CPAC 2007, Day 1: Campaign flair

One thing you can enjoy about presidential campaigning 21 months before the election is the early positioning each candidate maneuvers into; after carefully scanning the issues and the opposition, cagily eying the lay of the land, relying on top people for advice and insight - it's like watching the early moves in a great chess match in which the stakes are nothing less than the future of our world.

It can be mind boggling to try and comprehend the innumerable factors that make or break the early strategic game. What you can take to the bank, however, is the rock-solid evidence of who is pounding whom with the first tactical artillery rounds of campaign flair. And there is no better place to observe these early salvos of soul-searing cheeriness than at CPAC.

We hope to continue this survey throughout the conference, because in my experience it gets more and more competitive until by Saturday morning the opposing flair companies will be smacking each other across the face with their penny loafers.

For now, all is so cheery it's a bit hard to take early in the am. The early winner is certainly Brownback, but I sense a Romney surge on the way.

(This above is for Jim Gilmore. Great looking kids; need to work on their flair visibility.)

UPDATE: The flair wars heat up!

UPDATE II: Oh, yeah: Probably worth mentioning why the early positioning here.

Sort of a de facto early primary, until everyone goes on vacation this summer and forgets all about who won the 2007 CPAC straw poll. But a bump is a bump ...