After three days of FreedomWorks’ 2008 GOP presidential straw poll, 16,371 visitors cast votes. The winner? U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, with over 56 percent of the vote.  Why Ron Paul? Alvaro Vargas Llosa, senior fellow at the Independent Institute, responds in a commentary of the same title.

Vargas Llosa writes, “The congressman from Texas has hardly registered in national polls but is a political celebrity in the blogosphere and on cable TV Web sites, and has been the subject of front-page stories in The Washington Post and other major news outlets.” He asserts, media attention for Paul is being propelled by the congressman's support from disaffected younger Grand Old Partiers.

From YouTube to digital straw polls to electronic social networks, Vargas Llosa states, “one senses a growing revulsion against the intrusion of the authorities into people’s lives. The exasperation with established institutions affects both parties, but the most blatant target is the Republican Party.”

He continues,

The GOP, whose discourse paradoxically stresses individual responsibility, has come to be associated with two powerful forms of intrusion: the use of force abroad and of moral bullying at home…. Although the Democrats have traditionally been the big-government party, the perception today even among many Republicans is that the GOP has pushed the boundaries of authority beyond reasonable limits. The younger generations of Republicans seem to have found a spokesman in Paul, who calls for limiting the reach of government on all fronts—foreign policy, moral issues, economic activity.

Vargas Llosa hesitates to predict whether Paul’s libertarian streak popularity among younger people represents a wave to come that will alter the GOP’s political shoreline. I hope it does. Moreover, I hope that wave hits the Democratic Party's shore too.