Aides to Ron Paul are concerned their candidate’s once radical-sounding ideas for a revolutionary makeover of the federal government and the U.S. economy are being eclipsed in tone and rebelliousness by the lunatic rantings of Mr. Paul’s opponents in the GOP presidential primary.
“Every day that Gingrich talks about settling on the moon or Romney talks about fixing the problems of the middle class or Rick Santorum talks about almost anything is a day when Ron Paul’s ideas of going to a gold-based currency, ending the Fed, and prophesying our imminent economic collapse don’t seem all that crazy — and that’s hurting us,” said one Paul campaign worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because under the Paul campaign aegis he enjoys every freedom imaginable except the liberty to speak to the media.
Aides to Mr. Paul say they never envisioned the day when their candidate’s views would be rendered too uncontroversial by loose-lipped claims and counterclaims made by the party frontrunners. But some advisors to the libertarian-leaning candidate are now urging Mr. Paul to infuse his long-held views with references to Satan to help make them more understandable to the electorate.
“We’re not asking him to change any of his positions, we just want him to instill the presentation with a more demoniac narrative to give it a more extreme feel,” said one campaign worker.
In the past, supporters and detractors of Mr. Paul have marveled at his consistency since entering politics in 1974, citing it as evidence of either a type of eccentric levelheadedness or a brand of single-minded lunacy. No one considered that it would one day make the congressman uninteresting.
But as the Republican primary careers from one implausible frontrunner to the next, Mr. Paul’s steady anti-establishment ideas are suddenly contrasting unfavorably with some of the rivals he is trailing in the Republican primaries, including Mitt Romney, whose ideological flip-flopping has helped keep the former Massachusetts governor in the mix and made it more difficult for the others to define him.
After a solid third-place showing in Nevada and a display of ardent grass-roots support, the 76-year-old Mr. Paul had high hopes that his campaign would command greater attention for its inimitable mix of doom-saying and homespun humor.
It was still looking good for Mr. Paul and his unwavering pledge to continue his drive to accumulate delegates when he secured a second-place finish behind Mr. Santorum in Minnesota's caucus.
“But then Santorum began talking about contraception and [President] Obama’s theology and we were all back on the moon again with Gingrich — but I guess without Newt this time,” said the aide.
All at once, Mr. Paul’s promise to abolish the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Homeland Security seemed tame and unrevolutionary.
Mr. Paul’s colleagues say the candidate hasn’t given up his lifelong quest “to find the plain truth of things,” even if that quest for fact and honesty has placed him squarely outside the party’s fringe thinking.
Mr. Paul’s friends say the candidate is going through “an adjustment period.” They say it hasn’t been easy for Mr. Paul to assume the voice of moderation as Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Romney, and Mr. Santorum outdo one another in staking out extreme positions.
These days the congressman from Texas, who has spent much of his adult life warning of threats to personal freedom, has taken to locking himself in his room after campaign stops, watching the clever and biting political ads produced on his behalf and poring over “The Road to Serfdom” by Friedrich Hayek, looking, his friends say, for something he may have missed during earlier readings of the work that introduced Mr. Paul to Austrian economics and its good-and-evil choice between laissez-faire capitalism and a government-run economy destined for disaster.
While concerned that Mr. Paul seems to have recently slipped into “a bunker mentality,” his friends and colleagues remain confident that when the dust settles, it will be their candidate who emerges as the only one with truly crazy ideas.