If hospitals and emergency rooms are facing an explosion today of heart attacks and sudden death syndrome, don’t blame cholesterol or the fast food industry. It’s likely due to two recent news items—news certain to induce shock in War Party Republicans, which is to say, most Republicans.



First, there is the news from the CBS News Poll that Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are statistically tied with President Obama in one-on-one matchups. And only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. Obama handily beats the other Republican presidential candidates.



Romney is no surprise, of course. Establishment liberals and establishment conservatives have lost no opportunity in recent months to assure us that the 25% candidate is the only Republican who can beat Obama. And if it weren’t for that assumption, what would Romney’s level of support be? 5%? Your guess is as good as mine.



But Ron Paul? We have been told even more adamantly, and with greater certainty, that hell will freeze over before Ron Paul wins the nomination, that he has reached his ceiling in votes, that voting for him is a wasted protest vote, that his foreign policy is to the left of Obama, not to mention that he is a disgusting and crazy racist, yada, yada, yada. And that was before they thought he was a serious threat to the established order.



The most amusing diatribe in recent weeks was the accusation that Paul was ruining the primary and caucus process with his appeal to young people, independents, and (gasp!) Democrats. We can’t let people like that into our country club! But, of course, St. Ronald Reagan did exactly that to achieve overwhelming victories, and we still refer to “Reagan Democrats,” most of whom have probably not voted Democratic since Reagan converted them. But that was then, and now is now.



This CBS News poll is not the first one to show Ron Paul tied with President Obama, or even beating him, in one-on-one matchups. But those earlier polls came when the solution was to simply ignore Ron Paul and any positive news about him. It’s harder to ignore Ron Paul now, though the media and the establishment Republicans are doing their best to ignore mentioning the CBS News poll.



Then There Are the Actual Votes



Polls are one thing—they can be dismissed when convenient as biased or inaccurate. Actual vote counts are another matter. When the votes support what the polls are saying about Ron Paul, you can expect the anti-Paul War Party Republicans to go ballistic. And they will.



We now have the first caucus (Iowa) and the first primary (New Hampshire) behind us, and here are the vote counts for the Republican presidential contenders:



Candidate Iowa Vote New Hampshire Vote* Total Vote



Mitt Romney 30,015 91,071 121,086



Ron Paul 26,219 52,982 79,201



Rick Santorum 30,007 21,606 51,603



Jon Huntsman 745 39,041 39,786



Newt Gingrich 16,251 21,791 38,042



Rick Perry 12,604 1,619 14,223



Michele Bachmann 6,073 ----- 6,073



*At Midnight pm with 92% of vote counted.



As we see, Ron Paul is the leading Republican vote-getter whose last name is not Romney, just as he and Romney are the only two candidates who are equal to President Obama in one-on-one matchups.



It is time for the anti-Romney Republicans to unite behind Ron Paul—the only candidate who can then defeat both Mitt Romney and President Obama.