Captain's Quarters -

Governor Mitt Romney won the straw poll results at the CPAC event, one of the last stories of the conference. He outstripped Rudy Giuliani and left John McCain in the dust, but CPAC attendees will understand the real story behind those numbers:

Mitt Romney won the most support for the Republican presidential nomination in a straw poll of GOP activists attending an annual conference.

Despite his record of inconsistency on some social issues, the former Massachusetts governor got 21 percent of the 1,705 votes cast by paid registrants to the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference. They were asked who their first choice would be for the Republican nomination.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor whose moderate stances on social issues irks the party's right wing, was second with 17 percent.

Here are the full set of results from the poll:

Romney – 21%
Giuliani – 17%
Brownback – 15%
Gingrich – 14%
McCain – 12%

Given that Romney has only received single-digit support in most national polls, these numbers would normally indicate a surprising level of strength within the conservative movement. After all, Romney has his problems with the GOP base due to some inconsistencies in his public positions over the years. This seems to indicate that has has overcome those questions.

However, the straw poll probably reflects Romney's organizing abilities far more than his popular support among conservatives. The Romney campaign turned CPAC from a get-acquainted event to a mini-convention by recruiting scores of young activists to attend CPAC and haranguing attendees to vote for Mitt. The Brownback campaign did the same with a smaller coterie of foot soldiers. None of the other candidates bothered to do anything of the kind.

Understanding that, these numbers should be somewhat disappointing to the Romney campaign. Take a look at Giuliani's numbers. Here's a candidate who supposedly didn't impress in his speech on Friday, whose consistent positions have him in conflict with more than a few of the groups comprising CPAC, and who didn't have any organization at the conference or spend any time with the attendees outside of the speech. Despite all of these handicaps, 17% of the conservatives at CPAC selected Rudy over any of the other candidates -- only four points lower than Romney. He beat Sam Brownback and Newt Gingrich, who is widely presumed to be preparing his own bid for the presidency.

John McCain also scored rather highly despite his snub of CPAC. He came in fifth, but still managed to win 12% of the straw poll without any organization or appearance at the conference. That's only nine points behind Romney.

Romney had a good CPAC with or without a straw poll win. He scored well on his speech, with the consensus at the conference being that he delivered big when he needed it the most, and his personal appearance later generated some glowing comments. However, this result shows that he has only made himself credible as a candidate. He hasn't really beaten anyone.

UPDATE: Greg in Texas asks if the conference was as dispirited as the press has reported. Not at all. In fact, the problem for this conference was all the enthusiasm for individual presidential candidates, and the distraction it proved for the other issues at CPAC. I'd say that the conference had plenty of energy and enthusiasm.

UPDATE II and BUMP: One of my regular commenters said that he understands that I do not like Mitt Romney, but that's not the case. I think Romney is a good candidate for the nomination. I think the same about Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich (if he runs), Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, and Sam Brownback. I think that less about John McCain, but I'm not going to rule him out completely until we get to the actual primaries. I could support Romney in a general election with no difficulty at all, and the same is true of most of the rest of the field.

However, that doesn't mean that I won't speak honestly about my experiences with the candidates. Romney had a good CPAC, even a great one, but that straw poll has to be a disappointment. His campaign did everything they could do to overwhelm the field, and they didn't succeed. That's not to say they were dishonest; it's part of campaigning, even if the rest of the field (save Brownback) didn't think it would get that intense in March 2007. It showed good organizational talent, and he eked out a win on paper, but I don't think the Romney campaign can honestly say that they expected to win by only four points over Giuliani and nine over McCain with that level of effort.

Romney, as I said, had a good CPAC regardless. I expect to see him eat at the lead of the frontrunners, probably McCain more than Giuliani, over the next couple of weeks.