The CPAC presidential straw poll was announced today, right before Newt Gingrich delivered the final address of the event.
Mitt Romney nominally won, but with a paltry plurality of 21%, and he paid for “scores” of staffers to participate in the poll.
Further, there was cool reception from the crowd as the results were announced.
Three others were close behind, Rudy Giuliani with 17%, Sam Brownback with 15%, and the unannounced Gingrich with 14%.
When first and second choices were combined, Giuliani was first with 34%, with Romney and Gingrich tied with 30%.
But any grumbling from the crowd ceased once Newt entered the room.
The thunderous reception made it seem like Newt would have come in first, if he was an official candidate.
And how would Gingrich run?
It appears he will portray himself a mature elder statesman, offering “big principles, “big values” and “big solutions” for a “more prosperous” America.
So right after he called for “big solutions,” what were the solutions he offered?
Making English the “official language of government,” and keeping “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Now I have no doubt these things surely poll well.
But these are your big solutions?
For example, does preventing our government from providing Medicare information to a senior citizen who only speaks Japanese do anything to reform our broken immigration system?
I’ve noted at the start of CPAC that conservatives have a secular problem.
While most secular voters will say it’s fine to have “God” in the Pledge or on money, keeping what’s already there sure isn’t a “solution” to anything, and it won’t lure secular voters into the conservative camp.
Further proving how lost conservatives are in dealing with their political plight, Gingrich whined that:
We know that [conservative principles] are true, but we don’t have any ability to communicate them so people look up. And people have been so educated in the wrong direction, by literally what is now some 70 years.
Yes, the people are too uneducated to understand the intricate nature of conservatism. It’s a failure of citizenship.
It couldn’t be that they voted for conservatism for the last several years, watched it fail, suffered the consequences, and made the informed decision to try something else.
Newt says he’ll make a decision to run in September.
And apparently, conservative activists — dismayed by the current presidential field, yet woefully blind to their political problems — will be eagerly anticipating it.
For more, check out our Conservative Failure page.
