The Guy With Two First Names

Ron Paul has, of course, no chance of being our next President. Still, it's fun to have guys like him around to keep the debates interesting.

Some people are making too big a deal of his poll numbers. For example, here's a comment I found on The Volokh Conspiracy:

I wish you paid more attention to his central role in our revival as a movement. Can you imagine that Newsweek, Time, New York Times, etc. would have written so many positive and serious articles about the rise of libertarianism without Paul? Paul is now getting 8 percent in New Hampshire. Compare that with Ed Clark’s 1 percent.

I think this misses the point. Ron Paul is getting higher numbers than any Libertarian before him because he's not running as a Libertarian, but a Republican. There's always been a decent number of Repubs and Dems with a libertarian streak, so it's normal they'd respond to someone in the big parties representing them. If Paul ran as an L and not an R, I doubt he'd be getting any more attention, or votes, than Ed Clark did.