Best Political Theater: Republican lawmaker George Voinovich telling conservative radio talk show host Sean Hannity that he supported the Fairness Doctrine — “whatever that is” — struck me as one of the most delightfully entertaining self-immolations in recent memory.

But I’m going to make a really odd choice. There’s a reason the movie “300” hit a chord with folks, to the tune of $456 million worldwide. Was it bloody? Sure. Did it take liberties with history? Sure, as I think Victor Davis Hanson — who heartedly endosed the movie — would tell us that giant claw-men were not actually used against the Spartans.

But we’ve seen plenty of computer-generated epics and bloody war movies. What made this one brilliant, and deserving of its raves, was its courage to tell a really old-fashioned story, one of a noble, strong, unbending group of heroes. (And even more daring - this is the story of their defeat!). But the heroes represent “the West”, the villains are Persians (!) and instead of endlessly lamenting how terrible war is - a noble message, but one beaten into our heads 24-7 - we finally get one movie where we get to watch heroes smile and conclude, “You want to fight? Fine, let’s fight. But you’ll come to regret it.”

We’re seeing Hollywood’s endless depressing we’re-the-real-bad-guys-in-the-war-on-terror dramas bomb at the box office, time and again. This movie - having nothing overtly to deal with the conflict we’re in, and yet in its subtext, everything - does gangbusters at the box office, with people watching again and again. After seemingly endless heavy-handed dramas arguing, “war! uh! What is it good for, absolutely nothing!”, we get a movie that says when an impacable evil shows up on your doorstep, there are things worth fighting for.

I was able to hear a bit about Frank Miller’s efforts to make this film, and apparently some folks at the studio were upset because the hero didn’t have the traditional “journey” we’ve come to expect in these films. But the story of King Leonidas predates even our most worn-out film cliches. He begins the story a perfect hero and he ends a perfect hero; if there’s any inner conflict, it’s the briefest of moments where he hesitates before sacrificing his life and his men’s. Hollywood is demonstrating it has forgotten how to tell certain stories; Frank Miller, looking to the distant past, has demonstrated you can still make epics that rattle the bones and stir the blood.

Marshall: I thought about naming Stephen Cobert for his faux Presidential campaign.

But in the end, there was a clear winner: Ron Paul’s stunning one-day online fund raising effort, which hauled in $4.2 million in 24 hours.

The most extraordinary part of this story was that Paul’s campaign wasn’t involved. It was organized and run by a group of Paul supporters on their own.

More than any other single event, this fund raising success contributed to a couple of weeks of significant attention from traditional media, elevating the profile of the campaign and giving Paul — and libertarianism generally — a platform for its ideas.

This spate of attention culminated in a widely discussed commentary in the Sunday Washington Post written my Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch of Reason Magazine.

Whatever one though of the Post piece, there’s no question that the two week period beginning with the online fund raising drive and concluding with the op/ed raising the profile of libertarian ideas to their highest pinnacle in decades.

The fund raising success also demonstrated the power of the Web as an organizational tool. Much has been written about Paul’s online support. And though elements of it surprise and disgust me, there’s no question that his supporters have harnessed the power of the net to drive conversation about and attention for their candidate.

Cam says: This is one of those categories I looked at earlier and when “Shit… what am I going to pick?” I really like Jim’s thought (and I thought this email to Glenn is another indication that Hollywood doesn’t get it.

Also, I think there’s no doubt that libertarianism is getting a lot of attention these days. But let’s be honest… there’s a tendency among the mainstream media (and even some conservative pundits) to mock the Paul campaign and libertarians as being nutty. I worry that this is going to lead to people thinking libertarian ideas are nutty as well, and I think that would be a very very bad thing.

To be honest, I’m not really sure I can come up with a pick for this category. This has been a year in which I’ve become somewhat disenchanted with the idea of theatrical politics, so I’m going to second Jim’s pick of “300″.