Usually people don't get too fired up about finishing fifth in a seven man race. But Ron Paul was clearly psyched last night, mostly because he finished ahead of his nemesis (and frequent debate antagonist) Rudy Giuliani in the Iowa caucus by a score of 10 percent to 4 percent. And he made sure to use the trouncing as an opportunity to tell everyone in his own polite, grandfatherly way that Giuliani could go fuck himself.

"I think the evening went well," Paul told his gathered supporters in Des Moines last night. "Nobody made any rash predictions, but I know we didn't come out at the bottom and I know we beat that Giuliani guy!" Supporters cheered enthusiastically, undoubtedly recalling Giuliani's self-righteous scoldings of Paul regarding a little thing he likes to calls 9/11. To more cheers, Paul then asked "Wonder if they're going to ask him if he's gonna drop out tonight!"

Later in his speech, Paul dragged out Giuliani's bloodied corpse again as evidence of his own campaign's great potential. "If you can take the guy that's down near at the bottom, the guy that we beat, he used to be a mayor. This means that even with a lot of money and with a lot of establishment credentials, we the people who care about this country, who care about the Constitution, can still win." (Or at least take fifth place.)

For his part, Giuliani had long ago abandoned visions of seriously competing in Iowa, but was still running ads until the bitter end in hopes of a pulling off a better-than-expected showing. His plan for Tuesday's New Hampshire is basically the same, and Paul seemed animated by the prospect of administering another drubbing to the G-block in the Granite State, describing his campaign as being on the "upswing" and citing a statistic which showed he did the best among "independent-minded" Iowans. "Guess what," he said excitedly, "the people of New Hampshire are independent-minded!"