Your Wonkette is going to be at CPAC starting tomorrow to bring you all the fun and excitement of conservative furry sex parties and people yelling at Arab Americans. But here's a little preview of what's to come: Ron Paul is trying really hard to win this year's presidential straw poll, which is always especially important at this point in the presidential cycle. And by "important," we mean a bunch of inside-baseball media will take it very seriously for a few days and campaign types will put a lot of effort into it, and then it will be promptly forgotten. Yes, Ron Paul could well join the hallowed ranks of such past straw-poll-winning presidents of the United States as Phil Gramm, Steve Forbes, Gary Bauer, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and George Allen. And also 2010 winner Ron Paul.
Paul's Campaign for Liberty, the a 501(c)4 organization he founded after ending his '08 campaign, has in fact put together an extensive, and expensive, campaign for the conference. A source close to the conference said the Paul group bought 1,000 tickets to the conference, and a Paul aide told another Republican that they'd recruited at least 700 supporters to vote for him.
We are certain this will probably be a bunch of ponytailed and odd-smelling young libertarians in suits doing the voting, but we really hope they save money by hiring homeless people to vote. BUY LOCAL, PAULITES.
But uh oh, here's 2008 Paul aide John Tate:
CPAC 2011 is only a few weeks, and we are falling short of our recruitment goal. Last year, our movement shocked the establishment when Ron Paul won the Presidential Straw Poll with the largest vote total in its history. This year, they are aware of our presence, and they are planning to bus in hundreds of their blind followers to counter our grassroots energy. If you and I do not redouble our efforts in these last few weeks, I am afraid we will be outnumbered.
Fuck busing people. This calls for a BLIMP.
What happens if Ron Paul loses this vote? Will the Internet be deprived of its four-year cicada-like hatching of Ron Paul nuts? We hope not. And also: No, because this straw poll thing is pointless. [ Ben Smith ]
It is certainly just as useful.
Instead of "Paultards" I, again, suggest "Krugers (c)."