The Conservative Leadership Conference occurred over the weekend. It had called itself "CPAC West." That is perhaps too generous, but the straw poll results strike me as, perhaps, interesting. After all, these are activists. MSNBC’s First Read has the results, which are somewhat surprising:
Paul won with 32 percent, McCain came in second with 17 percent, Hunter was third with 15 percent, and "Romney was in the lower numbers because people came out for his event but they just didn’t vote for him," according to organizer and McCain operative Paul Jackson.
Although many of the Republican presidential teams had surrogates representing them at the conference, Mitt Romney and Duncan Hunter were the only candidates to speak at the conference, and the victor himself was not there.
Ron Paul first? I believe that. John McCain second? That’s news.
