Despite a big crowd, a Donald Trump ego address and a guest appearance by "one time Democratic pollster" Pat Caddell (what on earth is wrong with that guy?), there were no break-out or rally candidates in the 2012 line-up at the annual political gathering of the Conservative Political Action Committee. The non-predictive CPAC straw poll and convention was heavily Tea Party flavored, and voted 30% for Ron Paul (he won for the second straight year), a guy who has no chance to win the Presidency but who is terrific at busing in straw poll voters. The establishment candidate, Mitt Romney, ran from his record (for the umpteenth straight year) and came in second at a whopping 23%. Everyone else was in single digits.
Some of the comments from the attendees are very revealing. This was from an LA Times piece:
"They're all looking for somebody and — you'd be surprised — they don't think the person they're looking for is here yet," said Mark Pollard, 48, of Austin, Texas. He was searching for a candidate with presidential stature, but said: "I don't think I've seen that yet."
Republican strategists at the event agreed the 2012 contenders had yet to generate broad enthusiasm among conservatives. They attributed that to a lackluster field and a contest in which none of the leading candidates had formally declared they were running.
This one's from
NPR:
"I know what I'm looking for, but I haven't found the whole package yet," says CeCe Heil, an attorney in Virginia Beach, Va. "My candidate would be a mixture of what we've got. If you took a little bit of each one, that would be my candidate."
So what does the GOP base want?
Ask anyone attending the gathering, and you'd hear something like this: a dynamic conservative with a backbone who can win.
"That's it. But there's nobody who meets that criteria," added Bill Hemrick, a Nashville, Tenn., businessman who founded Tea Party HD, a conservative media company. He said the only two who even come close — former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann — "aren't electable."
Well, there's at least some insight shown. In fact, the whole Tea Party thing is causing major problems going forward. A new Pew Poll captures the issue, highlighting that non-Tea Party Republicans are closer to Democrats than to the tea bag extremists:
Tea Party's Hard Line on Spending Divides GOP
It isn't that conservatives won't vote for the Republican. They generally do. But how hard they'll work for the eventual winner, and whether non-tea party voters (also known as "the vast majority of the American people") will be as interested as conservative activists in shutting down the government, running against education, and destroying Social Security remains to be seen.
Just under half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they agree with the Tea Party -- representing 17% of Americans overall. The remaining Republicans make up 23% of the public, and either disagree with (3%) or have no opinion of the Tea Party (20%).
When you look at graphs like this, the attention given to Tea Party supporters seems way out of proportion to their numbers. That's what happens when Democrats sit on their hands - see the 2010 election. Now, that's not something likely to be repeated in a presidential year. And the Tea Party does give Democrats something substantial to run against. That's a good reminder for those eager to jettison Social Security in the name of bipartisanship.
Still, I will let Dave Weigel have the last word on The Meaning of It All:
So I asked what it meant that most of the candidates that the media covers -- Huckabee, Palin -- didn't show? Fabrizio, again, pointed out how unscientific the poll was. After all, Rudy Giuliani had won it in 2007, and John McCain came in fifth.
"And where was John McCain one year later?" asked Fabrizio.
"Losing the presidency," said Keene.
With polls showing
Obama winning the swing states, with the tepid response to the current candidates, and with that kind of GOP divide on the issues, it looks more and more like that's where the Tea Party will be next year: losing the Presidency for Republicans. And it couldn't happen to a nicer American political party.