CBS News explains who really won the straw poll at the Value Voter Summit.
Full text:
Rep. Ron Paul scored a decisive victory Saturday in a mock presidential election at the Values Voter Summit, trouncing fellow Texan, Gov. Rick Perry, but an organizer of the straw poll suggested ballot-stuffing may have skewed the results.
In a press conference following the announcement of the straw poll results at the annual Washington gathering of social conservatives, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins all but dismissed the results as irrelevant, citing 600 people who registered Saturday morning and, he said, “left after Ron Paul spoke.”
A total of 1,983 ballots were cast. “You do the math,” Perkins said.
A year ago in the same contest, Paul came in second-to-last. Speaking briefly with reporters before the straw poll results were announced, the Republican lawmaker said, “If I win, it wouldn’t be as important to the media than if I lose.”
Paul has a history of scoring unlooked-for straw poll wins by packing the electorate with diehard supporters. But Perkins said it’s too early to take much away from Paul’s win. “Let me just take you back four years to this event, when we had a straw poll. Mitt Romney won that straw poll,” he said. “I think people are still in the process of deciding where they want to go.”
Paul got 37 percent of the vote. The rest of the ballots showed how widely social conservatives support is splintered among the rest of the field.
Two other conservative favorites, businessman Herman Cain and former Sen. Rick Santorum, took second and third place, respectively, with 23 percent for Cain and 16 percent for Santorum.
Perry and Michele Bachmann won 8 percent apiece. Mitt Romney got 4 percent of the vote and Newt Gingrich, 3 percent.
For Perry, who is struggling to regain momentum after some disappointing showings in debates and the polls, the results represent a disappointment. The Texas governor is counting on voters who share his socially conservative views to help power his candidacy into the top tier of Republicans. He didn’t get the ringing endorsement he might have wished out of the Values Voter Summit. Instead, the gathering put Perry in the midst of a controversywhen the Dallas pastor who introduced him Friday later told reporters that Romney’s Mormon faith is a “cult” and “not Christian.”
Perkins said his organization did “everything to preserve the integrity of this straw poll,” including denying campaigns from buying blocks of tickets, “which they attempted to do this year.” But Santorum on Friday seemed dubious, and told National Journal that his success in the polls would depend “on how many people, how many campaigns, tried to buy a bunch of tickets and try to stack the poll, which unfortunately happens.”
The victory for the longtime congressman and three-time presidential contender over his Republican rivals in the presidential contest was all the more surprising because Paul’s principled libertarianism sometimes puts him at odds with the views of social conservatives on issues such as gay marriage and drug laws.
But in a speech hours before the straw poll results were announced, Paul argued that his staunch fiscal conservatism and dogmatic views on liberty were in tune with family values and the Bible.
A friend of mine “Neil” who attended the Value Voter Summit had these comments about what really happened:
Because these folks did not stay for the entire Summit.Those of us who were there knew the difference. It’s like a big family, everyone is kind and talks to each other. We see each other in the hotel halls and we chat and ask where people are from. It’s a special group of people who donate to FRC, AFA, Heritage and are Evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox and a few Jewish believers. We had lunch with each other, shared stories of frustrations with our churches and our elections and compared notes.
The Ron Paulites, didn’t mix, didn’t go to any break out sessions, didn’t eat with us.
So they did not share the same values, the same goals or the same relationship with FRC or AFA. They didn’t even listen to the rest of the speakers (all day Friday and the rest of the day Sat). They were not Values Voters or part of our family.
The straw poll was supposed to reflect the VVS family. This is what we guys voted.
If you delete the 600 Ron Paul voters, you get this:
- Herman Cain 456 33%
- Rick Santorum 317 23%
- Rick Perry 159 11%
- Michele Bachmann 159 11%
- Ron Paul 134 10%
- Mitt Romney 79 6%
- Newt Gingrich 59 4%
Ron Paul thinks that protecting the unborn and protecting a child’s right to a mother and father are “state issues”. He is moderate on social issues – nothing like Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann, for example. He doesn’t have the history of activism on these issues because he thinks that they are not federal issues. Fair enough, but that’s not socially conservative.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
I think the difference between a libertarian and a conservative are three little words, “I don’t know.” I thought about it back in August when Wes Widner posted a link regarding Penn Jillette’s reasons for being an atheist and a libertarian:
“Last week I was interviewed for Piers Morgan’s show (which used to be Larry King’s show). Piers beat me up a bit for being an atheist (that’s his job) and then beat me up a bit for being a libertarian (also his job). He did this by asking me impossible questions, questions that none of us, Harold, Richard, me, (or Piers), could ever answer.
He started with “How did you get here?” and I started talking about my road to showbiz and atheism and he interrupted and said he meant how the universe was created. I said, “I don’t know.”
He said, “God,” an answer that meant Piers didn’t know either, but he had a word for it that was supposed to make me feel left out of his enlightened club.”
The reason I personally identify as a conservative and do not support Ron Paul, the reason Neil says that the Ron Paulites were not part of the part of ‘our family,’ all has to do with what we know; we know what truth is, and we know what our core values are.
Conservatives have absolute values. These absolute values are the values that the value voters are voting on. They are the truths we hold to be self-evident, they are what we know.
Libertarians are not value voters, they are perfectly at peace with everyone making up their own mind about their own values. They are fine with the government letting everyone have their way, even if it means sacrificing national defence to protect the right of individual liberties. Freedom taking precedence over truth, because Libertarians just don’t now…what truth is.
Here’s the truth, there are absolute values, there is a bad, a good and a greater good. There are negative rights that need to be protected. Justice requires that force be used in the defence of life and freedom. They are gifts from the Creator. If you have a problem with these concepts you probably aren’t part of the ‘Values Voters family’ and you may not be a conservative either.
A conservative doesn’t allow freedom to take precedent over values. Freedom can not be the one overarching goal whereby values are alterred accordingly. Freedom in the mind of a libertarian will be valued at the expense of life and property. If you’re still confused it’s ok, as a Libertarian you can shrug your shoulders, but we need conservatives elected, because we can’t afford to go from “Yes we can!” to “I don’t know!”
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