Ron Paul Odds Slashed
 

The Ron Paul Revolution
By JOEL STEIN2 hours, 39 minutes ago
It sometimes seems as if someone is playing a cruel practical joke on Ron Paul. He goes to a college and delivers the same speech he's given for the past 30 years of his political career, the one espousing the Austrian school of economics. Only now the audience is packed with hundreds of kids in RON PAUL REVOLUTION T-shirts who go nuts - giving standing ovations when he drones on about getting rid of the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard. After a speech at Iowa State last month, when nearly half the crowd had to stand because there were only 400 seats, a hipster-looking student worked his way through the half-hour-long line to shake Paul's hand. This was surely it - the moment when the straight faces would break and Paul would be wedgied up the flagpole. "When you see Bernanke," the kid said, "will you tell him to stop cutting rates when gold hits 1,000?"

Politics might be rock 'n' roll for nerds, but the nerds aren't supposed to be quite this nerdy. The leader of the disaffected in next year's presidential election - the Howard Dean, the Ross Perot, the Pat Buchanan - is a kindly great-grandfather and obstetrician whose passion is monetary policy. Paul, a 72-year-old hard-core libertarian Republican Congressman who is against foreign intervention, subsidies and the federal income tax, is not only drawing impressive crowds (more than 2,000 at a post-debate rally at the University of Michigan last month) but also raising tons of cash. In the third quarter of 2007, Paul took in $5.3 million (just slightly less than G.O.P. rival John McCain), mostly in small, individual donations. On Oct. 22, he aired his first TV ads, $1.1 million worth in New Hampshire.

The numbers are even more impressive considering that as of early October, 72% of G.O.P. voters told Gallup pollsters they didn't know enough about Paul to form an opinion. He has been able to attract followers in the debates, where he's presented a clear, simple philosophy of personal freedom and responsibility. He bluntly refers to the U.S. as an empire. And the nerdiness lends Paul's simple message an aura of credibility, especially on a stage with more polished politicians and their nuanced positions. "He's about something that American nerd culture can get on board with: really knowing one subject and going all out on it," says Ben Darrington, a Ron Paul supporter at Yale. "For some people, it's Star Wars. For some people, it's Japanese cartoons. For Ron Paul, it's free-market commodity money."

The libertarian's traction is most apparent on the Internet, where his presence far outstrips that of any candidate from either party. His name is the most searched, his YouTube videos the most watched, his campaign the topic of songs by at least 14 bands. "The last thing I would listen to is rap," Paul says. "But there's something going on when there's a rap song about the Fed." On Tuesday, both Paul and Tom Cruise were guests on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The actor went to Paul's dressing room to thank him for his work on a bill fighting the forced mental screening of grade-school kids. "Go. Go. Go. Go hard," Cruise said. Paul turned to an aide and asked, "What movies has he been in?"

Paul's fans - and there were more than 100 of them in Leno's audience, many of whom had flown in from out of town - are entranced by a man who responds to surprising information with "Wowee" and a jaw-dropped smile not often seen apart from 5-year-old boys and Muppets. "It's the message. Ron isn't that exciting as himself," says Andre Marrou, who was Paul's running mate when he ran as a Libertarian in 1988. "I saw him referred to in print as semi-eccentric. He's maybe 10% eccentric. It's his ideas that are eccentric. But it's basic Americanism." Paul is such a strict constructionist that he autographs pocket Constitutions more often than Tommy Lee signs breasts.

But Paul's popularity can't necessarily be explained by a previously undetected craving for gold-standard debates on college campuses. His message, even if packaged in obscure economic lectures, is that there is something very corrupt, very Halliburton-Blackwatery going on with our military-industrial complex, and that can attract some pretty weird followers. At the Iowa State event, a student stood outside in a tricornered hat and Revolutionary War–era suit, ringing a bell. Representative Tom Tancredo, another long-shot G.O.P. candidate, tells me that after a debate in New Hampshire, one of his staffers walked up to a guy in a shark costume and asked him if he was a Ron Paul supporter. "No. They're all nuts," replied the shark. "I'm just a guy in a shark suit." There is a subset of Paul supporters who believe 9/11 was an inside job by the U.S. government. And there are anarchists as well: They've picked Nov. 5, Guy Fawkes Day, for a fund-raising drive.

"His supporters are the equivalent of crabgrass," says G.O.P. consultant Frank Luntz. "It's not the grass you want, and it spreads faster than the real stuff. They just like him because he's the most anti-Establishment of all the candidates, the most likely to look at the camera during the debates and say, 'Hey, Washington, f--- you.'"

The one place Paul hasn't become a major player is where it counts: in the polls, where he hasn't broken above 5% and has yet to pass Mike Huckabee. Paul realizes he's not a favorite among the pro-war, pro-Bush Republicans. "A lot of times at my rally, I say, 'We're diverse. We even have some Republicans,'" he jokes. (His largest Meetup.com group gathers in liberal Austin, Texas; another sizable one is in San Francisco.) And he isn't sure where all this sudden support will lead.

Paul doesn't expect that he will win the nomination, and he has no interest in running as an independent again. But he also doesn't see himself endorsing one of the other Republicans in the general election. "Those people who support me wouldn't believe it," he says. "If I said, 'Giuliani's a great guy, and he'll reduce subsidies and bring the troops home'? I couldn't do that." Even nerd revolutions don't surrender.
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I am completely flabbergasted by the fact that the mainstream media makes consistently and absolutely no mention of him.

There is a news blackout on Ron Paul. They obviously don't want the guy. It's sad. Most people I talk to never even heard of him, but they like his ideas when I tell them.

Remember a few years ago when___ Malcom Forbes?___ ( memory fails me- a serious economist) proposed the flat tax. He was attacked by all sides who are wedded to the current system.

Judging by the opposition by most politicians to a flat tax, it MUST be an idea to consider.

Yet another positive aspect.

Actually he poped up yesterday on CNN, there will be a special on him.

I hate the ()*&()&*()&$_$ media, refuse to watch the idiots. Ron Paul is one of the best hopes to fix this country before it falls apart. I doubt he will win, but many years from now we will look back and say "damn he could have fixed it". If the media bothered to cover him his support would sore, everyone I talk to about him likes his ideas.

He is ahead of his time.

Its amazing how so many people my age support him, he is my generations candidate, and his ideas appeal to my generation.

Not so much him, but the Libertarian movement itself. Our country first. Pretty basic.
Democrats and Repubs are not the only political parties out there. But the media and the election policies themselves tend to squash any other parties chances of even being on the ballot, much less having a real chance. Absolute power corrupts absolutely?

The flat tax sounds enticing at first glance, but when you get into details about how and what is tax deductable it gets dicey.

In general, I am against any changes in any tax systems because no matter how they are promoted by the time they get implemented we always end up paying more taxes in the end.

Folks support them because they imagine that they will benefit from the change, of course, it just never seems to work out in the end.

Tom W

Absolutely.

I'm not looking for a financial benefit from flat tax. I can afford the taxes I pay and could afford to pay higher taxes. No big deal.

What is a big deal to me is that the current system is dishonest and unfair. It is dishonest because it provides loopholes for the few. It is unfair because, even if there were no loopholes, it does not tax in proportion to income.

I like this guy's perspective: http://www.freedomworks.org/armey/

Yep the middle and upper middle class get hit the worst, they pay more than their fair share.

The wealthy have lots of loop holes, and the poor don't make enough to be taxed.

What do you find fair about taxing in proportion to income? Does income level reflect level of benefit from government services? Should income level determine the cost of other goods and services on a sliding scale?

1. It would be interesting if everybody paid exactly the same amount of taxes. But kind of dumb. I think people should pay taxes in proportion to the amount of services they receive and in proportion to the amount of money they save.

2. Yes. For example, I'll bet that Bill Gates can talk to any member of Congress, regardless of party, or the president whenever he feels so moved. I'll bet if Gates asks for an explanation of a particular gov service or regulation that he will get an answer from the upper levels of the bureaucracy. Also, I'm just guessing here, but if he called Hillary or Rudolph and said he was especially interested in some issue or other that those politicians would be awfully interested in discussing it. If he had a credible death threat against him his local and state government would be all over it.

Compare and contrast that with some middle class family member from Everett.

3. No, but taxes on consumption of those goods should be in direct proportion to the sale price so that the more one consumes, the greater the tax burden.