http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/23/AR2007112301299.html
When a fierce Republican foe of the wars on drugs and terrorism is able, without really trying, to pull in a record haul of campaign cash on a day dedicated to an attempted regicide, it's clear that a new and potentially transformative force is growing in American politics.
That force is less about Paul than about the movement that has erupted around him -- and the much larger subset of Americans who are increasingly disillusioned with the two major political parties' soft consensus on making government ever more intrusive at all levels, whether it's listening to phone calls without a warrant, imposing fines of half a million dollars for broadcast "obscenities" or jailing grandmothers for buying prescribed marijuana from legal dispensaries.
--snip--
Such positions may not be fully consistent or equally attractive, but Paul's insistence on a constitutionally limited government has won applause from surprising quarters. Singer Barry Manilow donated the maximum $2,300 to his campaign; the hipster singer-songwriter John Mayer was videotaped yelling "Ron Paul knows the Constitution!" and 67,000 people have signed up for Paul-related Meet Up pages on the Internet. On ABC's "This Week" recently, George Will half-jokingly cautioned his fellow pundits, "Don't forget my man Ron Paul" in the New Hampshire primary. Fellow panelist Jake Tapper seconded the emotion, saying, "He really is the one true straight talker in this race."
Yet Paul's success has mostly left the mainstream media and pundits flustered, if not openly hostile. The Associated Press recently treated the Paul phenomenon like an alien life form: "The Texas libertarian's rise in the polls and in fundraising proves that a small but passionate number of Americans can be drawn to an advocate of unorthodox proposals." Republican pollster Frank Luntz has denounced Paul's supporters as "the equivalent of crabgrass . . . not the grass you want, and it spreads faster than the real stuff." And conservative syndicated columnist Mona Charen said out loud what many campaign reporters have no doubt been thinking all along: "He might make a dandy new leader for the Branch Davidians."
When conservatives feel comfortable mocking the victims gunned down by Clinton-era attorney general Janet Reno's FBI in Waco, Tex., in 1993,
it suggests that a complacent and increasingly authoritarian establishment feels threatened.