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So Michele Bachmann has won the Iowa straw poll with a grand 28 percent of the vote against eight other contenders. This isn’t quite shocking when you factor in that Bachmann is from Iowa, which definitely had an effect on her local support. The reason I make this point is because the real winner of the straw poll came in a close second place. Congressman Ron Paul has been the GOP’s secret weapon that they didn’t know they needed for a long time (and probably didn’t want). He took second place with 27 percent, just 152 votes shy of first place. This is a great accomplishment for several reasons. Let me explain…

You might remember Congressman Paul from the 2008 presidential race. The dark horse candidate shocked both conservatives and liberals alike with his massive grassroots support that saw him raise the kinds of funds from the general public that the other candidates were raking in from the corporations. Paul ran on a platform of restoring liberty and true fiscal conservatism. Some of Ron Paul’s more notable topics were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the Federal Reserve and the decline of the economy. The congressman’s aim was to restore the United States of America as a country where people could be truly free from unjust laws and wasted tax dollars.

Unfortunately for Ron Paul, these ideas didn’t mesh with the status quo built up by the banks, corporations, the military-industrial-complex and law enforcement. He received strong opposition for his ideas, mostly from the media (both “mainstream” and FOX) who labeled him a nutjob. He received very little air time on the major news networks, yet somehow continuously garnered more and more support. He is considered by many the only Republican candidate who has a chance of beating President Obama in 2012. This is the man who originated the tea party movement, which was originally about restoring individual liberty and limiting the power of government before it was hijacked by Palin and her ilk as a racist and ignorant hate machine bent on taking down Muslim Obama and his socialist-fascist-communist regime.

So through every step, Paul has been cut off at the knees by his own party and the major media, yet still maintains his cadence. Like Charlie Sheen would say, that’s winning.

I’ll leave you with this final paragraph, which is a comment by user FreedomsReigning from the YouTube video clip I linked to. I think it sums this situation up nicely:

“Please consider Libertarianism. There’s a VERY good reason that both parties, and our government, consider us to be their enemy. We’re fiscally conservative and socially liberal because we understand that when you try and separate one from the other, you’ll get neither. We’re the choice you aren’t supposed to have.”

(Ron Paul official photo: U.S. House of Representatives)