Ron Paul & Libertarians Own CPAC 2010

posted by Nima

February 22, 2010 · Posted in Politics

Ron Paul’s speech at CPAC:

They also had the traditional CPAC straw poll, Ron Paul won this poll by a landslide. Here is what the annoyed, confused, and biased as ever news media had to say about this:

New York Times:

Mr. Paul, a Republican Congressman from Texas who inspired an intense following for president in 2008, swept the 2012 presidential straw poll Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

He won with 31 percent of the nearly 2,400 votes at the conference, edging out Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who won the straw poll last year and who captured 22 percent of the vote.

When Mr. Paul’s name was announced in the packed ballroom of a Washington hotel, it elicited hoots and boos along with applause. Although Mr. Romney won fewer votes, he seemed to draw stronger applause.

Huffington Post

…In many respects, his win in the CPAC poll seemed pre-ordained — his band of followers having a well-earned reputation for flooding polls and forums like these.

What it portends for a possible 2012 presidential run is anyone’s guess. Paul had a similar cult-like following during the 2008 election, only to garner a relatively small chunk of the actual vote.

Politico:

Paul’s victory renders a straw poll that was already lightly contested among the likely 2012 GOP hopefuls all but irrelevant, as the 74-year-old Texan is unlikely to be a serious contender for his party’s nomination.

As the results were displayed on twin large screens in the ballroom — and even before Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio could announce who had won — a cascade of boos came down from a crowd that views Paul and his fervent supporters as irritants. Paul’s backers responded with cheers, though, when their candidate was then proclaimed by Fabrizio as the winner.

CPAC organizers were plainly embarrassed by the results, which could reduce the perceived impact of a contest that was once thought to offer a window into which White House hopefuls were favored by movement conservatives.

Out of all these pointless and useless “reports” Politico is really the funniest one. “Because the straw poll results don’t fit our understanding of things, we declare them irrelevant.” Wow, that’s what I call analytic, investigative, and unbiased journalism right there.

Luckily Politico didn’t hesitate to set the record straight, by posting a poll on their website on who SHOULD have won the CPAC 2010 straw poll, the results:

Ugh, these strange people, with their unfathomable superpowers of flooding forums and polls, damn you Paulites!!!

On a side note, I really enjoyed how Ryan Sorba’s arrogant and patronizing gay bashing nonsense was simply booed off the stage:

Some more interesting reports from fellow freedom fighter Pete Eyre:

Without a doubt the most-informative and principled session I attended was “You’ve Been Lied To: Why Real Conservatives Are Against the ‘War on Terror’” sponsored by C4L and LOLA, essentially calling out the pro-war conservatives on their own turf. The panelists included FFF founder and head Jacob Hornberger, retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, former CIA counter-terrorism specialist Philip Giraldi and former deputy attorney general Bruce Fein. Check out the speech as a playlist on FFF’s YouTube Channel on as a two-parter on their Vimeo Channel.

CPAC 2010: “Why Real Conservatives Are Against the War on Terrorism, Part 2″ from The Future of Freedom Foundation on Vimeo.

In the session my man Pericles Niarchos (a student at Drexel involved with the badass Student Liberty Front) asked the panelists whether they believe the Constitution they advocate a return to actually helped cause the American Empire they so vilify since it allows for the monopolization of the use of force. See his question and the responses by the panelists here at 46:10. Similarly, in the “How Many Crimes Have You Committed Today” session, in which self-described conservatives argued for lessening the number of actions that were federal offenses, I asked the panelists why, being advocates of free markets and less government, would they allow such an admittedly important good as law enforcement to be controlled by an institution sheltered from competition. Their response? That government needs to exists and that different levels of government should be responsible for different things blah blah blah.

When will minarchists finally realize that we arrived at the rights-violating oppressive welfare/warfare state we have today thanks to the belief that a third party should be granted a monopoly on violence?

… they will realize it when the time has come for them to realize it. When the truth can no longer be obscured, violated, bent, perverted, and covered up. When will that be? It will be someday, nobody knows when, nor does it really matter.

What matters is that we all take part in this great journey and educate as many people as we possibly can along the way. For when the time comes, people will be looking back to us pioneers who stared the beast right in the eyes, who took ridicule, ostracism, oppression, bigotry, and bullying with a smile, who stood for reason and integrity in an ocean of nonsense and corruption, and who never wavered on the path toward morality, truth, peace, and liberty for all.