When I wasn’t invited to address the CPAC convention, I didn’t take it personally. I merely assumed they knew how much I hate flying and, besides, I don’t do well in cold weather.

But it’s always nice to see so many conservatives in good spirits, especially during these hard times. Still, I have to admit I found their straw vote worrisome. My own feelings about Ron Paul as a prospective presidential candidate don’t enter into it. My main concern, speaking as a conservative, is winning elections. Some Republicans love the guy, while others can’t stand him. I like some of his ideas and, as with Newt Gingrich, I’d hope he’d have the ear of the next Republican in the Oval Office. But as for his being the GOP standard-bearer in 2012, forget about it.

For one thing, he’ll be 77 at the time, meaning he’d be 81 at the end of his first term. As I’m also in my 70s, though just barely, I can assure you that’s the time to start taking things a little easier, not the time to start running a country. For another thing, he spent tens of millions of dollars in 2008 trying for the presidential nomination, and wound up garnering a tiny handful of delegates. That told me two things: one, outside of his own congressional district, he’s not much of a vote-getter; and two, he’s hardly the fiscal conservative he claims to be.

And, finally, in some parallel universe, looks may not matter, but here on earth they do, and Rep. Paul looks like his favorite pastime is sucking lemons. In fact, to me, it appears that he and Harry Reid popped out of the same womb.

Although I would love to see actual hardcore conservatives win every single election in 2010 and 2012, my greatest wish is that hardcore liberals, those pinheads who support Obama’s loony agenda, don’t win any. That’s why I’m afraid that the Tea Party crowd, a wonderful group of concerned Americans, might turn goofy and form a third party. If they did, I can assure you that their biggest source of financial support would be George Soros. That’s because a split on the Right would mean that leftists could win elections with just 40-45% of the vote.

Keep in mind that Bill Clinton won the keys to the Oval Office while collecting only 42.9% in 1992 and 49.2% of the vote in 1996, thanks, in good part, to the misguided efforts of Ross Perot.

Understand, I happen to be a big fan of Glenn Beck. I tune in every night. But when he keeps insisting that there’s no difference between the two major parties, I want to shake him until his teeth rattle.

For the past year, the Democrats have been gobbling up banks and car companies, and while raising their own salaries, have capped how much corporate executives are allowed to earn. Furthermore, they have been pushing trillion dollar stimulus bills, ObamaCare, cap and trade, Cash for Clunkers and, all the while, Obama has been turning Communists into czars and turning the NEA into his own personal pep squad. In the meantime, the GOP, although greatly out-gunned in Congress, has been pushing back. Even John McCain has been atop the ramparts engaged in battle with Barack Obama, something he refrained, for some unknown reason, from doing during the presidential campaign.

All I’m saying is that perhaps Beck should stop worrying so much about Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and start paying a little more attention to modern American history.