Thomas Woods has an excellent explanation of the absurdity of the Iowans for Tax Relief excluding Ron Paul from their Presidential forum over at Lew Rockwell's site.

Ultimately, what this boils down to is that the Iowans who supposedly preach the "gospel" of tax relief and limited government don't believe their own rhetoric. They don't even believe the straw polls taken at their own (co-sponsored) conference that put Paul in first place among declared candidates.

What does this all mean? Simply put, "conservatives," especially those in the establishment and libertarians, at least the principled kind, are political enemies. In fact, nominal liberals like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, in part because they fall outside the establishment boundaries of correct opinion, have been more friendly to Dr. Paul than mainstream conservatives (like ITR) and even some establishment libertarians.