Over at the American Conservative, W. James Antle III has this piece on how Ron Paul won the war of ideas in the GOP.

Here's an excerpt:

"When Ron Paul leaves office in January, he will have been more successful than many of the legislators who spent decades maligning him. Paul’s ideas have gradually gone from marginal to mainstream, and his record shows how much even a single determined man of principle can do to change a movement. In foreign policy especially, the Texas congressman leaves behind a new generation of leaders, both libertarian and conservative, who challenge the disastrous bipartisan consensus."

Read the whole thing. In it, Antle does a masterful job of explaining how Ron Paul began a real debate within the Republican Party on returning to a true on whether we should have a conservative foreign policy or the liberal internationalist foreign policy insisted on by the so-called "neo" conservatives.

I expect we will soon find out the Ron Paul won the debate on fiscal issues as well.

One reason Romney lost such an obviously winnable race was his failure to embrace the fiscal conservatism of Ron Paul on both spending and taxation.

Romney tried to run as a conservative on taxes while at the same time running as a liberal on spending. He promised to cut taxes while also promising to increase the outlays for his pet causes.

This fooled no one. Polls showed that by the end of the race voters trusted Barack Obama more than Romney on economic issues.

Romney will go down as one of the biggest losers in the history of presidential races.

As for Paul, Antle sums up Paul's legacy this way:

Things sure have changed. If you look back on those 2008 primaries you'll find instances where Romney laughed at Ron Paul.



Guess who got the last laugh.