No one should interpret Romney’s CPAC showing as representative of his strength among conservatives. But it’s not clear why his attempt to gin up support — and demonstrate that he can put on a good show — is hinky. ~Hotline

Of course, Romney boosters have been portraying the victory as representative of Romney’s strength among conservatives and as proof that he now cannot be accused of being a phoney.  It isn’t a credible argument, but they’re making it anyway.  As in David French’s statement:

This is huge and will blow away all the “he’s not a real conservative” garbage of the last few weeks.

That would be great, except that it isn’t huge (it’s a rather disappointing result given all of his preparations) and it doesn’t do anything to convince doubters that he’s a real conservative.  It tells us that he’s fairly good at organising things, which I think we already had picked up from, oh, I don’t know, the 2002 Olympics.  Here’s a reminder that expectations for Romney were a lot higher in the week leading up to the straw poll:

Matthew C. Hall, youth chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, said that he had tried to get other campaigns to provide buses, too, but that none were [sic] willing.

“I would expect Romney will do pretty well in the straw poll because his campaign is the one we are seeing investing so much money and energy into it,” Mr. Hall, who said he was not affiliated with any primary campaign, wrote in an e-mail message. “The response we’ve seen from students in Michigan is that regardless of who they are supporting for president, they are more than willing to take a free trip to the conference if all they have to do in return is wear a shirt and vote for him in a straw poll [bold mine-DL].”

But besides underperforming, Romney’s campaign may have been doing things they shouldn’t have been doing.  The good folks at Hotline have linked to this post that purports to show one of Romney’s agents of influence, Jordan Sekulow, engaged in what are apparently not all together appropriate activities.  Says Krusty Konservative:

I’ve had a number of people email me that attended the CPAC konference [sic] and tell me that what is important to know about the video is that Jordan Sekulow shouldn’t have even had the badges, since the Straw Poll was only open to registrants to the conference. Each badge is one vote.

So it might be the case that Romney’s people inflated his showing at CPAC not simply by the technically above-board distorting of the vote by bussing in supporters, but perhaps also by more devious or inappropriate methods.  However, whether or not Romney’s people engaged in any underhanded tactics at CPAC (these are political operatives we’re talking about, after all), it won’t change the reality that Romney would have won relatively little support had he not brought in and paid the way for 200 people.  He would have polled around 8% without those people, which pretty much matches the level of support he’s getting nationwide in many polls.  That sounds about right: I can believe that one out of every ten conservatives is either desperate enough to find a viable candidate or gullible enough to believe his stories to embrace Romney’s appeal.  All of this also doesn’t change that Romney is not credible.  No number of straw polls will change that.