Ron Paul: The outsider

The Texas libertarian may not win the GOP's 2012 presidential nomination, but his views have helped reshape the party

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has migrated from fringe libertarian to mainstream Republican as more people heed his warnings of the dangers of debt and excessive spending.
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

How influential is Ron Paul?

For more than three decades, Paul’s brand of uncompromising libertarianism left him on the fringes of the Republican Party. Only three of the 416 bills he has sponsored in Congress since 1997 even made it out of committee—and two of those were defeated. But events of the last three years—including the meltdown of the financial sector, massive government bailouts of private industry, and an exploding federal deficit—have turned his warnings on the dangers of debt and excessive spending into mainstream Republican thought. The Tea Party has embraced Paul’s belief that the best government is the least government, and that taxes are an intrusion on individual liberty. “Time has come around to where the people are agreeing with much of what I’ve been saying for 30 years,” Paul said in May, when he announced his third campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. “The time is right.”

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