CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) has just held its annual meeting, where the most extreme right-wingers in America gather to wallow in their far-right ideology and various forms of bigotry -- and this year they added to their normal courses of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and homophobia by refusing to allow atheists to set up a booth.As usual, they invited various right-wing candidates hoping to capture the next GOP presidential nomination to speak before them. And after listening to those speeches, they hold their own straw poll to anoint the far-right's preference for the nomination.
This year 2,459 conference attendees cast a ballot in the straw poll -- and the leading vote-getter was Rand Paul (with 31%). He finished far ahead of any of the other possible candidates -- with Ted Cruz (11%) and Ben Carson (9%) finishing in second and third place. Here is the list of candidates who got at least 1% of the vote:
Sen. Rand Paul...............31%
Sen. Ted Cruz...............11%
Dr. Ben Carson...............9%
Gov. Chris Christie...............8%
Rick Santorum...............7%
Gov. Scott Walker...............7%
Sen. Marco Rubio...............6%
Gov. Rick Perry...............3%
Rep. Paul Ryan...............3%
Mike Huckabee...............2%
Gov. Bobby Jindal...............2%
Sarah Palin...............2%
Condoleezza Rice...............2%
Mitch Daniels...............1%
Gov. John Kasich...............1%
Gov. Mike Pence...............1%
Sen. Rob Portman...............1%
Sen. John Thune...............1%
Donald Trump...............1%
Allen West...............1%
(The caricature above of Rand Paul is from the inimitable DonkeyHotey.)
