Ron Paul is nuttier than squirrel shit. So are many -- but certainly not all -- of his supporters.

I live in Texas in a congressional district adjacent to his. I do not support candidates just because they hail from the same state I do. I care about ideas more than geography.

I also have friends who worked in Paul's failed presidential campaign in 1988 so I have another frame of reference of the man and his beliefs. It's interesting to note that not one of them is working in his presidential campaign in 2008.

All this excitement around his campaign -- the overwhelming 3-5% of support in GOP primaries -- has raised some eyebrows in his district. What some of you may not know is he wasn't a shoe-in when he ran for Congress after his hiatus from public service even though it's a mostly rural and pro-GOP district. I dare say the only reason he won that district is because he had an R next to his name on the ballot -- he couldn't win it with either a D or L next to his name. There hasn't been a cult following within his district the way there's been during the presidential race.

He's had well-financed Democrat opposition, but this year he'll face his strongest opponent yet in the GOP primary. The last time I saw a poll, Paul was trailing in his re-election bid. Paul has been out of district campaigning in a presidential race he has zero chance of winning and voters in the Texas 14th Congressional District now know his views on more issues because of the spotlight he's been in during the presidential primaries. Those views may have pockets of acceptance and even appeal in some places, but not back home. It's likely he's served his last term representing that district.

I know what some of you will ask: "But Vladi, aren't you libertarian?"

Yes, I sure am. I'm not convinced Paul is soundly libertarian. Contrarian? Yes, absolutely that. But as contrarian as libertarianism is in this day and age, contrarianism is not the same as libertarianism.

I'm also not a crackpot and would prefer we not have one for president. It's been bad enough with people questioning the intelligence of the current president, it would be something worse of there were questions about the sanity of the next one.

As for Paul's pet issues, I don't believe the gold standard represents sound fiscal policy. If anything, I think it represents a conflict of interests. Like many other gold advocates, Ron Paul has been involved in the sale of speculative rare gold coins via his investment newsletters. These people prey on others via scaremongering about pending calamity. They did this for Y2K -- scared, buy gold coins! They did this for the great depression of 1988 -- scared, buy gold coins! You'd think people would wisen up to the same "sky is falling" bullshit and the identical solution to it all in the form of rare gold coins that are at best a speculative investment. But the commissions are great whether the sky falls or not.

I also don't believe in or condone the spreading of disinformation and misinformation in the form of conspiracy theories. Paul has done this himself and has aligned himself with Alex Jones and that paranoid wacko crowd. People who cannot come to grips with reality and need grand multi-century plots to explain history are the last ones I care to either enable with power or entrust with a nuclear arsenal. I'm even less willing to trust anyone who surrounds himself with people who think 9/11 was an inside job -- or worse, actually believes it himself.

I also refuse to condone racism masquerading as libertarianism. Yes, racism, the solution for which is (you guessed it) rare gold coins.

In short, Ron Paul is not my ideal of libertarianism or of anything a sane, rational human being can support. I know there probably are sane, rational human beings who DO support him, I just can't figure out why.

How do I see him? Several ways. The real photo shows the kind of Ron Paul my friends came to know in the 1988 race -- overly excitable, wild-eyed. I'll leave it there. I see him that way.

I see him, too, the way the polls have -- as an irrelevant "invisible man."


His supporters need to ask why he's still campaigning in a race he can't win while ignoring his hotly contested district race. Carlos Mencia can sum it up in three words: "Dee dee dee."

He's not making any difference.