{"id":344084,"date":"2010-02-20T17:44:13","date_gmt":"2010-02-20T22:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=77216"},"modified":"2010-02-20T17:44:13","modified_gmt":"2010-02-20T22:44:13","slug":"ron-paul-wins-2010-cpac-presidential-straw-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/344084","title":{"rendered":"Ron Paul Wins 2010 CPAC Presidential Straw Poll"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) scored a victory in the annual CPAC straw poll<\/a>, besting nine other Republicans in a vote taken by around 2,395 attendees — around 25 percent of the people at this conservative conference. Paul won 31 percent of the vote; Mitt Romney came in second with 22 percent, his first silver medal after winning the last three straw polls. Sarah Palin came in third with 7 percent, and Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) came in fourth with 6 percent.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

When GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio announced the results, loud booing broke out in the main ballroom; only when Mitt Romney’s showing was announced did they start to cheer, and the cheers continued for Sarah Palin. William Temple, the omnipresent revolutionary war re-enactor who has spent much of the conference standing in the ballroom waving a “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsen flag, stayed mum, then cheered and waved his sign for Palin.<\/p>\n

Still, the surprisingly strong result for Paul makes sense to those of us in the hall. Paul’s Campaign for Liberty and Young Americans for Liberty were a massive presence at this year’s CPAC, holding court in a wing of the exhibit hall and hosting overflowing satellite events with guests like paleoconservative author. They registered hundreds of attendees — nametags were stashed on Campaign for Liberty’s exhibit table — and worked the vote hard as other campaigns<\/a> basically ignored the contest.<\/p>\n

The result reflects two developments at this year’s conference. The first: the mainstreaming (inside the GOP coalition) of Paul’s libertarian beliefs, after years of him being marginalized, and sometimes booed, by this crowd. CPAC teemed with young libertarian-minded activists who, a few years ago, had little to do with the official conservative movement. The second development: the real affection for Romney, who has evolved from an excitable candidate over-eager to please to something of a statesman.<\/p>\n

Only four of the 1o nominees spoke at CPAC — Sarah Palin, Mitch Daniels, Mike Huckabee and John Thune all skipped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) scored a victory in the annual CPAC straw poll, besting nine other Republicans in a vote taken by around 2,395 attendees — around 25 percent of the people at this conservative conference. Paul won 31 percent of the vote; Mitt Romney came in second with 22 percent, his first silver medal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4313"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}