What's wrong with third?

Like many of you, I stayed up last night waiting for precinct totals and woke up this morning hoping the real numbers were available. If I were looking to Daily Paul to see what happened, I would have the impression that we lost, but the facts don't seem to support that view.

First, Huckabee and Romney were expected to take the top two spots, short of a surprise upset, the real news was third place. Based on what I saw on libertybroadcastnetwork.org, Thompson and McCain were in a virtual tie, with Paul within easy reach of them and his numbers in his strong areas unaccounted for. I don't know why they stopped posting results or what the final numbers are, but without precinct totals, the Iowa GOP will have a hard time claiming anything, and we have enough data to check against some of the precincts to see how accurate their count was there. Until someone PROVES the third place finisher, we have as much right to claim victory as anyone else. STOP CRYING DEFEAT!!!

Second, we are lucky that discrepancies are coming out now. Over the next few weeks states will find that their vote counts are under scrutiny and will have to account for their totals. Iowa was a chance for us to show we are a viable campaign with real voters --- MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!! Stay on the vote count thread so that we don't end up losing DELEGATES later on because those in charge of counting are content to let the networks name their results.

For now we need to keep looking ahead. Some of the early states will be starting early voting by next week. Its too late to change someones mind after the vote is cast, so lets get out and build on our success, rather than get discouraged about something we may never know the result of.