Ron Paul recently gave his farewell address to Congress. I encourage you to watch it in full.

As recently as 2007, Ron was so obscure a figure that the way to reach him was by his home number, which I got from Murray Sabrin, the 1997 Libertarian candidate for governor.

He now leaves office having introduced more ideas into the national debate than any other figure in either party.

Not that that was much of a challenge. Can anyone name a single idea introduced by either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?

In fact the only idea I recall from recent debates is Herman Cain's "9-9-9" tax plan. It made a lot of sense, though Cain himself was a bit flawed as a candidate. But even that was derivative of Ron's ideas.

And on foreign policy, Ron Paul pretty much singlehandedly made it possible to talk about the rather obvious fact that we're going broke trying to be the policeman of the world - and that we're not very good at it. If only Romney had listened to him he might have made some headway on foreign policy.

But when your foreign policy consists of arguing you're going to get us involved in even more debacles than Obama, then you are going to give the upper hand on the issue to your opponent, which is exactly what Romney did.

Ron also offers a way out on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage - the old-time conservative way. He argues we should leave abortion to the states, a position that would let a Republican pile up pro-life votes in pro-life states and pro-choice votes in pro-choice states.

I saw Ron make that argument last January during the South Carolina primary. As I wrote here, it outraged the "pro-life" political lobbyists who were holding the debate. But that's because the lobbies that have grown up around such issues get rich by pushing the most extreme positions possible.

A candidate needs to have the nerve to stand up to this pressure and stick to principle. But again Romney ignored Ron Paul's advice and pretended to be a one-size-fits-all pro-life fanatic - even though he was a pro-choicer just the other day.

But if you're looking for the best evidence that Ron Paul leads the debate, read this column by George Will.

Will doesn't mention Ron Paul by name, but he mentions his ideas:

If even old George can get the message in his cave deep inside the Beltway, Ron has won.

And he's also winning the debate against the Grover Norquist crowd. I like Grover, but that no-tax-hike pledge of his is a bad joke when taken by politicians who run up trillion-dollar deficits.

Again, the voters saw through Romney on this. Polls showed they didn't believe his argument that we could cut taxes while increasing spending.

Ron Paul meant it when he said he would trim a trillion or so from the budget. No wonder he scared the Republicans. But it's silly to whine about Obama's debt and then propose even more spending on the military and Medicare.

Ron Paul may be retiring, but his ideas are just starting to work.



ALSO: What is it about liberals that they want to resort to violence whenever their beliefs are challenged? Murray brought this cartoon by Margulies to my attention.

In it, our liberal friend implicitly endorses the idea that it would be a good idea to use violence against those who utter political ideas not to your liking.

These guys claim to love peace, but it's amazing how admiring they are of people who start wars.