Ron Paul Wins CPAC Nod Again

The American Conservative Union hosts a conference each year that is attended by thousands of conservatives representing dozens of different conservative organizations. The Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC as it is commonly called, allows these conservatives to get together, swap ideas, and help to set the conservative political agenda in the United States.

The CPAC meeting also gives presidential hopefuls (primarily Republican) a chance to get their message out to their fellow conservative activists, in the hope they can generate support for their candidacy. Although it is by no means indicative of who will actually win the Republican nomination next year, CPAC's straw poll does give a good indication of where the candidates stand with conservatives at this particular time (and it can identify those who are not really viable candidates).

This year's CPAC meeting was held over the last weekend, and the straw poll shows that two candidates are far ahead of the rest of the field with the conservatives attending the conference. Those two candidates are Ron Paul, who finished in first place, and Mitt Romney, who was not far behind him. Everyone else was basically an also-ran. Here's how the straw poll came out:

Ron Paul..........30%
Mitt Romney..........23%
Gary Johnson..........6%
Chris Christie..........6%
Newt Gingrich..........5%
Tim Pawlenty..........4%
Michele Bachmann..........4%
Mitch Daniels..........4%
Sarah Palin..........3%
Herman Cain..........2%
Mike Huckabee..........2%
Rick Santorum..........2%
John Thune..........2%
John Huntsman..........1%
Haley Barbour..........1%
Others..........5%
Undecided..........1%

Even though it's just a pretty meaningless straw poll, these results have to be rather humiliating for some supposedly serious candidates like Gingrich, Palin, Huckabee, Santorum, Thune and Barbour. All of these candidates consider conservatives to be their natural base, and they have been rebuffed by these politically active conservatives. They have some work to do.