Back in July, Christopher Caldwell penned this profile of Ron Paul for the New York Times Magazine. Here's Caldwell's thesis:
Paul represents a different Republican Party from the one that Iraq, deficits and corruption have soured the country on. In late June, despite a life of antitax agitation and churchgoing, he was excluded from a Republican forum sponsored by Iowa antitax and Christian groups. His school of Republicanism, which had its last serious national airing in the Goldwater campaign of 1964, stands for a certain idea of the Constitution - the idea that much of the power asserted by modern presidents has been usurped from Congress, and that much of the power asserted by Congress has been usurped from the states. Though Paul acknowledges flaws in both the Constitution (it included slavery) and the Bill of Rights (it doesn't go far enough), he still thinks a comprehensive array of positions can be drawn from them: Against gun control. For the sovereignty of states. And against foreign-policy adventures. Paul was the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate in 1988. But his is a less exuberant libertarianism than you find, say, in the pages of Reason magazine. Over the years, this vision has won most favor from those convinced the country is going to hell in a handbasket. The attention Paul has captured tells us a lot about the prevalence of such pessimism today, about the instability of partisan allegiances and about the seldom-avowed common ground between the hard right and the hard left. His message draws on the noblest traditions of American decency and patriotism; it also draws on what the historian Richard Hofstadter called the paranoid style in American politics.
Slowly, people are beginning to investigate the import and potential consequences of Ron Paul's presidential candidacy. Their inquiries are all worth checking out. For example, you can find Patrick Ruffini's examination of Paul's donors here. According to Ruffini, Paul draws his support mainly from the West, and his donors are overwhelmingly male. Meanwhile, Thomas B. Edsall looks at how, much to Paul's consternation, white nationalist groups are supporting the Texas congressman's candidacy. This Edsall post also gives me the opportunity to recommend Carol M. Swain's The New White Nationalism in America, one of the most interesting, and unusual, books I've read recently. As Caldwell suggests, there is a lot that is principled and a lot that is debased in American politics. For confirmation of this, one doesn't need to look any further than the Ron Paul phenomenon.