America’s conservatives are in ebullient mood

RAMPANT: no other word comes close to capturing the mood of America’s conservatives as several thousand of them gathered in Washington, DC, on February 18th-20th for the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference. It is no surprise. With their recent capture of Ted Kennedy’s former seat in Massachusetts, the Republicans have robbed President Barack Obama of his Senate supermajority and appear to have blocked health reform, his chief domestic priority, in its tracks. Now Republicans are looking forward to big victories in November’s mid-term congressional elections, and beginning to wonder who their presidential candidate should be in 2012.

The CPAC meeting is, among other things, a beauty contest for presidential wannabes, and most of the most ambitious Republican leaders did indeed turn up to strut their stuff. A formal straw poll at the end of the jamboree put Ron Paul, the Texas libertarian, at the top of the list, with 31% of the delegates’ votes. Since he is 74 and unlikely to run again, that underscores the fact that the unofficial front-runner in the still undeclared race for the Republican nomination is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, who came second with 22%. Sarah Palin came third with 7%, just ahead of Tim Pawlenty, the governor of Minnesota, who received 6%. Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana got 5% and 4% each went to Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker, and Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas. …