Posted 11/01/2007 05:18:00 PM by Douglas

What amazes me about the "Ron Paul" revolution is that the more steam it picks up, the harder and harder the mainstream media try to force the public to ignore it.

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.

Interesting, in that he can mobilize any base, much less college students that want to give him money. I'm sure the GOP is glad they have a candidate out there stirring interest and bringing actual issues to the debate, right?

"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.'"

Boy, you said a mouthful! It's fairly easy to see how a anti-establishment candidate that would like nothing more than shutting down the money tubes Washington has been sucking on for the last 90 years.

Labels: Ron Paul