Ron Paul, Tea-Party favorite before there ever was a Tea Party movement, is officially entering the 2012 Presidential Campaign.
He deserves the honor.
Twice before he has run for President first as a non-major party candidate in 1988. The second time, he ran in 2008, an outspoken wonk outspent by Romney and outdone by needless attacks by Rudy Giuliani over his stand on the war in Iraq.
In previous presidential contests, Paul stuck to sound and solid libertarian principles, which he still proudly endorses:
1) End the Fed (also the title of one of his books)
2) Return the U.S. Currency to the Gold Standard
3)Shrink the size of Government (including the Presidency, with Paul promising to cut his paycheck in half, since he would be overpaid considering all the cuts he would make in the federal bureaucracy)
4) Get the U.S. Armed forces out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and any other nation where they are needlessly stationed.
Paul is real, he's articulate, he's outspoken, and he has twenty-plus years of experience in government, yet has not sold out his libertarian beliefs. On the contrary, the whole country is starting to buy in to what he has been talking about all this time. Hardly the "cheerful anachronism" plaintively dismissed by columnist George F. Will four years ago.
If enough people in the United States begin to appreciate the gravity of runaway debt, sky-rocketing inflation, burgeoning government, and exorbitant taxes, then Ron Paul, the wacky also-run of yesteryear may become the next President of the United States.