While the mainstream media has spent the past week discussing whether Newt Gingrich's recent rise in the polls for the GOP nomination for president is for real (and the consensus among some of those same pundits on Sunday morning was not really), yet another candidate deserves to be in that discussion when it comes to who might win Iowa, the first contest on the 2012 nominating calendar.

That would be Ron Paul, the cranky old guy in the debates who is currently right at the top of two new polls in the Hawkeye state, which will vote in just six weeks time.

Introduced as "once a fringe candidate," by Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer, Paul took center stage on that program Sunday morning: