The verdict is in - Ron Paul won last night's GOP Presidential debate in Ames, Iowa. Much to the chagrin of the neo-cons at Fox News, the polls, and applause, overwhelmingly showed that the people thought Ron Paul won the debate. Fox News was even forced to take down its own poll from its website after Paul crushed the competition in a landslide. Readers can can view that poll here. This is the largest online GOP debate poll, and just under 30,000 Americans have voted. Ron Paul has received a whopping 16,188 votes thus far, which is more than triple the support of runner-up Newt Gingrich.

In fact, Paul is winning nearly every single online GOP debate poll, many of them by a very wide margin. It was also obvious who the crowd preferred last night in Ames, as Ron Paul supporters were clearly the loudest and most influential contingent at the event. Still not convinced? During and after the debate last night, Ron Paul was #4 on Goggle Trends, well ahead of the other candidates. At last check, he is still #4, which is quite a feat. Furthermore, he remains one of the top trending topics on Twitter, which is a very reliable gauge of interest.

Even TheHill.com is declaring Paul victorious. Last night, was a huge boost for the Texas Congressman who has emerged as one the GOP front-runners, and is polling third nationally, only trailing Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. It is becoming quite clear that the American people are gravitating towards Paul's honest and principled positions which emphasize peace and personal liberty. Unfortunately, the rest of the field is made up of Establishment figures whose pandering is determined by which way the wind blows. Clearly it is blowing in the direction of Dr. Paul, as his influence continues to shape the course of the GOP primary, with candidates such as Newt Gingrich and Michelle Bachmann now parroting many of the ideas that he has been promoting for the last thirty years. Gingrich actually attacked the Federal Reserve last night.

The problem that these other candidates have, however, is that their records simply don't lend them much credence, whereas Paul has an unblemished, and unimpeachable, Congressional voting record. Despite the best efforts of the media to get Dr. Paul to flip flop on his libertarian views, he just won't do it - even when the questions are tough. Last night, when he was asked what his response would be to the possibility that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, Paul stuck to his non-interventionist position and said that he would prefer more diplomatic discourse and trade with Tehran, as opposed to just relying on threatening rhetoric and war mongering.

While this may have seemed like an extreme position to Americans whose only source of information on Iranian/U.S. relations is media propaganda, it is in fact quite sound, and part of an already existing strategy. The Obama administration has acknowledged that Iran deserves a seat at the international table. In 2009, he told the Iranian people that "The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right-but it comes with real responsibilities." Iran and the United States also are trade partners.

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Furthermore, the Obama administration has been warned in no uncertain terms by a panel of academics and ambassadors that a military attack against the country would be a mistake, and that the only viable course of action was unconditional negotiations. This panel included former special envoy to Afghanistan James Dobbins, former ambassador to the UN Thomas Pickering, and Middle East scholars from American universities. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to claim that his country's nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, and Iran is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty along with the United States. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has issued a fatwa against the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons.

On the terrorism front, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has said that Iran is "a helper and a solution" for Afghanistan and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq stated that Iran has a "positive and constructive" role in helping the Iraqi government improve security in that nation. Another thing to note about Iran is that it is a democratic country, and the hard-liners may not be in power much longer. Ahmadinejad's 2009 re-election caused significant debate and protest in that country, and it is becoming ever more clear that he is losing the support of the Iranian populace.

We have seen this trend throughout the Middle East in countries such as Libya, Egypt, and Syria. None of this should be interpreted as an endorsement of Iran as a shining beacon of peace and freedom, but it does underscore where Dr. Paul is coming from. Under his foreign policy, countries such as Israel, and the Europeans, would have much more latitude to deal with the Iranians as they saw fit, without U.S. meddling.

The American people have absolutely no desire to engage countries such as Pakistan and Iran in war, yet the government's rhetoric suggests otherwise. Ron Paul is the only candidate that can guarantee the American people that we will not preemptively engage in another war of aggression such as Iraq, which is now viewed as a mistake by the majority of U.S. citizens.

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