Perhaps I let my glass-is-half full side get the best of me in interpreting the results of the CPAC straw poll positively. There is another, more depressing way of looking at the CPAC strawpoll results (Perhaps I am making too big a deal of a minor matter?). Though it is true that Mitt Romney won with an anemic 21 percent, suggesting a wide open field, Rudy McRomney--that is Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney--combined to take 50 percent of all ballots cast. In other words, maybe the problem is not so much with what right-wingers used to deride as country-club candidates. The problem is with conservative voters, or should I say "conservative" voters. They've traded in any sense of principle for the reward of winning. Rudy McRomney has his strengths as a candidate. A third of him is a good family man, a third of him is a war hero, and a third of him upstaged the president in leadership after 9/11. But to defer to electibility a year-and-a-half before the election--as half of CPAC's "conservatives" seem to have done--speaks volumes about the backward direction of the not-so-conservative movement.

In politics, you have to win to play. That is why some conservatives are bending themselves out of shape to justify supporting Rudy Giuliani since at the moment he is closest to Hillary in national polls.

If you play to win and find out that, in doing so, you have given up your original objectives -- why bother winning in the first place?

Amen brother. But, what's a (somewhat) Righty to do? Until there's a truly conservative candidate with rock solid convictions that stands up or a legimate (read: electable) Third Party candidate with rock solid convictions, one third of the GOP triumverate will have to do. And I've said it before that I'd even consider voting for a Dem. if he had a set. But, he'd have to be something in the JFK mold and they don't make em' like that anymore. Not good choices.

"They've traded in any sense of principle for the reward of winning."

felt the same way as about the dems in last years election...except they still lost...welcome to the club...

r.c.

The "conservative movement" doesn't really exist anymore in the sense of a movement that tries to articulate and spread its ideas. That era is over. Currently, the "conservative" movement might best be defined as the "whatever aggravates liberals" movement. Why don't "conservatives" make a ruckus over Bush's spendthrift policies? Because it doesn't aggravate liberals. Why do "conservatives" defend the war in Iraq? Because it aggravates liberals. Why does Ann Coulter use words like "faggot" call widows "witches" and refer to Iraq as "George Bush's bitch?" Because it aggravates liberals. Why are "conservative" despondent over the conviction of Scooter Libby? Because it doesn't aggravate liberals.

That's essentially all one needs to know about the modern "conservative" movement. It's basically an angry mob that reflexively takes whatever position aggravates liberals.

Interesting point Eric. But if you put a hat on, nobody will notice.