Palin fourth in Values Voters' straw poll

Over the weekend, and according to numerous sources, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was the top vote-getter at the presidential straw poll of conservative activists conducted at the annual Values Voters Summit. According to the Wall Street Journal's "Washington Wire," about one third of the 1,850 in attendance cast votes. Huckabee won 170 votes, Romney 74, Tim Pawlenty 73, Sarah Palin 72, and Mike Pence 71. Of the top five finishers, only Sarah Palin didn't speak at the conference. She was invited, of course, but her son Track just returned home from an Army combat tour and she stayed with him instead of attending. Read the WSJ account here. We've seen headlines saying that Palin tied for second, but that only works if one rounds the numbers, and the poll is already unsound enough. We also saw one headline from a Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog post, which links to Politico's story on the poll, that says Palin "flopped," but we don't know where they got that. Commentary has been mixed, but even, with extremists alternately saying that the poll is proof of Palin's apple losing its shine, or that it's no set-back because if Palin did show up, she would have rocked the house. Quite a few other commentators have said that the poll, with its log-jam in "second" place, doesn't say anything new -- namely that conservatives are divided among several possible candidates for 2012, and that The Force is strong with Huckabee among socially conservative, religious voters. See? Ho-hum. Our favorite piece today on that tack, from The Christian Science Monitor's "The Vote" blog, cheekily says that this poll meant way less than college football's big weekend, and that three weeks from now no one will remember the poll's results.