Rep. Ron Paul for Prez

[alexamenos]

a fitting eulogy for Dr. Paul's candidacy......from Time Online, no less.

Why Ron Paul Scares the GOP
Thursday, Mar. 20, 2008 By MICHAEL GRUNWALD

There used to be an organization for people who believed in a truly limited government — limited taxes, limited spending, limited interference in individual lives and limited intervention in foreign affairs. That organization was known as the Republican Party. But the only one of those beliefs that still motivates the G.O.P. establishment is limited taxes. In 2008, people who still hold all of them joined the Ron Paul Revolution.

But now the revolution is ebbing. Congressman Paul's new campaign finance report shows that he's raised nearly $35 million, including more than any other Republican candidate in the fourth quarter of 2007, and he's inspired remarkable passion among the kind of diehards who hold up campaign signs on highway overpasses and post irate comments on obscure blogs. But the presidency isn't decided on YouTube or Technorati. Paul didn't win any Republican primaries, and he recently conceded that "victory in the conventional sense is not available."

Of course, nothing in Paul's world is ever done in the conventional sense, so he has refused to drop out of the race and endorse the presumptive G.O.P. nominee, Senator John McCain. Instead he argues that all Republicans should have "the right to vote for someone that stands for traditional Republican principles." And he's got a point.

The real significance of the Paul campaign is not the ubiquitous bumper stickers and lawn signs or the online fund-raising records ($6 million in one day, plus another $4 million, hilariously, on Guy Fawkes Day) but the mirror Paul held up to the modern Republican Party. When his fellow candidates denounced big government, Paul was there to remind them that President Bush and the G.O.P. Congress had shattered spending records and exploded the deficit. When they hailed freedom, Paul asked why they all supported the Patriot Act and other expansions of executive power. And when they called themselves conservatives, Paul asked what was so conservative about sending thousands of young Americans to try to transform the Middle East.

rest of article here --> link