Ron Paul Wins CPAC Straw Poll Again, Romney, Gary Johnson, Chris Christie Following

Returning champion Rep. Ron Paul has once the 2011 CPAC straw poll with 30% of the vote, with only one other candidate scoring a double-digit percentage: former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Trailing far behind but worthy of note were also former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson and New Jersey Chris Christie, with the loudest potential candidates– Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum, barely receiving mention.

Paul, who received ebullient praise from the crowd with a speech slamming nearly every important social and neo-conservative policy point, is used to this sort of praise at CPAC, so his win is not particularly surprising. Plus, with the boycott from family values groups and the inclusion of more civil libertarian/diversity groups like GOProud, the population voting in the straw poll was necessarily tailored to this sort of outcome. Nonetheless, the inclusion of Gary Johnson in the top three– a sort of “Ron Paul light” who openly advocates for the legalization of marijuana– and tying with a diametric opposite in both style and substance like Gov. Christie raises some eyebrows.

The most upsetting results for social conservatives attention, of course, will be how their most prominent potential candidates fared: Mike Huckabee and Santorum managed a paltry 2%, and Palin only beat them by 1%. While Romney is himself somewhat of a social conservative, and deserves mention for find himself sandwiched between far-right libertarians like Paul and Johnson, his stances on many financial issues may prove troublesome, and those are the core issues on which both conservatives and libertarians agree.

The full results here, and a report from Fox News below: