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Mitt Romney is sliding in the polls, Newt Gingrich is surging (at least for now), and neither candidate excites conservatives. A giant question mark hangs over the Republican-primary field. Washington Post columnist George Will and many others have speculated that the GOP’s apparent disarray could compel libertarian Ron Paul, with his sizeable base of enthusiastic supporters, to mount an independent bid for the presidency.

Naturally, most Republicans shudder at the thought, fearing such a bid would all but ensure Obama’s reelection. They needn’t lose much sleep.

Although Ron Paul can’t do an interview these days without being asked about the possibility of a third-party run, it seems the media can’t take no for an answer. “I have no plans to do that,” he told NBC’s David Gregory. “I’m not even thinking about it,” he said on Fox News. “I have no intention of doing it,” he insisted on CNN’s State of the Union. “I have no plans whatsoever to do it.” Which is what one should expect to hear from any candidate in his position — running for the Republican nomination.

Of course, when pressed to “categorically, unequivocally, authoritatively, unconditionally, swear-on-your-first-born-son absolutely” rule out the possibility, Paul hedges. “I’m not going to rule anything out or anything in,” he told a relentless David Gregory on Sunday. “I don’t talk in absolutes.”

Still, a source close to the Paul campaign tells National Review Online that the media should get over their third-party fixation. “Asking this question over and over again of a candidate who’s actually doing quite well in competing for the Republican nomination is both silly and insulting,” the source says. “Is anyone asking Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich about running third-party if they don’t get the nomination?”

Although the media may refuse to believe it, Paul is in the race to win. “Look, I’m not doing badly right now,” the candidate recently told Fox News’s Neil Cavuto in response to yet another third-party question. “We’re very happy with our polls. . . . We concentrate only on one thing: Keep moving up in the polls, and see how things come out in a month or two.”

Indeed, Paul is consistently polling second or third in early-primary states Iowa and New Hampshire. A Public Policy Polling survey released on Tuesday has Paul within one point of frontrunner Newt Gingrich in Iowa, as support for the former speaker has waned over the past week. Money-wise, Paul has always been a prolific fundraiser. The campaign is holding a “money bomb” on December 16 to coincide with the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. A similar drive during the 2008 GOP primary raised more than $6 million from nearly 60,000 individual donors — in one day.

This year, Paul will almost certainly have the resources to last well beyond the first leg of contests. The campaign recently opened state headquarters in Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Washington State — states that hold their primaries in February and March.

There is some hope among Paul fans that, given the party’s dissatisfaction with “Newt Romney,” their guy will be the last man standing at the GOP convention in August 2012. That seems unlikely. (But given the twists and turns of the campaign so far, can it really be ruled out?) Either way, there are a number of logistical factors that would make a third-party run simply impractical.

For starters, even though Paul would be a shoo-in for the Libertarian party’s nomination, its convention will be held in early May — before GOP primaries in 13 states. He would need to quit the race rather soon in order to secure the nomination. Additionally, “sore-loser laws” in some states prohibit candidates from running in one party’s primary and then switching parties for the general election. In most cases, there are ways around these barriers (albeit time- and resource-consuming ones), but in states such as Mississippi, Ohio, and Texas, the legal barriers are reasonably strict. Those states hold their primaries in March, meaning Paul would have to drop out well before then just to get on the general-election ballots there as a third-party candidate.

If Paul’s goal — short of winning the nomination — is for his libertarian views to have their maximum positive impact on the outcome of the 2012 presidential race, he clearly has much more to gain by remaining in the GOP race for as long as possible. Significant changes to Republican-primary rules this year are a main reason why.

Republican primaries used to be winner-take-all affairs, with all of the state’s delegates awarded to the first-place finisher. Now, states holding primaries or caucuses before April 1, 2012, must award delegates on a proportional basis, meaning a candidate who wins with 33 percent of the vote will receive only one-third of the state’s delegates. With his cadre of dedicated and energetic supporters throughout the country, Paul is best positioned to take advantage of this change in the rules. He could conceivably arrive at the GOP convention in Tampa, Fla., holding a substantial number of delegates, and thus be able to exert some influence on the eventual nominee.

What that influence would entail exactly is anyone’s guess, but Paul did say on Meet the Press that he was “very pleased” by what he heard from other candidates at the most recent GOP debate. “Some of them are starting to use a little bit of the language I use,” he noted. And while it seems unlikely that Paul would go so far as to endorse a candidate other than himself, strong showings in the early primaries, followed by a string of solid finishes in which he racks up a chunk of delegates, would make him and his die-hard base a political force to be reckoned with at the GOP convention.

Running as an independent, on the other hand, would serve only to further isolate Paul’s brand of libertarianism from the Republican party — and likely breed animosity between the two, particularly if Obama waltzed to reelection in 2012 as a result.

Another reason Paul is almost certain to forgo a third-party bid is that it would likely do significant harm to the ambitions of his son, freshman senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.), who has indicated his interest in running for the White House in the future. In fact, the younger Paul told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that his father’s running as an independent would be bad for the country, as well as for the Republican party.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, to tell you the truth,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for the Tea Party to break off — or for my dad necessarily — because I think what it would do is just elect the president again and . . . we don’t want that.”

And, we can only assume, neither does a twelve-term congressman who voted against the Paul Ryan budget because it was too timid. So perhaps the media can cool it with the third-party talk. If they’re smart, they’ll start readying their “Paul wins in Iowa” headlines for January 4.

Ron Paul surging, can now win it all

While all eyes focus on Iowa there is some remarkable movement in New Hampshire. For the first time Ron Paul has moved into contention. Today’s Inside Advantage poll shows Mitt Romney hanging onto first place with 29.1% of the vote, Newt Gingrich at 23.9% and now Ron Paul at 20.6%. The rest trail badly, for example, Michelle Bachman dropping to 3.7% and Perry and .5%.

There is now a very real possibility that Ron Paul could win the nomination and the White House.

Everyone talks about what will happen if Paul beats Romney in Iowa, which is very likely. With the Romney brand severely damaged Gingrich would have a real shot at winning New Hampshire. But there is another scenario. Ron Paul is now within one point of Gingrich in Iowa and Paul has been moving up, Gingrich down. What if Ron Paul wins in Iowa? What if he beats both Romney and Gingrich? both men will be hurt in New Hampshire, Ron Paul will get a bump and could win there too.

Well, the pundits are saying, even if that happened, where does he go after that? What can he do in South Carolina?

Keep this in mind. As the renowned Trygve Olson points out, no recent candidate of either party has ever won the nomination without winning either the Iowa Caucus or the New Hampshire primary. This because of the power of sequential wins. And nobody has won both, in recent years, without getting the nomination. What happens is that the candidate who wins an early contest gets a bump. If he does it a second time the bump becomes insurmountable.

If Ron Paul wins the Iowa Caucus he will become a sensation. The people of South Carolina will rush to Google him and they will learn what the people of Iowa and New Hampshire are learning right now, that the way this economy is being run is corrupt and only one person saw it coming and exposed it and can be trusted to fix it.

Now you can bet that the people who are gaming the system will be fighting against this scenario for all they are worth. The attacks are coming and they will be merciless. But the public does not like being conned. And the public has lost the value of their homes and lost their retirement funds, they just may not be willing to give up their vote as well.

Paulistas need not worry about South Carolina. They need not worry about New Hampshire and Iowa. They should only have one concern. The next money bomb on December 16th, this Friday. That’s all that matters now. Ron Paul has great television ads, the best of the campaign, and those ads are working. They are very effective. They move numbers. But it will take money to get them air time. Everything for Ron Paul now depends on Friday. The nation’s elite will be watching.

And yes, Virginia, this is all happening. Ron Paul can win it all. It is something that we have discussed here four the last four years. It is now very possible.

why conservatives must adopt ron paul's foreign policy

Many Republicans love Ron Paul’s limited-government philosophy but have problems with his foreign policy. This is understandable given the state of today’s Republican Party. But what many Republicans probably don’t realize is that Paul’s foreign policy is part of his limited-government philosophy — and it’s a crucially important part. If the American right does not begin to at least consider Paul’s foreign policy, it will continue to forfeit any hope of advancing a substantive conservatism.

As the Founders understood well, it is hard-to-impossible to preserve limited government at home while maintaining big government abroad. History and experience tell us that one always begets the other. This certainly rings true as we spend trillions of dollars on domestic programs that we match with trillions more overseas. The Founders’ talk of “entangling alliances” requiring “standing armies” was recognition of the inherent dangers of war — and especially permanent war. “Mr. Republican” Sen. Robert Taft would echo similar sentiments a century and a half later in his battles against New Deal liberals. President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about the “military-industrial complex” reflected the same concerns within a 20th-century, post-WWII context.

Almost alone, Ron Paul today carries on this important Republican tradition. Like every other conservative, Paul believes that America must have a strong national defense — he simply believes we can no longer afford our current irrational offense.

Unfortunately, unlimited Pentagon spending remains the big government too many Republicans still love. During the Reagan era, when we were fighting a global superpower that possessed thousands of nuclear weapons, this made sense. It does not make sense anymore. Today, we are fighting individuals, or collections of individuals, with infinitely less military capabilities and no particular attachments to nation-states. Ask yourself this: What, exactly, does having thousands of troops stationed in Afghanistan do to prevent some sick individual from trying to blow up his underwear on an airplane? Just as important, ask this: Does having thousands of troops in places like Afghanistan make it less likely — or more likely — that some sick individual will try to blow up his underwear on an airplane? Our own military and CIA intelligence tells us that our overseas wars actually encourage terrorist attacks. A majority of the members of the U.S. military agree, or as a Pew Research Poll of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans published in October revealed: “About half (51 percent) of post-9/11 veterans say that the use of military force to fight terrorism creates hatred that breeds more terrorism.”

These are basic questions that Americans desperately need to ask. Ron Paul is asking them. The other candidates don’t even consider them questions.

Which brings us to conservatism’s fate. Want to know why Paul is the only GOP presidential candidate who has proposed substantive spending cuts — $1 trillion in the first year? It’s because only Paul addresses Pentagon spending, the largest portion of our budget after entitlements. What the Republican candidates who eschew Paul’s foreign policy are essentially saying is this: We support limited government in theory but in practice it’s simply too dangerous. Paul continues to make the same argument that former Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff Mike Mullen has made: that our debt is the greatest threat to our national security. Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and the other GOP candidates do not see our debt as a similar threat — if they did, they would be calling for bigger spending cuts.

As for national security concerns, Paul’s $1 trillion in cuts still allows for a defense budget four times greater than China’s and larger than even President George W. Bush’s 2005 defense budget. This is how drastically Pentagon spending — along with all government spending — has grown under President Obama. Cries from the GOP field that Obama is “weakening” our defense with “cuts” mirrors liberal shrieking about conservatives hurting the poor or seniors by reforming welfare or entitlements (just ask Paul Ryan).

Big-government advocates always claim that any changes or reductions in the status quo would be catastrophic. Conservatives always argue that not only can we no longer afford such spending, but that reducing big government will be better for all parties involved in the long run. Republicans can remain doubtful about whether Paul’s foreign policies will actually make us safer (they will, if our own intelligence and military members are to be believed). But they cannot doubt that Paul’s foreign policy addresses a cost we can no longer afford (our current foreign policy and related spending costs about $1.2 trillion annually, roughly our entire deficit).

The only GOP candidate offering the kind of cuts the tea party has said it desires is Ron Paul. If Paul’s foreign policy makes him beyond the pale politically, then the tea party’s desires become academic. This is a matter of fact and basic math, or as Rush Limbaugh explained in October:

Ron Paul is about to show the Republican presidential field what a serious fiscal reform plan looks like. He is going to propose $1 trillion in real spending cuts. What this indicates is something, folks, that we have got to face, if we are serious about this. Fooling around the margins isn’t going to get it done. A 2% tax cut here, or a 3% tax variation over there is not going to fix what’s wrong. Genuine, big spending cuts are the only thing that is going to bring us back …

Limbaugh added that Ron Paul’s plan was the only serious conservative budget even proposed. Rush said such ideas aren’t even original to Paul: “Now, these are not really Ron Paul’s ideas. We’ve long been an advocate of this … But nobody on our side has ever seriously proposed this and Ron Paul is going to. We have called for everything that Paul is suggesting. He will be the first candidate to actually do so.”

To disqualify Paul because of his foreign policy views is to also disqualify any chance of actual spending cuts. Until conservatives learn this lesson and begin to apply their limited-government philosophy comprehensively, conservatism itself will largely remain a moot point.

Former Bush insider: "I sleep better at night working for Ron Paul." FreedomWatch 8pm ET on Fox Business.