So, Ron Paul in 5th, exactly what he needs.

As I said earlier, it seems amusing that despite the outpouring of massive support for Ron Paul he only managed a rather sad 5th place with 10% of the vote in Iowa. Now first off, 10% is such a small showing it’s hardly worth mentioning. While a decent percentage, realize that gives him under 12,000 votes total, which would have given him around 5% on the Democratic side.

Ron Paul’s mystique comes from two things: the fact that his severely minority base is INCREDIBLY vocal, and that he’s an also-ran that won’t win.

It’s that second point that’s important. See, as long as Paul doesn’t win, his supporters can continue to give him the messiah treatment. He’s the best politician in history, and if he won then by gum he’d have saved the nation instead of the idiot who did win.

In fact, losing the primary’s even better, since they can also say he would have totally beaten the Democratic nominee and the GOP is a bunch of morons. The worst thing that could happen to these guys is if Paul were to actually win. Then they’d see their hero go down in flames. There’s a certain charm to being the perpetual underdog.