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Saturday, February 9, 2008
McCain and the conservatives
How’d John McCain do in the straw poll of the conservatives to whom he spoke this week on the day Mitt Romney dropped out of the chase for the GOP presidential nomination?
Much better than he did in last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll, when he finished fifth at 12 percent and Romney was first at 21 percent.
CPAC straw poll results released Saturday showed Romney still as the favorite at 35 percent. But McCain was a solid second at 34 percent among the 1,558 conference participants who cast ballots. Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul tied at 12 percent.
But the straw poll also showed the lack of enthusiasm for McCain among some conservatives.
Seventy percent of participants said they would vote for McCain in November if he is the GOP nominee. But 19 percent said they’d vote for somebody else and 10 percent said they would not vote.
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Video: Perry in DC on prez race, Texas record
Gov. Rick Perry was in Washington, D.C. on Saturday to speak to activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
He vouched for transparency in government spending, urged support for John McCain and talked about his new book on the Boy Scouts.
Afterward, he talked to reporters, and we have some video. Your blogger must have had too much coffee, so apologies for the shaky camera work.
Update: I asked Perry during his Q&A session about the fact that state government spending has been growing in Texas. He did not recall off hand exactly how much he has vetoed since taking office, but his office now tells it is $1.8 billion in state spending and $3.2 billion in state and federal funds. That doesn’t include the 2005 veto that forced a special session on school finance, because that money was put back in a couple of months later.
