“A lot of peoples were not going to come here because they heard Jeb Bush was speaking,” Mr. Temple said before laying out his plan at the Conservative Political Action Conference. It's the first real national audition for potential Republican candidates, all on the same stage, one after the other — even if the TV audience is only on C-SPAN. So almost everyone who's considering a run showed up, from CPAC favorites Rand Paul and Ted Cruz all the way to Jeb Bush, who's fighting off an unwanted label as the most moderate Republican in the race. Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, is hot — the new more-conservative hope to stop the Bush juggernaut. He said the party should nominate the like of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Gov. Laura challenged him, but he weathered the questioning fine and it was a format best suited for the force of Christie’s personality. We are hopeful it will resonate with attendees,” Mrs. Campbell said. He is leading in many early GOP presidential polls, but also is out of sync with many conservatives because he supports Common Core K-12 education standards and an immigration fix that includes legalizing the millions of people who are living here illegally. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, describing them as “true conservatives.” He called Ben Carson a “good guy.” 
 
 “We don’t want another Bush or another Clinton,” Mr. Temple said. William Temple, a member of the Golden Isle Tea Party, told The Washington Times that the party doesn’t need another Bush in office, and said that the party should listen to the grass-roots activists that helped fuel their gains in the 2014 election.
– Today saw the conclusion of the Conservative Political Action Conference, a gathering which a GOP strategist calls "the starting gun of the Republican primary campaign," the Los Angeles Times reports. The event saw a number of possible candidates offer their pitches, and Scott Walker was among its stars: The Wisconsin governor made a "barn-burner of a speech. He lit up the crowd," writes Rich Lowry at the National Review, noting that the event settled any doubt as to whether Walker is "up for a national race." At the New Yorker, John Cassidy adds that Walker looks "like Bush’s strongest rival. Whenever someone mentioned Bush’s name, boos rang out." Indeed, Bush faced the threat of a walkout at the very conservative event, according to a report in the Washington Times. But reports say only a few people made good on that threat, and the former Florida governor came off well. "He didn’t make any enemies, or any new ones at least. Indeed, he made a pretty convincing case that he is a committed conservative," Cassidy writes. "In entering the conservative den and emerging unscathed, he did what he needed to do." Among the other candidates: Marco Rubio, Lowry writes, is "a natural political talent," and in the Times, Doyle McManus calls the Florida senator a possibility to "rise if Walker stumbles." As for Chris Christie, he "weathered" questioning by Laura Ingraham well, but "the problem for him is that his early accomplishments in New Jersey and his personality manifestly aren’t going to be enough to get him through a Republican nomination battle," Lowry writes.