In 2008, Ron Paul's supporters created the Tea Party movement. Since then, the Tea Party has energized the conservative grassroots, which caused them to pay a lot more attention to Washington and the Republican Party's politics. They have successfully advocated a return to small-government conservatism by engineering a landslide victory in the 2010 Congressional midterm elections for the American Right. Moderate incumbent Republicans were challenged and often ousted from their seats in primaries—even Senator John McCain nearly lost a hotly contested primary in Arizona—and they were often replaced by political neophytes whose only credentials were their sworn allegiance to the United States Constitution.

Much of this grassroots activity was fueled by the Internet, which allowed for rapid coordination, spontaneous fundraising and efficient dissemination of information. It seemed that, finally, the conservative right in American politics had stepped into the 21st century and had begun to utilize the Internet. The Internet has allowed communities of like-minded individuals to easily organize for a cause and, perhaps more importantly, avoid media bias by providing users with the ability to actively pursue information rather than passively receive it. If used properly, the Internet has the capacity to remove the spin found in the old mainstream media–that is, television, radio and newspapers–and can potentially create an independently informed populace.

Unfortunately, former Senator Rick Santorum's statistical tie for first place in the Iowa caucuses proves that much of the American Right continues to rely on the old media as its primary source of information and is thus utterly misinformed. Now, some of you may be balking at my choice to paint most of Santorum's 30,007 Iowan supporters as misinformed, so let's take a look at the Republican Party's constituency.

Historically, the Grand Old Party has stood for limited Constitutional government, economic freedom and, to some degree, personal freedom.

To a certain extent, it was a political party based on the premise of individual liberty. Since the 1960s, the GOP has drifted from these views toward a more authoritarian "big government" mindset.

The Tea Party sought to reclaim the Republican Party as a bastion of liberty. They wanted to re-imbue it with their conservative values and viewpoints. As a result, these new activists rallied against all wasteful spending, anything that is not explicitly authorized by the Constitution and, most importantly, corruption in Washington—arguably the largest and most dangerous impediment to liberty in America today.

Since the race for the GOP nomination began, we have seen a litany of candidates "surge" in the polls and then wither away. We saw names like Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich propped up by the old media and marketed to the Tea Party as strong, reliable, "electable" conservative alternatives to the moderate, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Once each of these candidates eclipsed Romney for the lead in the national polls, they came under more detailed scrutiny and were revealed to be ideologically and/or intellectually lacking. Each time, these phony frontrunners saw their leads collapse like a house of cards.

They were, if you will, "campaign bubbles," suspended only by the illusory notion that they were popular—according to the talking heads on television.

After Gingrich's campaign bubble burst, the only conservative option left for the media to inflate–other than Ron Paul, of course–was Rick Santorum as the "anyone-but-Romney" candidate. But is Santorum actually a conservative, as the media said he was? Or is he, like the others, ideologically lacking?

Upon actively pursuing the information on my own, I found that even a cursory examination of Santorum's record showed that Iowans were not told the entire story. A Google search revealed that Santorum's "conservatism" was mere froth, no substance. While claiming to support free markets, Santorum voted against National Right to Work legislation. While claiming to support the Second Amendment, Santorum voted to increase restrictions on gun ownership.

While claiming to support lower taxes, he has voted to raise them. Despite preaching for a smaller federal government, Santorum voted to double the size of the Department of Education and add another entitlement program to the federal budget.

Perhaps his most egregious fibs are his claims of being a "Reaganite." In an interview, Santorum said, "I am a Reagan conservative. I am not a libertarian. And the people who are calling me a big government guy are libertarians." This shows him to be utterly ignorant of the man of whose philosophy he purports himself to be a disciple. In 1975, Ronald Reagan said the following: "The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is." How is it possible that Tea Party conservatives, given all of this knowledge, could have been corrupted into supporting this man who repeatedly stood opposed to all that they fight for?

The answer, as I said, is simple. When a group's main source of information blatantly lies by omission, the group will inevitably be misled.

If the mainstream media had not distorted the truth, or if, preferably, voters began actively pursuing their information from the Internet rather than resorting to the intellectual sloth that is watching television news, they would have been properly informed, and Rick Santorum would have remained at the bottom of the polls where he belongs.

Instead, the only consistent and trustworthy candidate in the Republican field would have risen to the top of the Iowa caucuses. If they had taken the initiative to pursue the facts online, Republican voters would have been able to proudly vote for a reliable conservative stalwart who is, incidentally, the only legitimate contender to Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. The man I am talking about is, of course, Texas Congressman Dr. Ron Paul.