http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/02/21/2010-02-21_ron_paul_for_prez_say_rightwingers.html
Executive Summary:
Ron Paul won the straw poll for 2012 presidential nominee at CPAC, one of the big political events of the year for conservatives.
Mitt Romney was second with 22% of the vote and all other candidates (including Sarah Palin) were 7% or less. Most voters also said they were dissatisfied with the current slate of candidates.
Opinion:
It is an unoffical poll, and it looks like Ron Paul won because he made sure his supporters attended CPAC, not because he's who conservatives actually want. His supporters are what worry me a bit. I saw them at our state's GOP convention in '08 where they tried to throw our nomination to Paul. When they failed, they focused on trying to ram as much antiwar rhetoric into our platform as possible. They showed the same kind of slavish, unquestioning devotion to Rep. Paul (or "Dr. Paul," as they are careful to say) that many Obama voters showed for Obama. They seem to believe that all we need to do is elect a "smart," well-educated man, and he will fix everything that is wrong with the country. The cult of personality that surrounds him (and that he doesn't seem to mind it) mixed with his unrealistic foreign policy positions means that this conservative does not support him.
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While there is a lot of Ron Paul's positions that I disagree with, it would be interesting to see how his fiscal policies would be carried out.
ReplyDeleteBut if poll's like this are a measure of just who had the most people show up and not a measure of what people actually want, how do you get that number? How do you successfully poll? Or can you?
I do think we do pay way too much attention to polls. The one from CPAC is really unscientific, but even the scientific ones have so many flaws (i.e. people that lie to pollsters, people that refuse to answer), that I think they are rarely an accurate representation of what people actually think.
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