Ron Paul is the final Mitt Romney alternative in the GOP presidential race now that Newt Gingrich is bowing out of the race, a fact that has wide-ranging implications for the party's chances of winning the White House in 2012.

Though Ron Paul's 2012 campaign has been consistently underestimated, much as his 2008 campaign was, he has managed to continue to bring in millions of dollars in donations, and to pack his rallies with thousands of vociferous supporters.

As such, it is no surprise that he is the last man left in the race against Mitt Romney. From day one Ron Paul, a Texas congressman and medical doctor, has been couched by the mainstream media as an underdog, a sideshow candidate incapable of beating his establishment opponents and unworthy of much attention.

But he has proven over and over again that he is a strong force, and recent news reports indicate that he is not going away anytime soon. Unlike Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and other candidates who were once seen as frontrunners, Paul has always flown under the radar, slowly and methodically gathering delegates along the way.

He may not be winning the votes of entire states like Mitt Romney, who picked up five more states on Tuesday, but he is winning over individual delegates to the nominating convention, already having secured half of the delegates in both Iowa and Minnesota, and working on a number of other states.

As such, Ron Paul's 2012 campaign is hoping for something like Warren G. Harding's surprise win in 1920, when Harding eventually won despite heading into the convention with the fewest delegates of any remaining candidate. And Harding went on to sweep into the White House.

And it appears that the path to the convention has been cleared of obstacles for Ron Paul, as Fox News said this week that his presence at the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa looks inevitable at this point.

So it's within the realm of possibility that Ron Paul could upset Mitt Romney and pull the rug out from him and the Republican establishment, winning the GOP nomination despite all the odds being stacked against the Paul campaign from the race's outset.

As the Ron Paul Revolution PAC website has stated, the election is not over just because the media says so:

The mainstream media has crowned Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee for the 2012 election and have declared that he is now moving onto the 'real race,' a statement on the site says. The mainstream media is doing its job promoting the status quo and now that the choice has been made by those that really know what is going on we can all relax and get back to trusting the government in all things. EXCEPT for the inconvenient fact that as caucus states are progressing to their county, district, and state conventions Ron Paul supporters are doing very well.

Stay tuned. It's just a matter of time before the world will see what becomes of the Ron Paul Revolution.