it angers me to hear levin, hannity, limbaugh, and other "conservative" talk radio hosts ridiculing/dismissing ron paul. he's arguably the founder of what now is referred to as the "tea party movement," and each of these talk hosts would happily blow a homeless man if it meant they could take credit for it all.
the result of this groveling talk radio shit festival is the stealthy shifting of how the tea party movement is defined. what started as a libertarian awakening has been co-opted and infused with typical neo-conservative thinking reinforced by hack radio mouthpieces.
THAT'S why when you poll supposed tea party people, you're getting poor stats for paul. the pool of "tea party" voters is so tainted that there is no longer a tea party movement at all. it's just devolved into another useful wing of the republican party establishment designed to elect unimaginative hacks like romney.
the gingrich surge might have SOME within the republican machine worried, but the level of concern is probably not as pronounced as you might suspect. after all, gingrich is willing to continue bombing brown people all over the world. he's not proposing any radical, extremist solutions to our fiscal woes despite the radical, extreme situation in which we find ourselves. gingrich will probably sell access to government. he will strengthen the patriot act and further ambiguate who can be called a "terrorist." he is willing to take money from you in order to counterbalance the scourge of climate change (see pelosi commercial). in other words, he is no conservative. neither are the powerful men who run the republican party.
despite what we're being told in the mainstream media, the only candidate who inspires fear among the elite is ron paul. i don't think he can win the republican nomination, but if he runs as a third party candidate in the general i think he could easily become our next president.