Ron Paul: merely a Barry Goldwater without the gunpowder

by P.M. Carpenter
from SmirkingChimp

I don't use the word "fascinating" very often to describe political movements, but that's just what the Ron Paul phenomenon is. It's fascinating because it's a strange sort of outlier, a borderline freak show, an insurrectionary abnormality within the normally staid and stuffy Republican Party.

Paul has ignited a dedicated and mushrooming base largely, as we know, because of the Iraq war. He alone among the Republican warhawk club of presidential candidates called a spade a spade early on -- that the war was an anticonstitutional betrayal of America's interests -- and thereby stood out from the snarling pack. In doing so, he also put to shame the Democratic candidates, excepting Dennis Kucinich, who have done little but waver and waffle on the war's status quo. Hence Paul has been able to draw visceral antiwar support from both sides of the blurred ideological divide.

When both parties get themselves mired in such an intolerable state of affairs, Ron Pauls happen. It's as simple and predictable as that, but no less fascinating. Because they usually take on a common-man, log-cabin, "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" kind of grassroots enthusiasm that's like a behemoth without a head. Support sprawls, and indignation and frustration rule, but usually in only one identifiable cause and direction; in this case, the Iraq war and demands for its end.

(Continued here.)