Where’s Ron Paul in all the Iowa straw poll coverage? You’ll remember he came in a close second.

John Stewart asks, “How did libertarian Ron Paul become the [political equivalent of] the 13th floor in a hotel?”

Watch…

Politico’s Roger Simon agrees Paul got shafted. But Kevin Drum says no, Ron Paul doesn’t deserve any more attention:

Ron Paul isn’t getting any attention because he doesn’t deserve any attention, and Simon knows it. Paul has a small but fervent fan base that hasn’t grown noticeably since he ran and flamed out in 2008, and he has a well-known (but meaningless) ability to fire up this little fan base for assorted minor events like this. That’s his organizational ability and everyone is keenly aware of it. At the presidential level, he deserves about as much respect as Harold Stassen.

Doug Mataconis at OTB goes further:

[N]o candidate is entitled to free media coverage, and no candidate is entitled to be taken seriously by the media. Especially if the odds of them becoming the nominee are roughly equivalent to the odds of Lady Gaga entering the convent… If you look beyond those straw polls to actual candidate polls, Paul is currently averaging 9% nationwide. In the most recent Des Moines Register Poll of Iowa caucus voters, he received the support of 7% of those polled, far below the 27% he managed to garner in the Ames Straw Poll. Given the lack of correlation between the scientific polls and the straw poll with respect to Paul specifically, it seems fairly clear that winning those straw polls doesn’t really mean that he’s any kind of a frontrunner… Ron Paul isn’t going to get the same coverage as Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann, and it’s because, in the end, he’s so far out of step with the GOP base that he isn’t going to get the nomination.

What, dear readers, do you think?

The title of this post is a quote from an August 12 CNN report highlighted in Stewart’s piece.