According to the corporate media, the Democratic Party is on the way out and the GOP is a well oiled machine, poised to take back control of Congress. Of course, more Republicans are retiring from Congress than Democrats and there are plenty of vulnerable GOP seats this year too, but hey, why let things like facts get in the way of a great media narrative.

Case in point -- the Presidential Straw Poll from this year's CPAC convention. With names like Romney, Palin and Gingrich on the list, you would think this might be a close poll...but you'd be wrong. In fact, Ron Paul didn't just win, he crushed the competition.

In a strong reflection of just how strong his standing remains within the die-hard conservative community, Texas Republican and 2008 presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul won the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll on Saturday, earning nearly one-third (31 percent) of the entire vote. The crowd, however, booed heavily when the results were announced.

Paul was far and away the most widely anticipated speaker at the three-day conference, with his base of "Paulites" streaming into the main auditorium to hear him rail against government overreach and neoconservativism on Friday afternoon. In many respects, his win in the CPAC poll seemed pre-ordained -- his band of followers having a well-earned reputation for flooding polls and forums like these. Read on...

Paul was roundly booed, and Palin, Pawlenty and Huckabee all scored in single digits. Now, I don't disagree with everything Ron Paul has to say, but I would never vote for him and boy, did he ever get destroyed by the GOP base during the 2008 Presidential campaign. Talk about the proverbial ship without a rudder. This wasn't some online poll that got freeped, this was taken in person at the GOP's biggest annual event. TPM caught another interesting stat from the poll.

Only 2,395 straw poll votes were cast by what organizers said was 10,000 attendees at this year's CPAC.