Raw Story | February 22, 2010
By Stephen C. Webster
Remember the big conservative conference Fox News has been hyping over the past 10 days?
The Conservative Political Action Conference's presidential straw poll, a key marker of the mood among conservative voters, apparently didn't mean anything to the network. And if it did mean something, the only real result is bragging rights for the individual candidates who were so well exposed. And hey, even Dick Cheney showed up.
Or, at least that's how Fox News characterized the poll, after it was reported that Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) had won it by a wide margin.
CPAC participants voted for Paul as their favored candidate by some 31 percent, giving him the largest margin of victory in recent years. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who has won the vote over the last three years, was the runner up with 22 percent. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was third with seven percent.
Over 10,000 people attended CPAC this year. Among them, 2,395 voted in the straw poll.
"It is way early, it is unscientific," said a Fox News host, even as the split-screen showed Glenn Beck on stage at the conference. "Perhaps it offers nothing more than bragging rights, uh, through the course of this year. But, it is quite a, uh, enthusiastic crowd. What a difference a year makes."
What a difference a year makes, indeed. Paul himself said something quite similar a day prior, when he spoke before the largest, loudest audience of any other presenter.
He asked if the crowd remembered when he was the guy "off in the corner" predicting doom, and none in the media paid him any serious mind.
"All the sudden, the crash that I had predicting all along: it came," Paul said. "And now, Fox News TV has had me on about 60 times since the campaign was over."
On its Web site, Fox News said that the vote is "not necessarily a good forecaster" of conservatives' leanings nation wide.
Jake Gibson, micro-blogging for Fox News's Live Shots, wrote that Paul's win was "surprising" and caused very audible booing throughout the crowd. Meanwhile, Live Shots writer Kelley Beaucar Vlahos characterized the poll as an annual competition between the Republicans' "bright lights."
Paul is now, apparently, counted among them. Or is he? National Review praised him, jeering "Feel the 'Ronmentum,'" thus triggering a sharp response from Robert Costa.
"Some older CPAC attendees don’t seem to care much for the Texas congressman, sure, but many young activists seem to regard him as a hero of sorts," he wrote. "When he talks about the debt, like he did on Friday, calling it a 'monster' that will 'eat up' our future, it was with a passion that you can’t fake in politics. He also didn’t mind challenging many of the room’s security hawks on foreign policy."
Full story HERE
