I attended CPAC for ten consecutive years. I am working on a similar streak of non-attendance. Should they invite me to speak on a panel with the likes of Jane Russell again, I will gladly reappear. Ron Paul won the presidential straw poll at the conference this weekend. This is shocking given the reception given to Paul by party conservatives just two years ago. It is unsurprising given the past tenacity of Paul's supporters in such non-binding votes. Jim Antle's take on Paul's victory is here. My take is that Ron Paul was a premature tea partier. Though his campaign for the presidency failed everywhere it was put to a vote, the Ron Paul Revolution anticipated the Tea Party movement in its focus on limited, constitutional government. Conservatives, tethered to the Bush presidency and thus unmoored from their principles, largely dismissed Ron Paul two years ago. Even if movement conservatives haven't fully embraced him--witness the booing his victory received at CPAC--they have largely come around--or, perhaps more accurately, come back--to his principles. A Democrat in the White House has had that effect on them.

Even Glenn Beck, who always respected Paul's fiscal platforms, is starting to come around to his foreign policy ideas.

Ron Paul has some solid conservative and fiscally conservative ideas and his policies are good common sense and responsible ones. But no matter how many Paul supporters at CPAC vote for him in a faux election/poll, he will never be able to win the Presidency.

You are right though, it took a mega-spending radical leftist ideologue in the White House to snap many in the party back from the brink of their support for the Bush spending years and to see the light which Paul had been pointing out for years.

At very least, Dr. Paul will have a positive and strong handed influence on the selection of the next GOP candidate.

And Glenn Beck is annoying. It's sometimes difficult know which side he's on and he at times appears to be an equal opportunity basher. In that sense, I think he's more showman than influential political party builder.

Beck longs to be an opinion-maker, and he has made a splash there. But he is no party person. I think he'll always be more gadfly than leader of a broad coalition.

"A Democrat in the White House has had that effect on them".
....And a Democrat will stay there if Paul gets the nomination.

I've never heard anyone suggest Paul is going to get the nomination or that he could win the presidency, not even his most die hard supporters. But he was more than a premature tea partier; that movement was conceived in his campaign. Many of its leaders, and most of its intellectual content, come from it.

Can Paul be president? No. Neither could Barry Goldwater. But he is, and will continue to be, much more influential on the conservative movement in America than any empty suit, such as Romney or Guliani, that will be voted for simply because they have an 'R' next to their name.

Most conservative leaders these days, of course, are nothing more than party lobbyists who work for the GOP. So while National Review will defend Mitt Romney's state control of healthcare as a 'free market solution', and then talk about an extremely similar policy from Obama in nothing short of apocalyptic terms, they'll certainly never consider endorsing Ron Paul. A candidate who has nothing to sell except actual political conservatism is not only a non-starter with them, it's actively offensive.

I've got a new rule and a test for one being a good and true elected conservative: If you endorse RINO's - you're out.

So, out for me is Scott Brown, Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin who all either endorse or are campaigning for John McAmnesty.

The "Tea Parties" are a sad shell of an attempt to usurp the reactionary spirit that Paul tapped into to keep seducing conservatives to the Republican Party. They are completely cynical and bogus, hence the use of Palin as a new figurehead. They will do nothing, like voting if it changed results or upset the apple cart of the regime it would be suppressed.

Any other vague generalities you'd like to throw out without support?