New Hampshire: the Bigger Winner Was Ron Paul

Charles Krauthammer

As a diligent but very prudent observer of U.S. politics, that is, the politics of a country that I don’t live in, I have always taken the liberty of maintaining these two basic convictions: a) Ron Paul is “a principled, somewhat wacky, highly engaging eccentric,” as Charles Krauthammer puts it, who may be (terribly) wrong on a couple or so issues—though rather important, to say the least—but he is dead right on many other things; b) the above mentioned Charles Krauthammer is a very bright Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist, political commentator, and physician who may sometimes be a bit too “straightforward,” so to speak, but who is almost always right, as this piece in today’s Washington Post shows ad abundantiam.

“There are two stories coming out of New Hampshire. The big story is Mitt Romney. The bigger one is Ron Paul.” Yet, Paul is less a candidate than a “cause.” And

after a quarter-century in the wilderness, he’s within reach of putting his cherished cause on the map. Libertarianism will have gone from the fringes — those hopeless, pathetic third-party runs — to a position of prominence in a major party.

He is 76, Krauthammer continues, and “he knows he’ll never enter the promised land,” but what he has already wrought is “a signal achievement, the biggest story yet of this presidential campaign.”

Believe me, it’s a must-read.