After a terrible political week, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has gotten some good news in terms of imagery and the argument he’s making that he is conservative and was a “severely conservative” governor: he has won the highly touted Washington Times/CPAC straw poll, which many had expected former Senator Rick Santorum to win:
Mitt Romney won The Washington Times/CPAC Presidential Straw Poll on Saturday, and also nipped Rick Santorum as the top choice of conservatives nationwide, according to a new version of the poll conducted for the first time this year that suggests Mr. Romney retains strong support among self-identified conservatives.
Mr. Romney won 38 percent of the straw poll, which counted the votes of 3,408 activists gathered for the Conservative Political Action Conference, which ran from Thursday through Saturday at a hotel in Washington.
Mr. Santorum was second with 31 percent, Newt Gingrich was third with 15 percent and Rep. Ron Paul was fourth with 12 percent — far below his showing the last two years, when he won with 31 in 2010 and 30 percent in 2011.
In the national survey, meanwhile, Mr. Romney barely topped Mr. Santorum 27 percent to 25 percent, with Mr. Gingrich in third place at 20 percent and Mr. Paul again trailing at 8 percent.
The poll results have no official meaning in the GOP’s presidential nomination battle but do give Mr. Romney a boost as he seeks to regain the momentum he appeared to have lost last week as Mr. Santorum swept Tuesday’s three contests.
Mr. Romney’s 38 percent of the vote among CPAC activists is the highest of any candidate since George W. Bush won 42 percent of the vote in 2000, en route to the nomination and the White House. The poll wasn’t held from 2001 through 2004, but has been held every year since then.
In both surveys, beating President Obama in November took a back seat to nominating someone who holds a conservative stance on the issues.
So much for those who thought Romney seemed somewhat madcap in the way he pleaded he was “severely conservative.”
(I have to run because I have lots of severely moderate posts to write this weekend…)
SOME OTHER VIEWS:
Ed Morrissey:
The results for Paul doesn’t come as much of a shock. Paul didn’t speak at CPAC, and his faithful contingent was mostly absent from the conference this year. Still, it’s a bit of a shock to see him fall all the way to the bottom.
Romney brought a lot of supporters with him to CPAC, which is exactly what this straw poll measures. In that sense, it’s a bit surprising to see Rick Santorum come as close as he did in second place. We saw a lot of Santorum posters and signs at CPAC this year, so perhaps the Santorum campaign managed to get that kind of organization in place. As low on resources they have been, though, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to buy a bunch of tickets for Santorum supporters to attend a three-day conference. I’d chalk that up to more organic support than organization.
The big surprise, though, was Gingrich’s poor showing. He also has resource issues now, but CPAC is his crowd. Normally one would expect Gingrich to score better at this particular conference, especially after a very good speech yesterday. A distant third was not the result the Gingrich team would have wanted for the story line out of CPAC. Gingrich does a little better in the Washington Times’ national poll at 20%, but still trails both Romney (27%) and Santorum (25%).
The Daily Kos’ Kaili Joy Gray:
So even though conservatives actually can’t stand Mitt Romney, apparently his latest declaration that he was a “severely conservative” governor was good enough for them. And since one of the biggest themes of this year’s Republican primary season is how Obamacare sucks, obviously choosing the father of Obamacare to run against Obama makes perfect sense.
Please commence mocking now.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.