Ron Paul Catches Obama In Poll

I've written here before in agreement with Sarah Palin that Ron Paul and his people cannot be ignored. While personally, I find Paul's people harder to take than Paul himself, Republicans have a brand new reason to embrace the "big tent" theory so dear to the heart of John McCain. After years spent as a voice crying in the wilderness of progressive thought, the apostle Paul is in no mood to take the road to Damascus. Today in a CNN poll Paul trails Obama by only two points, within the margin of error. Yes, Romney does beat Obama by one point but if that gives Obama a reason to worry what about Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum. Santorum does the best of these three losing to Obama by six points. No matter what Bill O'Reilly and TeaParty@Perrysburg think the voters prefer Paul to every Republican except Romney. Paul reaches this height by attracting independents and Democrats and he does it without pandering or compromise. Unlike the other four candidates Paul has adhered to his principles without wavering even when they were anathema to both parties and the voters are choosing to reward that consistency of opinion. Many of us have romanticized about Paul's libertarian ideas and dismissed them as daydreams, of little practicality in the real world of cynical voters but now we seem to be the cynics. It's almost as if someone had taken the Tea Party ideals, doubled the voltage and we are shocked.

Most likely Romney will go on to win and we'll swallow hard and support him as we did John McCain and maybe many of us will find enthusiasm in the down ballot candidates but we all know we will never be enthusiastic about Romney. Win or lose we'll be about the business of picking our next nominee and most likely if Romney loses we'll hear about the inevitability of Santorum. Then we can vote for the man who lost to the man who lost to the man, McCain. I have no idea how to deal with Paul and his supporters should he run a strong second to Romney. They could insist on such a strong libertarian plank in the party platform that many congressional candidates would run away from it. If the Republicans refuse to grant that, the Paulists could walk and go third party and who could really blame them? These are uncertain times!