Opinion: Ron Paul, political loser, now best-selling author

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‘Every election season America is presented with a series of false choices,’ Texas Rep. Ron Paul writes in his new book. ‘And so every four years we are treated to the same tired predictable routine: two candidates with few disagreements on fundamentals pretend that they represent dramatically different philosophies of government.’

If you agree with that summary, you may want to consider joining the Ron Paul Revolutionaries, several hundred thousand highly motivated political partisans, many new to politics, who despite their more than $34 million in donations over the last year have seen their 72-year-old candidate distinctly not catch fire with the broader electorate.

He took 16% of the vote in Pennsylvania’s GOP primary, but Sen. John McCain got 73%, which he doesn’t really need because he already has sufficient delegates to win the party’s nomination in St. Paul come September. Second place or worse is a familiar spot for Paul, a former ob-gyn who’ll be entering his 11th House term next January.

But no longer. At least in terms of his book, Paul is Numero Uno. Paul’s Paulunteers have driven his brand-new book -- ‘The Revolution: A Manifesto’ -- to No. 1 on the amazon.com bestseller list. They’re also packing the reader reviews with five-star evaluations, as they’ve been packing the comment columns of blogs like this for many months.

Paul’s call to conservative, libertarian-like action is even selling better than Oprah’s latest book recommendation. According to Lew Rockwell’s blog, Paul’s book will rocket into seventh spot on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list later this month.

The book is designed to be both a call to arms for his would-be followers and a....

... source of longterm income to help finance the longterm revolution Paul tells his loyalists to expect in turning around the country’s over-governed political system.

Many of Paul’s fans firmly believe that a vast media conspiracy resulted in his name rarely being published in the last year, which they say cost him a straight-ahead chance to beat out McCain, get the U.S. unilaterally out of Iraq, kill the Federal Reserve, the Department of Education and other large chunks of the federal government in the name of Paul’s strict constitutionalism.

Of course, the conspiracy charges do not apply to The Ticket because we’ve covered him ad nauseum; his followers were one of the most interesting stories of the campaign so far in terms of dedication and willingness to sacrifice for a larger goal.

Although Paul didn’t do well in the state elections so far, he hopes his crowd will persevere and bring about the same kind of fundamental change in today’s Republican Party as Barry Goldwater’s disciples did in the 16 years between that Arizona senator’s defeat and the electoral win of Ronald Reagan.

Meanwhile, as The Ticket noted yesterday, Paul’s political partisans have quietly taken over a number of local Republican organizations in a bid to boost his presence at September’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Paul has declined to endorse McCain and his supporters have phrased it with considerably more vehemence in comments left on The Ticket in recent weeks.

Again, the comments area is open.

--Andrew Malcolm