Two days before the New Hampshire primary, Fox News staged a forum for the Republican presidential candidates and invited everyone who was at the ABC debate the day before, except for Ron Paul. They introduced the forum by saying that the GOP nominee would be one of the five candidates who were there, a statement clearly meant to suggest that Ron Paul doesn't have a chance to win.

That may have been the straw that broke the camel's back, if the camel was an American populace growing increasingly impatient and frustrated with Faux News propaganda.

Fox News wanted to have a forum where it talked with the five GOP candidates who basically agree with their way of thinking: who like the war in Iraq, who like the surge, who want to increase troops in the region, and who have no problem with an eventual war against Iran. What they didn't count on was the depth of support for Ron Paul.

It is hard to measure Paul's support. He is the most-searched-for candidate on the internet, by far, outpacing every Democrat and Republican. He probably raised the most money last quarter (probably, because he reports his donations live while others wait for the FEC deadline at the end of the month). In a graphic map of Meetup groups, other candidates have patches of red dots, while Paul's map is a solid red across the entire country. He has won almost every post-debate poll. Independent Paul supporters have helped him raise $10 million over two days, setting and breaking his own record. There is a blimp flying around the country that asks Who is Ron Paul? on one side and suggests you Google Ron Paul on the other.

Yet Paul came in fifth in both Iowa and New Hampshire. True, he beat Rudy Giuliani in the first, and nearly tied him in the second, despite the fact that Giuliani apparently spent more time campaigning in both states. But still, the other measures of Paul's support would suggest he should be winning these primaries, possibly by a landslide.

So is the mystery, why does Paul not do better in primaries? Or is the mystery, why does his support seem larger than it is?

It's almost an impossible question to answer. Almost because we now have, thanks to Fox News, proof in the stock market that the support is genuine, and the primary results so far are the aberrations.

The news that Fox News would be excluding Ron Paul from its N.H. debate came on Dec. 27. From that day on, the stock price of News Corp., its parent company, fell every day, losing a cumulative 10 percent, or about $6 billion, over the next seven days.

To be sure, other media companies fell as well. Time Warner and Viacom each fell about 6 percent over that period. The Paul supporters who spread the message of selling News Corp. stock, boycotting Fox News advertisers, and otherwise imposing their economic will cost the media giant billions.

The bleeding stopped Jan. 8, when Fox News relented to the economic pressure and invited Paul to the South Carolina debates. The stock price gained nearly 4 percent in just two days, right back in line with the other media companies.

Those debates were held last week. They were very similar to all the earlier debates, to which Paul had been invited. Other candidates get asked about policy issues while Paul gets asked about his electability. Other candidates snipe at each other and in particular Paul, while Paul ignores them and talks solely about the issues, the only candidate to answer every question that is asked.

But there was one major difference: Whereas in past debates, Paul received a vanishingly small portion of air time, in this one he received approximately equal time. I counted the number of words each candidate uttered. Paul surpassed the word output of John McCain, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Rudy Giuliani. Only Mike Huckabee said more words.

Maybe it's because Paul talks faster than the others, or because he needed to respond to accusations against him by the other candidates. Or maybe Fox News has realized that the people buttering its proverbial bread are conservatives like Paul and they are trying to recapture that key demographic.

That was, in essence, the only difference in this debate. Everyone else still wants to keep our troops overseas. Everyone else is itching to go to war in Iran at the slightest provocation. Everyone else thinks it is up to the government and the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy. Only Paul wants to bring our troops home, abolish the IRS, abolish the Federal Reserve, and slash our debt, spending and warring.

On the poll run by Fox News, where viewers can only vote once per cell phone number, the winner of the debate was, as always, Ron Paul.

editor@newhavenadvocate.com