Straw Man

The 10,000 attendees of this year's CPAC conservative get-together took their usual straw poll to decide who they want running for president. As usual the results will bear no relation to reality once the actual campaigning starts.

Here's the list:

Ron Paul: 31%
Mitt Romney: 22%
Sarah Palin: 7%
Tim Pawlenty: 6%
Mike Pence: 5%
Newt Gingrich: 4%
Mike Huckabee: 4%
Mitch Daniels: 2%
Rick Santorum: 2%
Haley Barbour: 1%

So what do we learn from this? As usual, Ron Paul is the guy conservatives pretend to like because he makes them look smart. But he never gets to run because the GOP is so shot through with war 'n' torture fetishists, anti-intellectuals and religious loons. Oh well... In an ideal world where the GOP weren't struggling to overcome their own base, I'm sure Ron Paul would be in with a real chance. But it seems never to be.

I wouldn't say I liked Ron Paul that much (I used to for a while but I won't get into that...). But I do appreciate his uncommonly sincere opinions on neocolonialism and corporatism. Doc Paul's a smart guy and an ideological purist. Only snag being that his whole small-government philosophy would be suicidal in practice.

How, for example, can a Libertarian expect "big bad government" to voluntarily restrict its own authority? Then there's the tricksy issue of power abhorring a vacuum. You want small, powerless government? So do the folks who dream of launching military coups and fascist putsches.

Libertarians also like to argue the old cliché that government should be afraid of the people not vice-versa. Libertarians, meet Joe Stalin. Libertarians, meet Adolf Hitler. Libertarians, meet Pol Pot... here's a few governments who really were afraid of the people. So they killed them off by the million.

But I'd still say Ron Paul's unworkable, fantasy reality that appeals to our 'better angels' is a lot more palatable than Chairman Limbaugh's unworkable, fantasy reality that appeals only to our finger-sniffing angels with mullets who hate everybody.

Anyway... where was I? Oh yeh. Mitt Romney wins the CPAC straw poll with 22%.