{"id":4078,"date":"2011-02-13T09:38:08","date_gmt":"2011-02-13T17:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4078"},"modified":"2011-02-13T09:38:08","modified_gmt":"2011-02-13T17:38:08","slug":"the-cpac-pecking-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/02\/13\/the-cpac-pecking-order\/","title":{"rendered":"The CPAC Pecking Order"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the CPUKE pecking order might be a better term.  The winner of the straw poll was Ron Paul, known for antiwar foreign policy, domestic extremism and racism.  Sadly, there is virtually no chance for Paul to get the nomination.  CPAC winners rarely do. However, watching the hopefuls pander to the more rabid extremists provides good material to bring back when the eventual Republican winner tries to present himself as a centrist in the general election.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"13Paul\"For the second year in a row, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex., emerged as the potential presidential candidate that a group of conservative activists want to see at the top of the Republican ticket in 2012.  <\/p>\n

Paul won this year\u2019s Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll by a healthy margin, getting 30 percent of the <\/strong>vote. His nearest competitor was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who won 23 percent of the vote<\/strong>. Most of the other possible candidates wound up in the low single digits.<\/p>\n

Still, Romney’s finish was relatively strong given talk that health care reform legislation he championed in Massachusetts — which includes an individual mandate — would alienate the conservative base.<\/p>\n

The poll should not necessarily be regarded as an accurate indicator of where the Republican electorate actually stands. Many political figures who have won the CPAC straw polls in past years did not go on to win the Republican presidential nomination.<\/p>\n

\u201cA year is an eternity in politics,\u201d GOP pollsteAmericansr Tony Fabrizio, who conducted the straw poll, told ABC News.<\/p>\n

Rounding out the top five were former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson (6 percent), New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (6 percent) and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (5 percent). Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who delivered a lenghty speech at the conference on Friday night, each received 4 percent of the vote. (Notably, Christie did not attend CPAC.)<\/p>\n

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who turned down an invitation to attend CPAC for the fourth year in a row, finished a distant 9th place, garnering only 3 percent of the vote<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <ABC<\/a>><\/p>\n

Frankly, I don\u2019t think either Paul or Romney would have done as well as they did had the Theocon wing of the party not boycotted to express their hatred for LGBT Americans.  As a result, Plutocons and non-Religious members of the InsaniTEA wing dominated.  Sadly, it looks like we\u2019re in for yet another campaign season of media-hawking by Paul supporters.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the CPUKE pecking order might be a better term.  The winner of the straw poll was Ron Paul, known for antiwar foreign policy, domestic extremism and racism.  Sadly, there is virtually no chance for Paul to get the nomination.  CPAC winners rarely do. However, watching the hopefuls pander to the more rabid extremists provides […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}