WASHINGTON - 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.
Both were among the more than half-dozen White House hopefuls who spoke at the conference.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who rounds out the top tier of serious GOP contenders, skipped the event -- and was punished for it. He got only 12 percent of the vote.
Ahead of him were Romney, Giuliani and two others. Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, a favorite of religious conservatives, got 15 percent, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who says he won't decide whether to run until the fall, got 14 percent.
Others got 5 percent or less.
So Mitt Romney beats Rudy Giuliani in the CPAC straw poll, while Giuliani beats Romney in the Newsweek poll. Talk about strange here. The only difference I can think of between the CPAC and Newsweek poll is that the CPAC poll was weighted towards the diehard Republican activists, while the Newsweek poll contained a more general representation of the conservatives. I doubt that the CPAC conference had a large number of Religious Right activists attending. But would the Religious Right choose Giuliani, who is a moderate conservative on social issues, over that of Romney, who is a Mormon? Strange.
One final note. John McCain, who did not attend the CPAC conference, came in dead last among the front-runners in this straw poll--behind Romney, Giuliani, Sam Brownback and even Newt Gingrich--who is not currently running. Talk about getting punished here.
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