Ron Paul. The mere utter­ance of his name elic­its strong responses in so many peo­ple. It makes sense, when you think about it. This is a man whose polit­i­cal prin­ci­ples boil down to the eas­ily under­stood pre­cepts of clas­si­cal lib­er­tar­i­an­ism. Because it’s eas­ily under­stood, peo­ple can eas­ily dis­cern whether or not they share his belief. Those who do share it will almost uni­ver­sally share it in a deep, vis­ceral way. Sim­i­larly, those who do not share it will have a deep, vis­ceral dis­like of it, and thus of him.

Ronald Earnest “Ron” Paul is an obstetrics/​gynecology physi­cian who became a politi­cian when he heard that the United States was final­iz­ing its sev­er­ance from the gold stan­dard. The end of the Bret­ton Woods sys­tem so offended his Aus­trian School sen­si­bil­i­ties that he moved to pol­i­tics to affect future fis­cal policy.

Though he lost an elec­tion in 1974 in the 22nd Con­gres­sional Dis­trict in Texas, he was sub­se­quently elected to the seat in the April 1976 spe­cial elec­tion, when the incum­bent, Robert R. Casey, was tapped by Ger­ald Ford to head the Fed­eral Mar­itime Com­mis­sion. He held the seat for a mere half-​​year before being defeated by Demo­c­rat Robert Gam­mage in a photo-​​finish elec­tion. Unde­terred, he ran again in 1978 and beat Gam­mage to retake the seat.

He ran for the United States Sen­ate in 1984, lost to Phil Gramm in the pri­mary, and returned to med­i­cine. His seat was taken by an exter­mi­na­tor who would later become famous, and ulti­mately infa­mous: Tom DeLay.

Ron Paul, in a 1988 interview

Four years later, Paul briefly reen­tered pol­i­tics as the Lib­er­tar­ian Party Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. His stated goal was not to become Pres­i­dent, but rather to spread the gospel of lib­er­tar­i­an­ism. In the gen­eral elec­tion, he gar­nered more votes than any other third-​​party can­di­date, though his 0.5% show­ing is well below the mar­gin of error for the elec­tion tech­nol­ogy of the time.

He sub­se­quently stayed out of polit­i­cal elec­tions for eight years. The Gin­grich takeover of Con­gress led Paul to run for office rep­re­sent­ing Texas Con­gres­sional Dis­trict 14, believ­ing that the pop­u­lar sup­port for the Con­tract with Amer­ica was a sign that the pub­lic was ready to sup­port more lib­er­tar­ian pol­icy. He didn’t count on being opposed by the Repub­li­can Party estab­lish­ment, whose strat­egy in the South, includ­ing Texas, involved con­vert­ing Dixiecrat-​​style Democ­rats to Repub­li­cans. In TX-​​14, that meant sup­port­ing Democrat-​​turned-​​Republican Greg Laugh­lin. Despite hav­ing to fight against the party’s lead­er­ship, Ron Paul defeated Laugh­lin in the pri­mary, and then went on to take the seat in a close gen­eral elec­tion. He has com­fort­ably retained the seat ever since.

Paul has built a rep­u­ta­tion of sup­port­ing prin­ci­ples over pol­i­tics, focus­ing his atten­tion on dri­ving party pol­icy by a com­bi­na­tion of Aus­trian School eco­nomic poli­cies and clas­si­cal lib­er­tar­i­an­ism. The for­mer led him to blame the with­drawal from Bret­ton Woods for the high infla­tion rates in the 1970s (he has sim­i­lar con­cerns about infla­tion today). The lat­ter has led him to sup­port drug legal­iza­tion*, in oppo­si­tion to the national party platform.

He has long sup­ported term limits…at least in the­ory. His jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for con­tin­u­ing to run for reëlec­tion is that term lim­its are mean­ing­ful only if they apply to every­one equally. By this logic, self-​​imposed term lim­its only serve to remove term limit sup­port­ers from Con­gress. Whether or not this is a form of ratio­nal­iza­tion is a mat­ter of debate. Unsur­pris­ingly, Paul’s sup­port­ers con­sider it a per­fectly legit­i­mate justification.

He has repeat­edly sup­ported decreas­ing Con­gres­sional pay, and is one of only two mem­bers of Con­gress who have pledged to refuse to col­lect his gov­ern­ment pension.

Ron Paul is a pro­lific and Quixotic bill spon­sor, reg­u­larly intro­duc­ing leg­is­la­tion to enact term lim­its, abol­ish the income tax, abol­ish the Fed­eral Reserve, defund some gov­ern­ment agency, or imple­ment some other lib­er­tar­ian sort of pol­icy. Few have made it out of com­mit­tee, let alone been passed into law. This is a sign that he intends to affect change not by mak­ing it hap­pen directly, but rather by get­ting oth­ers to talk about it, think about it, and even­tu­ally come around to his way of thinking.

This is the crux of what Ron Paul means as a can­di­date for Pres­i­dent. In the Repub­li­can pri­mary polls, he has con­sis­tently shown sup­port in the 7–8% range. And yet, he per­forms much bet­ter in straw poll after straw poll. What accounts for this?

Sim­ply put, Ron Paul is an arti­san candidate.

A sign of an arti­san candidate

Imag­ine for a moment that we were talk­ing about the mar­ket for cheese. Beecher’s Cheese is con­sid­ered to be among the best ched­dars in the world. The mac­a­roni and cheese made from their ched­dar is one of Oprah’s Favorite Things. Yet Beecher’s will never have any­where near the ched­dar mar­ket share of Kraft. Any­one who really knows cheese knows Kraft shouldn’t even be spo­ken in the same sen­tence as Beecher’s, and cheese enthu­si­asts will come out in droves to spread that mes­sage. But in the daily dairy war at the super­mar­ket, Kraft is the go-​​to brand.

So it is with elec­tions for Pres­i­dent. The win­ning can­di­date has to have the generic national appeal of Kraft, even at the expense of being a closer match for those “in the know” who pre­fer arti­san can­di­dates. The arti­san can­di­date will have extra­or­di­nar­ily enthu­si­as­tic sup­port from a small seg­ment of the mar­ket, while the major brand can­di­date will typ­i­cally have luke­warm sup­port from the broad mar­ket. This elec­tion cycle, Mitt Rom­ney is Kraft, and Ron Paul is Beecher’s.

For Ron Paul sup­port­ers, there is good news in the long run. Ben & Jerry’s was an arti­san ice cream famous for nov­elty fla­vors, and even­tu­ally became a minor national player on its own. But, more­over, the inter­est in arti­san ice cream led the major national brands to cre­ate more nov­elty fla­vors of their own. In a very real sense, Paul isn’t run­ning for Pres­i­dent. He’s run­ning to change the long-​​term plat­form of the Repub­li­can Party, from an increas­ingly uneasy part­ner­ship between big busi­ness and reli­gious social con­ser­v­a­tives, to one of true fis­cal dis­ci­pline with a light hand on social issues.

In that respect, even as he is los­ing the race for the nom­i­na­tion, Ron Paul is winning.

*Note: in an ear­lier ver­sion of this arti­cle, I erro­neously stated that Ron Paul is in favor of legal abor­tion. In fact, he is adamantly opposed to it. I regret the error.

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