“By the way,” Trump responded, “Ron Paul cannot get elected, I’m sorry to tell you.”The room erupted. “I like Ron Paul, I think he’s a good guy ― but honestly, he has just zero chance of getting elected. The moment was, in retrospect, critical in Trump’s political ascent. But his appearance at CPAC was an important breach in that general wall of disdain and lack of interest.”The line from CPAC’s 2011 gathering to the Trump White House is not straight. “That’s when I started to realize this was a different person,” said Lisa De Pasquale, the former director of CPAC who brought Trump onstage during that conference.

Source: Huffington Post February 22, 2017 18:22 UTC