Jennifer Rubin claims Santorum "put Ron Paul in his place." Matt Welch counters:
Ron Paul, and more importantly his ideas, are in it for the long haul. Other candidates will run out of money; Ron Paul won't. Most politicians see their business in primarily transactional terms of winning, losing, and influencing legislation; Paul sees his as proselytizing for freedom. "Where we are very successful," he said his speech last night, "is re-introducing some ideas the Republicans needed for a long time, and that is the conviction that freedom is popular."
Presidential campaigns, for all their soul-killing dreariness, are opportunities to debate political philosophy and policy with a motivated audience. The Paul campaign, simply by virtue of surviving the fates suffered by Herman Cain, Tim Pawlenty, and a dozen other pretenders to the throne, has occasioned all sorts of fascinating (and oftentimes brutal) discussion about, against, and within libertarianism.
The Dish 