Paul prods GOP back to its roots

The News Virginian / News Virginian
Published: November 27, 2007

Much of 2007 has served as a sort of presidential spring training, with even the weakest of contenders — like, say, the Washington Nationals or Baltimore Orioles — fancying a run deep into fall. For baseball's perennial pretenders, hope frequently is dashed by the time summer arrives. For some presidential aspirants, the illusions are fading right about now, with the Iowa caucus just over a month away.

One might have presumed that reality would have tapped Republican Ron Paul on the shoulder long ago and pointed him in the general direction of the door. The congressman from Texas looks about as presidential as your local produce man. His dark suits hang over his narrow shoulders like a feed sack, his wispy, gray hair appears never to have been touched by a stylist's hand and his words reflect the voice in which they're spoken, rough, gravely and decidedly to the point.

Poll numbers say he should just go away, and many big-name conservatives wish he would. Just 5 percent of likely Republican voters say they support Paul. But still there he is, the proverbial dark horse who looks more like the old gray mare, lingering almost in spite of himself. The 70-year-old boasts an Internet following that Howard Dean would envy. More important, he is reeling in money — on Nov. 5, he raised $4.3 million, a one-day GOP record.

That Paul could somehow inch his way into the race is unfathomable. The Paul phenomenon is more intriguing than it is evidence of a viable candidacy. But it is not moot. Paul's tireless — and to some, tiresome — advocacy of limited government is resonating with people on both sides of America's ideological divide. The onetime Libertarian and 10-time GOP representative has opposed war in Iraq from the beginning, wants to abolish the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Service and believes that some federal control should be shifted to states.

The approach is neither so novel nor radical as it sounds. The idea of restrained federal government is fundamental to true conservatism. And while liberals have a gardener's affinity for growing things when it comes to government, they are uncomfortable with Washington's reach extending to a growing number of military bases abroad and into private lives at home. For people of all political persuasions, a key component of the American dream is being left alone by government to pursue it.

Paul grasps this, as Republican icon Ronald Reagan and many other party stalwarts did before him. The Grand Old Party's drift into big spending, nation building and Big Brother bureaucracy has created a vacuum that Paul's thinking seems to fill.

It likely will not be enough to stretch Paul's candidacy far beyond Super Tuesday, if he makes it that far. But his following just might get the attention of a conservative movement that has lost its way. And if political power brokers find religion on the subject of limited government, we all will be winners no matter how far back Paul finishes in the presidential standings.