This past weekend at the annual Conservative Political Action Committee Convention, the notorious first straw poll of the 2012 Presidential campaign. Not surprisingly, Ron Paul won for the second time in as many years, getting 30% of the mostly young and libertarian-leaning crowd’s vote. Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts, came in second with 23% of the vote.
Although Paul has long been a favorite of CPAC attendees, he has never faired well in national campaigns garnering .5% of the vote in 1988 as the Libertarian Party candidate, and 1% in the Republican primary in 2008. No matter how popular Ron Paul may be, and how much of a “true conservative” he is, that is not the essential goal of the 2012 campaign.
2012 is a year about fixing the wrongs of the past four years. It is about ensuring that someone with conservative principles, and not necessarily the most conservative principles, is elected to the White House. And according to recent polls collected by Fox News, Romney has the best shot against Obama in a head-to-head match-up.
So what is it that has kept many conservatives away from Mitt? One of the biggest issues has been the RomneyCare bill that was passed in Massachusetts, which many believe was a roadmap that led to Obama’s unpopular version. In this bill many controversial pieces were included such as “the addition of a provision which requires firms with 11 or more workers that do not provide fair and reasonable health coverage to their workers to pay an annual penalty.”
However, if one dives deeper into the history of the bill, no mention of this provision was ever included in the plan Romney sent to the State Legislature. In fact, when both houses passed this bill, Romney vetoed his own produced bill in eight sections such as the former example, which proved to be detrimental to the progress it would have made. However, his eight vetoes were all overridden by the legislature, and out came RomneyCare, except not the RomneyCare he really created. Romney may even be able to peddle his vision of health care reform as a common sense alternative to Obama in a general election.
At the end of the day, Mitt Romney has proven to be the most viable candidate to take on Obama in 2012. In the four states that hold their primaries prior to Super Tuesday, he has shown huge leads in two (New Hampshire and Nevada), and could prove to be very strong in Iowa as well. In many large delegate states such as California and Florida, he has also shown to have an advantage over the other top candidates including former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
What will happen? No one really knows. We may even see Donald Trump mounting a challenge for the GOP nomination or running as an independent candidate. But simply separating conservatives into factions is not what the party needs. The party must stand together behind its candidate, and not focus on individual interests, but instead on the good of the GOP, and the American people above all.
State by State Polls: http://gawker.com/#!5691650/early-2012-presidential-polls-state-by-state
Photo Credit: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/white-house/romneys-critique-of-the-obama.html