...haw, haw, just kidding. Every year at conservative fun-fest CPAC, Republicans vote in a straw poll on who they most want to be their party's candidate in the next presidential election. As I've already pointed out on Slog, the winner of the CPAC straw poll is never the actual Republican nominee.

This year, Ron Paul's followers decided to come out in force and win the poll for their Ayn Randy leader. Some additional hilarity ensued, and Paul cleaned up in the straw poll for the second year in a row. Here are the results:

Ron Raul: 30%
Mitt Romney: 23%
Gary Johnson 6%
Chris Christie 6%
Newt Gingrich: 5%
Tim Pawlenty 4%
Michele Bachmann 4%
Mitch Daniels 4%
Sarah Palin: 3%
Herman Cain 2%
Mike Huckabee 2%
Rick Santorum 2%
John Thune 2%
Jon Huntsman 1%
Haley Barbour 1%

But you know, aside from Ron Paul stacking the deck, I think these results look pretty much like how the Republican race will actually shake out. Names like Gingrich, Pawlenty, and Barbour are huge with conservative pundits, but unless something drastic happens, they simply won't catch on with street-level Republicans.

Romney is their biggest name, the guy who placed second to John McCain last time around. For the most part, Republicans believe in orderly succession, and unless the teabaggers pull some magic out of their collective assholes, they're not going to be able to stop the Romney machine. Hopefully, one of the Krazy Kandidates™ makes it enough of a contest to severely injure Romney* and turn teabaggers away from the Republican Party. The more fractured the party gets, the better the election will be for Obama and Democrats.

* Since we're talking about crazy-ass teabaggers here, I guess I should clarify: I don't mean we should hope that the Tea Party literally injures Romney in a physical sense. I'm talking about his poll numbers.