Ron Paul just scored another victory in his campaign for the presidency.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Just last year, the Texascongressman barely even registered in the Values Voters Summit straw poll.\u00a0 This year, however, with 37% of the vote, he didn\u2019t just walk away with it; he left second place contestant Herman Cain in the dust. <\/em>With 23% of voters backing the latter, Paul beat Cain by a full fourteen percentage points.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n Long time self-avowed \u201csocial conservative\u201d Senator Rick Santorum came in at third place with 16%.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is as ironic a twist of events as it must be exasperating for Santorum: it is Santorum, most definitely not <\/em>Paul, who is supposed to be \u201cthe values voters\u2019\u201d candidate.\u00a0 In fact, to hear the former Pennsylvania senator tell it\u2014and he spares no occasion to tell it\u2014\u201cvalues voters\u201d are <\/em>his main body of support.\u00a0 If the media was as interested in marginalizing Santorum as they are interested in doing the same to Paul, \u201cvalues voters\u201d would be known simply as \u201cSantorum people.\u201d\u00a0 Yet Paul not only defeated Santorum among the latter\u2019s \u201cpeople\u201d; he defeated him by a vast margin.<\/p>\n Even as I write this, already the masters of GOP spin are laboring inexhaustibly to reduce the significance of Paul\u2019s achievement.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t, though, that they are diligently in search of ever more ingenious ways by which they can explain away <\/em>Paul\u2019s viability.\u00a0 There are no<\/em> ingenious explanations in the coming to this effect.\u00a0 Moreover, there aren\u2019t even many disingenuous<\/em> explanations.\u00a0 Rather, there are essentially two <\/em>strategies of which Paul\u2019s detractors continually avail themselves to dismiss him: either his latest accomplishment, whatever it may be, is ultimately of no importance, they tell us, or else it is attributable solely to his fellow cultists, those peculiar \u201cPaul people.\u201d\u00a0 Yet in spite of the staleness of this script, Republican Party apologists are reciting it on cue this weekend as they try once again to diminish Paul.<\/p>\n Their protestations to the contrary aside, though Paul\u2019s showing in this most recent poll promises to neither break nor make his campaign, it is anything but insignificant.<\/p>\n To reiterate, Paul has never been known for his success at attracting the vote of the so-called \u201cvalues voter.\u201d\u00a0 There can be no question that neither Paul\u2019s competitors, like Santorum, nor those GOP pundits, like Bill Bennett, who have long regarded themselves as voices of \u201csocial conservatism,\u201d expected for Paul to have done well in this most recent straw poll, much less come in first place.\u00a0 If this straw poll is any indication of a new trend\u2014and you can rest assured that it would most certainly be unanimously regarded as such by the \u201cconservative media\u201d if it was any other candidate but Paul under discussion\u2014then we can only conclude that \u201cvalues voters\u201d are now \u201cPaul people!\u201d<\/p>\n This brings me to the second consideration.<\/p>\n As everyone <\/em>now knows, Herman Cain won the Florida Straw Poll a few weeks back.\u00a0 Prior to this one <\/em>achievement, though, his single digit poll numbers prevented Cain from receiving much media coverage.\u00a0 Since then, however, a GOP-friendly media all too eager to catapult a black candidate into the stratosphere has exploited Cain\u2019s success in Florida to just that end.\u00a0 Now, he comes in second<\/em> place in the Values Voters Summit poll behind<\/em> Paul and this <\/em>event <\/em>the same media figures appropriate to fuel the momentum that they <\/em>created for Cain initially.\u00a0<\/p>\n Paul, in stark contrast, from the outset of the presidential primaries, has been doing appreciably better than Cain and, for that matter, every other candidate except for the two media selected front runners\u2014in spite of <\/em>being ignored and dismissed by those entrusted with the task of providing honest coverage of events.\u00a0 And now, the one GOP constituency that was supposed to lie far beyond Paul\u2019s grasp, the \u201cvalues voters,\u201d has swung solidly behind him.\u00a0<\/p>\n Paul must regularly contend with a hostile, indeed, an unjust, \u201cconservative media.\u201d\u00a0 And yet he still maintains a roughly third place showing in the polls.\u00a0 Granted, now he is slightly behind Cain, whose poll numbers have \u201csoared\u201d sinceFlorida.\u00a0 But, again, the latter\u2019s poll numbers have \u201csoared\u201d precisely because his supporters in \u201cconservative media\u201d continually tell us about his \u201csoaring\u201d poll numbers.\u00a0 For Paul, they reserve unqualified contempt, but still, the good doctor\u2019s standing remains the envy of most of his rivals.<\/p>\n Finally, that Paul appealed to the majority of \u201cvalues voters\u201d participating in their \u201csummit\u2019s\u201d straw poll just might be due the growing recognition that his ideas are not only constitutional; <\/em>they are as well Christian. <\/em>\u00a0The importance of this insight can\u2019t be overstated.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Santorums and Bennetts of our generation have long promoted the idea that the federal government must be enlisted in the service of \u201cJudeo-Christian\u201d morality.\u00a0 They may very well believe this.\u00a0 However, in appealing to \u201cvalues voters\u201d\u2014the vast majority of whom are Christians\u2014Paul invites his supporters to revisit a feature of their tradition, an idea rooted in the teaching of Christ to which the rise of the dominance of our federal government and the utopian politics with which this has been coupled has all but blinded them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n This is the idea that the realms of politics and religion\u2014\u201cCaesar\u201d and God, \u201cthe City of Man\u201d and \u201cthe City of God,\u201d as Augustine put it\u2014though they may and often do overlap, are nevertheless mutually distinct.\u00a0 Those who would conflate the two aren\u2019t just fools; they are blasphemers.\u00a0 <\/em>With those few simple words\u2014\u201cGive unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God\u201d\u2014Jesus opened an unbridgeable chasm between Christianity, on the one hand, and utopian politics, on the other.\u00a0 Indeed, from the apostle Paul to Augustine and throughout even the medieval period, for the duration of their pre-modern history, Christians knew this well.\u00a0 However, the emergence of centralized governments and the unprecedented power over which they acquired a monopoly forced this old Christian concept to the periphery.\u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps Paul\u2019s victory at the Values Voters Summit signals its resurrection. \u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n originally published at The New American<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ron Paul just scored another victory in his campaign for the presidency.\u00a0 Just last year, the Texascongressman barely even registered in the Values Voters Summit straw poll.\u00a0 This year, however, with 37% of the vote, he didn\u2019t just walk away with it; he left second place contestant Herman Cain in the dust. With 23% of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n