 14%
Ron Paul 13%
Sarah Palin 13%
Newt Gingrich 10%
Mike Huckabee 7%
Mark Sanford 4%
Rudy Giuliani 3%
Tim Pawlenty 2%
Charlie Crist 1%
Undecided 9%
A lot of news outlets are reporting this as a Romney win, but that doesn't seem all that accurate for a 20% plurality in a field this large. The bottom line is that there are a whole bunch of possible candidates who could pick up support, and the field still has a lot of time to really form.
It's a wide-open field with no clear favorite -- and it doesn't really have to be anything other than that, at this very early point in the game.
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Josh
Matt
Eric
Brian
It's a loss for Sarah Palin more than anything.
On a side, CNN played Rush Limbaugh's rant in full, covering it like it was some great political speech or something. Fox did it as well, but that's to be expected. Has this thing ever been so closely covered before by the MSM?
Not saying it's a bad thing since Limbaugh is a fringe pig, and while he might be preaching to the choir at the event, his venom shouldn't play nearly as well away from the wingnuts and dittoheads.
February 28, 2009 6:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
CNN is Fox lite.
At best they were always center right, but invariably moving more and more to the right every season.
Honest to God, if I'm forced to make at least one choice and I have two options- I will watch Fox over CNN.
Coz, with Fox what you know it.
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Anyway, my only point of interest in this Stupid poll is Ron Paul. I think his base will expand more in the next cycle. I hope he runs again.
February 28, 2009 7:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why make a choice between these two? There are much better options. I haven't watched either in five years.
February 28, 2009 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I really don't think Ron Paul's base will expand much. 13% is about the highest he got in any Republican primary, unless I am forgetting one or two. Paul's base is rabid, but self-limiting, and he was going after the crazy bikers and militia types to get it that high. His goal was and remains one primarily of fund-raising and selling Libertarianism.
I am more interested in the fact that the two most clearly evangelical individuals in the race, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, are splitting a mere 20% between them. It also interests me that Sen. Jon Cornyn (R - TX) appears nowhere on the current list. Both items may be artifacts of the absence of a large evangelical presence at the conference or something else that limited the attendance of their representatives, but I have no evidence that was true.
February 28, 2009 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
The top three[1] on that list shows once and for all that comedians have nothing to worry about in a post-Shrub world.
Romney: He led the CPAC Straw Poll of 2008 with 35% to McCain's 34%...after he dropped out of the race. So that means the candidate's likely to be...
Jindal: Let the lulz begin! Come on Bobby, resign or go out the state more so we can get Sen. Landrieu's brother for official governor. >:-)
Palin: Oof. Looks like the formerly-MILF-now-GILF-factor[2] has worn off on the CPAC-men. [[cue Nelson Muntz laugh]]
[1] = Ron Paul's going nowhere with the wingnuts...he supports same-gender marriage, will end the War on Drugs and opposes the death penalty. That, along with his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, will ensure he'll have to run 3rd party again.
Therefore, I didn't count him.
[2] = To wingnuts, not me. I needed brain bleach with just typing that sentence alone.
February 28, 2009 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
B.O. is destroying what is left of the U.S. and this is all you can say. Every time B.O. opens his mouth the markets slide further; he is sending 17,000 troops to be slaughtered where no nation has succeeded before; he is bombing and killing innocent civilians in Pakistan; he has signed a wasteful budget that he and his demoncrat buddies didn't want anyone to read (except his lobbyist friends). Wake up dude and smell the toxic waste. Repent for voting for the community organizer and just hope that B.O.'s nazi, marxist spirit is not unleashed. He is very, very scary.
March 1, 2009 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Where's Jeb?
February 28, 2009 9:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Much too smart to be even considering a run in 2012. I don't think his name will even surface again to 2012 or even 2014.
February 28, 2009 9:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds like good news for Obama in 2012
February 28, 2009 9:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yo Eric! Concerning your list. It's missing the most important GOP candidate of them all ... None of the Above
February 28, 2009 10:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I forgot to add, of all the candidates in the list, he's got the most name recognition.
February 28, 2009 10:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't either foe years now. I didn't mean I would watch any of these two. That was not the point.
February 28, 2009 10:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very interesting read on the attempted astroturfing with Rick Santelli and the "spontaneous" Chicago Tea Party - http://exiledonline.com/exposing-the-familiar-rightwing-pr-machine-is-cnbcs-rick-santelli-sucking-koch/all/1/
I really wish it was titled differently, and it may seem a little CTer, but all those coincidences are hard to ignore.
February 28, 2009 10:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hard to say what will happen by 2012. I expect that the economy will still be big, so Romney may be the man. My guy was Fred Thompson, but it looks like he is out for good.
One bit of correction from a previous post:"Ron Paul's going nowhere with the wingnuts...he supports same-gender marriage, will end the War on Drugs and opposes the death penalty. That, along with his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, will ensure he'll have to run 3rd party again."
Paul said in an interview just a few days ago he supports the death penalty, which surprised me.
Also its not that he supports same-gender marriage, its just that he's a "States Rights" guy and believes that the Federal Government has no right, according to the Constitution, to pass laws Pro or Con in such matters, only states do.
And he didn't run Third party in 2008, he ran as a Republican. I know all of this because at the local party meeting I ran into a nice young couple that supported him. They were normal looking and excited about participating, which I think is a good thing!
March 1, 2009 2:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
That post would be mine...
I flubbed with the 3rd party thing...thanks to the folks in Louisiana who did put him on the third party ballot, but I mistakenly thought that was the same nationwide. My sincere apologies.
As for same-gender marriage, he has come out "in favor" of it in terms of being ambivalent about it, in that's a non-governmental matter (like you said). But keep in mind that compared to Republican party standards, that's not far enough for the-powers-that-be (even if they understand the "State's Rights" backdoor to disallowing it).
In the end, it really all comes down to whether DOMA is constitutional or not (and IMHO I'm strongly on the "unconstitutional" side of that), and that's up to the SCOTUS if they ever get the testicular/ovarian fortitude to actually review it.
Serious question: Why in the world (or really, what cause) would Paul reverse his stance (again) on the death penalty?
March 1, 2009 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ron Paul considers the very existence of the Federal Reserve Bank as unconstitutional, also. If the banks are still not lending very much, as they won't be if the economy continues to worsen (as seems to me most likely), how much traction will a platform that includes eliminating the Federal Reserve get? Except among the about 10% of the Republicans who are Libertarians, of course. He's trying to go back and change the outcome of the decades-long political battle prior to the Civil War over the creation of a National Bank of the US. The Fed was created in a severe Recession, strengthened during the Depression because of that economic collapse, and is back again doing what it was intended to do and which cannot be done by any other organization. A long history of clear need for the Fed has brought it into existence, but Ron Paul doesn't care.
Paul holds no real appeal except to hardcore Libertarians, and at his age it is unlikely that will change. My biggest objection to him (out of a list that is beyond counting) is his desire to eliminate NASA. He used to represent the district that includes the Johnson Space Center, and has tried to eliminate NASA from the budget every year. He has always been a wack-job who constantly stood up in Congress and told the Congressmen they were acting unconstitutionally.
March 1, 2009 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
With Anne Coulter and Joe the Plumber as advisors, all you can say is...go Whigs!
March 1, 2009 8:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would have to say that Bobby Jindal, not the better known Mitt Romney is the winner, if there is one, in this straw poll. Sarah Palin didn't do very well at all so you might say she is the loser. Ron Paul also has a sizable cult following. This looks pretty splintered to me. Oh, well.
March 1, 2009 10:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
if you missed it, obama's speech before congress is playing again on cspan in a few minutes.
March 1, 2009 10:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
i hope it's romney. it'll be fun to make him the face of corporate interest responsible for shipping american jobs overseas.
March 1, 2009 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, I'm confused. They're, what, holding elections for Commander in Chief Desider Guy of the Wingnut Fringe Loons? Are they setting up their own country or have they finally just become so completely undocked from reality that they think they're the only people in the country now?
March 1, 2009 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
I will never vote for the former liberal governor fron Massachusetts. He was pro-abortion, pro-big government, pro-high taxes. I am just amazed that any thinking conservative would even consider Mitt Romney.
Many, myself included, said the same thing about McCain and Bob Dole and look at the disaster that their false conservatism created.
If we are truly conservative in our world view then we should want the candidate who best represents our worldview and Romney is not that candidate. Please wake-up!
March 1, 2009 3:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Mitt Romney is less crazy than some of the of the others, but with that exception, the CPAC popularity is almost perfectly inversely proportional to the relative sanity of each candidate.
March 2, 2009 10:42 AM | Reply | Permalink