Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won the most support for the Republican presidential nomination in a straw poll of GOP activists attending the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. But the numbers leave no doubt that the Republican Party's conservative base is still open to finding some other candidate. CBS News breaks down the numbers...
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.
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.
That would include Duncan Hunter, I suppose. Ah, well. He'll always have Spartanburg.
Of those that got above 10 percent, Romney, Brownback and Gingrich are the most across-the-board conservative, and combined they got 50 percent of the vote at the Conservative Political Action Conference. What does that mean? Well, it means the conservative vote is still up for grabs. But it may also mean that a large chunk of the "conservative" vote is willing to cast their lot, and the Republican Party's 2008 presidential hopes, with a candidate who isn't perceived as a down-the-line conservative, but is perceived as able to win in the general election.
Romney's challenge: Convince conservatives he can win in November 2008, and he might just win the nomination.
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