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Rand Paul Wins CPAC Presidential Preference Straw Poll

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If you want to know who the most popular fascist is at CPAC’s “little rebellion on the battlefield of ideas,” as Texas Gov. Rick Perry put it, it is Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who won with 31 percent of the vote, repeating, and improving slightly upon, last year’s CPAC victory of 25 percent. Apparently, his irrational objection to a black man being elected twice to the highest office in the land, and obeying and upholding the Constitution, resonated with the audience.

Paul’s words were jingoistic if not factual, just the sort of thing a CPAC crowd loves: “He’s got a pen, he’s got a phone, he doesn’t care what the law is,” Paul said. “A tyranny will ensue, and we must stop this President.”

Will ensue, has ensued…they can’t make up their mind and don’t know what a tyranny is anyway, but what the heck, it makes an ignorant audience angry, and that’s the point.

There were 25 Republicans on the ballot, including some write-ins (Calvin Coolidge among them). The Cuban anarchist, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), had nothing new to say at CPAC and came in second with 11 percent (a tepid increase of seven points over last year), with Dr. Ben Carson third with 9 percent (who tied with in last year’s poll) and New Jersey Gov. and self-professed Koch-sucker Chris Christie fourth, with 8 percent. Rick Santorum and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker tied for fifth, each garnering a meager 7 percent of the total.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) go a whopping 6 percent of the vote and Rick Perry 3 percent, tying Rep. “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire” Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). It was Perry, who, seemingly unaware that it is his own party that is killing the USPS, who tried to fire up the crowd Friday with his cry, “And what the heck: deliver our mail; preferably on time and on Saturdays.”

CPAC was a triumph of “red state principles,” which are a combination of unbridled arrogance, limitless stupidity, and irrational hatred of humankind, with a whole lotta dishonesty mixed in.

We are all used to thinking in terms of millennials and liberal ideals, but at CPAC, we were not talking about a collection of geriatrics. According to CNN’s coverage of the event, “it was a very young voting group” – 46 percent of the voters were between 18 and 25. It comes as less of a surprise that they were mostly male, at 63 percent.

According to Politico, GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio, “who has run the straw poll since 1986,” said, “This is a sampling of people from all 50 states who are at the forefront of the conservative moment. They’re the people who go knock on doors.”

Oh dear. Time to lock your doors, and if you’re a geriatric and irrelevant, maybe wave a musket around.

This was Rand Paul’s statement following his victory as the most popular person in the least popular political party in America:

The fight for liberty continues, and we must continue to stand up and say: We’re free and no one, no matter how well-intentioned, will take our freedoms from us. Together we will stand up for the Constitution. Together we will fight for what is right. Thank you, and onwards to victory.

It is unclear what freedoms Paul thinks are being taken from him and his fellow hooligans, or to which Constitution he was referring, since it clearly was not the United States Constitution. Yesterday, I called CPAC a theater of the absurd and certainly seems absurd that these conservatives are rallying around an America that has never existed, and will never exist, except in their imaginations. What they have accomplished is about as meaningful as if they made their 2014 rallying cry, “For Frodo!”

It would help, I think, if the GOP decided it was time to live in the same world as the rest of us. Just sayin’.

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Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

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