Rep. Ron Paul has won the straw poll at the 2010 CPAC convention, the Conservative Political Action Conference. Out with the regimists!
This is an informal poll; it’s not a well-controlled one. Out of 10,000 conference attendees, approximately 2500, very motivated Paulites voted, which means that they might have slanted the outcomes. On the other hand, it is quite possible that the Tea Party element has assumed control of the conservative movement.
Will they see to it that the bums and their statist sycophants—the Bill Bennetts, Ann Coulters, Rush Limbaughs of the world—are tossed out and replaced with strict Constitutionalists such as Peter Schiff and Rand Paul?
Perhaps as the republic tanks, the people are finally rising…
Update I: Glenn Beck commences the keynote address, and declares: “The Republicans have not had that come-to-Jesus moment.” And: “I am a Republican and I have a problem”—this moment of GOP contrition and recognitions has not transpired, says Beck.
About the Republicans’ quest for that Big Tent: “What is this, a circus?”
My version: “If the Republicans don’t stop their love affair with idiots, it’s not a bigger tent they’ll be seeking, but a giant tin-foil hat.”
At this stage, Beck has descended into America boosterism. The evening is young. Let us hope he does not waste the opportunity to substantially bash the GOP and zero in on economics, monetary policy; in other words, deliver some Paul pearls.
Glenn: “To restore America, we need less Marx and more Madison.”
Praises Calvin Coolidge.
Finally a fleeting Beck Breakthrough: “We don’t need to export democracy; the best example to the world is to lead by example.” But short lived. He fails to return to this vital point.
Beck then makes a huge historical and philosophical faux pas reading the progressive Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” as if hers were the richly textured words of a Thomas Jefferson. Lazarus was a progressive interloper, whose sonnet ushered in all the maxims of mass immigration we’ve come to know.
Update II: Beck’s address was not the stuff of tea parties. He hit all those soaring notes the sentimental yentas on his show and in his audiences love to hear. But as for substance: he gets an “F.”
Update III: Back to Paul. ABC leads with the news that “Conservatives [Have Picked]: Ron Paul For President In 2012.”
Update IV (Feb. 21): Hours after we reported it here on BAB, CNN joins a growing chorus among MSM in acknowledging That This Is News: “Rep. Ron Paul surprise winner of CPAC presidential straw poll.” Whoever asserted that the “the 74-year old libertarian hero” would be in his 80s in two years was sprouting nonsense on stilts. Paul will be young enough to dismantle whole departments; dismiss large sections of the oink sector, and allow us all to begin breathing life into the economy again.
Update V (Feb 22): “The small Beltway Politburo that runs CPAC is worried,” writes Tom Tancredo at WND.COM:
the Beltway Politburo strives to demonstrate their superior cleverness by undermining the grass-roots consensus. On two key issues, CPAC offered detours and blind alleys, not leadership…
Whereas grass-roots conservatives and millions of 912 patriots – along with 80 percent of the American people – understand the need for border security as a precondition for immigration reform, CPAC board member Grover Norquist is busy launching a new project in support of the Obama administration’s plan to grant another amnesty to 20 million illegal aliens. Neither border control nor immigration enforcement was included as a topic for any of the CPAC general sessions.