Yesterday on Meet the Press they reviewed the declining prospects for the Republican Party. And the yawning conclusion was that no one can really challenge Barack Obama in 2012 and no one can revive the G.O.P. They assessed the prospects of all the possible candidates but there was one glaring omission. Guess who?

Mitt Romney and Lindsey Graham were the Republican guest commentators. Romney has already made it clear that only an Obama owned recession will allow him back in. And if Obama can’t get a temporary bump in the stock market, after trebling the money supply, well, we might as all start selling apples right now. And one by one, on the Russertless Meet the Press, they ticked off all of the reasons why Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee won’t be returning after all.

Of course, the weekly news dominated and they bemoaned the loss of yet another possible G.O.P. standard bearer for 2012. Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina, is now out. His dalliance in Argentina means he is damaged goods. Can’t you just see the governor sitting at a side walk café in Buenos Aires, with this nagging worry in the back of his head, “What if they are looking for me right now? What if I am on CNN? Naaa.” Indeed, the Sanford episode brings back all the painful narrative surrounding the infidelities of Newt Gingrich and Rudolph Giuliani. Is there no one left to lead the G.O.P.?

Meet the Press cannot be blamed for omitting the one man who is still on everyone’s lips, as in “you know, I think he may have been right, after all.” The one man who predicted the economic collapse, who suggested that the Federal Reserve needed an audit itself, who warned that electing a Democrat or Republican was pretty much the same thing; there would still be a war where we don’t need one. The lobbyists would still rule. The government would still intrude.

On May 18, 2009 Time magazine ran a cover story on the Republican Party, entitled “Endangered Species.” They had a Michael Grunwald article on “How the Republicans Lost Their Way.” And an article by Joe Scarborough on “How They Can Come Back.” Not once did the magazine even mention the name of the man who raised $32 million with a single call. The man who was first to recognize and announce that Republicans had lost their way, their heart, their soul.

What made the Mark Sanford loss so regrettable to many in the press was the fact that he was emerging as a bit of a populist figure. He had been able to articulate some of the views and the ideas of the one man whom Meet the Press and Time Magazine and the rest of the establishment so studiously ignore. And Sanford had been able to pick up the mantle without all the odious, dangerous extra baggage that makes the people at the television networks recoil in horror. Like actually auditing the Federal Reserve.

The fact is that Mark Sanford was never really a true clone to that man, who like Lord Voldemort, cannot be named. The man who would shake Wall Street and Capitol Hill to their foundations. I am speaking, of course, of Congressman Ron Paul of Texas

No, he is not dead, much as Meet the Press and Time would have you believe. Tim Russert is dead. Michael Jackson is dead. Farrah Fawcett is dead. And now even, Billy May is dead.

Ron Paul lives.

And as long as Ron Paul lives, the heart of the Republican Party beats strong and an alternative to the new Socialist Republic of America still exists.

Make sure you read…. Is Ron Paul too old?

And see Reagan and the age issue.