Ron Paul Wins Presidential Straw Poll at CPAC

Fox News ^ | 2/20/2010 | FOX NEWS CHANNEL

[onyx]

Ron Paul Wins CPAC 2012 Presidential Straw Poll

[Rich Knight]

Ron Paul wrote, sponsored, and fought for the Sanctity of Life Act, which would have allowed states to ban abortion.

Allowing states to ban abortion is a massive improvement over the current situation, which doesn't allow such a ban at state or federal level.

[rintense]

The RINOs and Paulbots are attempting a take over just like they’ve done CPAC.

[RetiredArmy]

The republicans better do better. I ain’t voting for Ron Paul. I darn near sat out the last election because of McScum running, but voted holding my nose, plugging my ears and closing my eyes, for him. But, I ain’t going to continue to do this. They had better get their collective heads out of the dark hole.

[wagglebee]

Ron Paul wrote, sponsored, and fought for the Sanctity of Life Act, which would have allowed states to ban abortion.

Yes, and it would have also allowed states to keep abortion legal. In other words, he is pro-choice.

Allowing states to ban abortion is a massive improvement over the current situation, which doesn't allow such a ban at state or federal level.

No, it refuses to acknowledge that unborn babies are HUMAN BEINGS who have RIGHTS. As far as reducing the number of abortions, just as many babies will be murdered, it will just happen in fewer states.

[Brices Crossroads]

“I can’t give you proof, just as you can’t prove that she is electable.”

I can’t prove that future events will occur, but I do know this. Palin has won elections against long odds and in a year where GOP candidates, incumbent and nonincumbent (Remember George Allen and Rick Santorum in 2006) were swimming upstream.

She is telegenic (the camera loves her) and she connects with a crowd like no one I have ever seen. She had a bad interview with Couric. You think Katie Couric can kill a Presidential candidacy and render a candidate with Palin’s talent unelectable with one interview? I don’t think so.

the Couric interview, the resignation. Look. If she hadn’t resigned, she would have been up in Juneau batting down ethics complaints and the course of the Health Care debate and the Tea Party movement would have been decidedly different. If someone is going to vote against her based upon Couric and the resignation, then they were never going to vote for her in the first place.

“I have no doubt that here support is deep among conservatives...but I suspect her support as a candidate isn’t wide outside of that group.”

Conservatives make up 40-45% of the electorate, maybe more, and probably 75% or more of the GOP electorate.. That is a pretty hefty base. In fact, I don’t think a serious observer could deny that she is the odds on favorite to win the GOP nomination in 2012. When she wins the nomination, it will be her against Obama. If the American people want to fire Obama, as I suspect they will, the alternative will be Palin. Period.

“Am I ready to say that she is our only or best hope of actually winning...absolutely not.”

Tell me who else is a) better positioned and more capable of winning the GOP nomination than she; b) tell me who is equally as well positioned and capable of winning it?

Finally, the GOP has nominated only one genuine conservative, who was also a really talented candidate, in in the last 45-50 years. (Goldwater was not a good candidate and for a variety of reason had no chance to win, and his nomination was nearly 50 years ago.) The result was two landslides. Why not try nominating another conservative who is a really good candidate? Do you see another candidate in the GOP who is a) a conservative; and b) a genuinely talented candidate. I do not. But I would be anxious to hear about one. That formula worked spectacularly twice in recent history and it has not been tried since.

[ansel12]

Any definition of conservative that includes McCain as President is certainly elastic enough to include Ron Paul.

Don't confuse the Presidential election with the Republican primary. Ron Paul is not and never will be representing the Republican party in a Presidential election.

[SoldierDad]

R-U-N Paul couldn’t win his way out of a wet paper bag.

[ansel12]

“2006 was a good year no doubt for Palin even as a Republican, just as it was generally a bad year for incumbents. Susan Collins won reelection to a third term in 2008 by over 10%, defeating a dem congressman in a state that went for Obama by a wide margin. Despite all that, I wouldn’t use Collins victory in Maine as an indication of anything just as I wouldn’t use Palin’s victory in Alaska as anything.

Would I love it if Palin was to prove me wrong...absolutely. Am I ready to say that she is our only or best hope of actually winning...absolutely not.”

---

The Most Popular Governor
Alaska’s Sarah Palin is the GOP’s newest star.
BY Fred Barnes
July 16, 2007, Juneau

The wipeout in the 2006 election left Republicans in such a state of dejection that they’ve overlooked the one shining victory in which a Republican star was born. The triumph came in Alaska where Sarah Palin, a politician of eye-popping integrity, was elected governor. She is now the most popular governor in America, with an approval rating in the 90s, and probably the most popular public official in any state.

Her rise is a great (and rare) story of how adherence to principle—especially to transparency and accountability in government—can produce political success. And by the way, Palin is a conservative who only last month vetoed 13 percent of the state’s proposed budget for capital projects. The cuts, the Anchorage Daily News said, “may be the biggest single-year line-item veto total in state history.”
snip
With her emphasis on ethics and openness in government, “it turned out Palin caught the temper of the times perfectly,” wrote Tom Kizzia of the Anchorage Daily News.
snip
As recently as last year, Palin (pronounced pale-in) was a political outcast. She resigned in January 2004 as head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission after complaining to the office of Governor Frank Murkowski and to state Attorney General Gregg Renkes about ethical violations by another commissioner, Randy Ruedrich, who was also Republican state chairman.

State law barred Palin from speaking out publicly about ethical violations and corruption. But she was vindicated later in 2004 when Ruedrich, who’d been reconfirmed as state chairman, agreed to pay a $12,000 fine for breaking state ethics laws. She became a hero in the eyes of the public and the press, and the bane of Republican leaders.

In the roughly three years since she quit as the state’s chief regulator of the oil industry, Palin has crushed the Republican hierarchy (virtually all male) and nearly every other foe or critic. Political analysts in Alaska refer to the “body count” of Palin’s rivals. “The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who crossed Sarah,” says pollster Dave Dittman, who worked for her gubernatorial campaign. It includes Ruedrich, Renkes, Murkowski, gubernatorial contenders John Binkley and Andrew Halcro, the three big oil companies in Alaska, and a section of the Daily News called “Voice of the Times,” which was highly critical of Palin and is now defunct.

[trisham]

How do these votes by Ron Paul allow us to conclude that he is pro-life?

Voted NO on restricting interstate transport of minors to get abortions. (Apr 2005)
Voted NO on making it a crime to harm a fetus during another crime. (Feb 2004)

Voted NO on forbidding human cloning for reproduction & medical research. (Feb 2003)
Voted YES on funding for health providers who don’t provide abortion info. (Sep 2002)

Voted NO on federal crime to harm fetus while committing other crimes. (Apr 2001)

Voted NO on barring transporting minors to get an abortion. (Jun 1999)

It seems to me that there is a conflict here.

[Rich Knight]

Individuals are imperfect.

He still has been a much stronger pro-lifer than most elected Republicans tend to be.

Clearly many look at him through the lens of their objections to his foreign policy stances, and that colors their view of all the good things he does.

[Rich Knight]

Without his plan, the status quo remains.

Under the status quo, more abortions occur than would had his legislation become law.

Thus, he is pro-life and he knows how to proceed to save real lives.

Ron Paul pursues real pro-life objectives while many Republicans in Congress do nothing about it.

[Eric Blair 2084]

You guys are missing the point by such a wide margin it is hard to even know where to begin. This has nothing to do with Ron Paul. He is a near octogenarian, non-candidate who is not very photogenic or eloquent. It's his ideas that are sexy and appealing to young voters. Stupid stuff like liberty, freedom, limited government. This is GOOD NEWS for the future of our nation. Look at the bright side, young Americans don't want Gubmint cheese, they like limited gubmint. You could substitute the name "Ron Paul" with "Snoopy". It's not the person, it's the message....

"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to insure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are travelling the same path".

--Ronald Reagan

Inside Ronald Reagan: A Reason Interview from July 1975

When, not if, Republicans get back into power, they should remember this. The national GOP party wants money and power to keep their cushy jobs. Know the difference between a legitimate gubmint function and social engineering/handouts to keep getting elected.

[truthfreedom]

I would’ve said that the MSM did not like either Ron Paul or Sarah Palin, and did not want either Paul or Palin to win. The MSM has always seemed to like Romney.

Pauls ideas are really very unpopular with the MSM. If I was to guess, I would say that the MSM has concluded that Paul has 0% chance of winning in 2012. He would be, what 77 years old then? So, if he can’t win, why not talk about him?

At this point, I’d guess that Palin scares the MSM more than Paul does, due to her electability.

Not here on FR, but elsewhere across the country, Palin and Paul can appeal to the same types of people. The MSM seems to be wanting to push those people to Paul instead of Palin at least in the short term.

But that’s just a guess. It’s still a surprise that the MSM is talking up Ron Paul when they can ignore him.

[trisham]

Oh, please.

[patriot preacher]

This is a disaster waiting to happen

[Grampa Dave]

"Not just “GAYPAC” but Paul, Romney and all the rest. It looks like a brilliant strategic move now." How about "GAYCINORINOPAC"?

[wagglebee]

Without his plan, the status quo remains.

Under the status quo, more abortions occur than would had his legislation become law.

No, Ron Paul is a big fan of "and then you can have an abortion" laws.

His laws DENY that babies are human beings and give the states the authority to legalize murder.

There is NOTHING to suggest that these laws would eliminate a single abortion.

[Engineer_Soldier]

The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments make it absolutely clear that the states CANNOT make ANY LAWS that deprive a person of life without due process.

Do you believe that an individual state should be allowed to pass a law legalizing murder?

These amendments bar the federal government from doing so. Remember, the Constitution (as it was originally written) places limitations on the federal government as a treaty amongst the states, and the federal government only. It places no limitations on the states individually (pre Civil War as our country was founded). That is why every state has its own constitution spelling out the limitations by the people on their state's individual powers.

Do I believe that an individual state should be allowed to pass a law legalizing murder? No. But it is a state issue. Take the death penalty: a large number of people think it's state sponsored murder. However, as our founders created the Constitution, it's left up to the state and its populace to decide this. That's also why slavery was accepted for so long after the founding of our country; it was a state issue and up to the moral intellect of its people to decide the issue within the means of their own constitution.

With that said, if a state were acting tyrannical, the people would either move to a freer state or rise up and take over its government either by force or by election, but it would still be within the state. The way the founders created our confederacy, it makes states cater to the will of its own citizens without affecting the citizenry of its neighboring states; it creates competition amongst the states to attract the greatest and brightest of citizens, yet allows them to fail (as Michigan has done) and drive the ingenuity away.

[Rich Knight]

Murder by abortion has been legalized since 1973.

Ron Paul’s legislation would allow it to be illegal in any state that voted to make it illegal.

[wagglebee]

Trust me, I am well aware that libertarians despise the 14th Amendment, but the fact remains that it PROHIBITS individual states from depriving a person of life without due process.