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Dr. No On Ice Shawn Macomber COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa -- Stores and restaurants nearby remained darkened, shuttered and without power from an ice storm the ended only hours ago. Few cars were on the roads, save for a peculiarly steady line gingerly easing into the still-glassy Mid-America Center parking lot. Inside nearly 500 Iowans gathered to hear a longtime Republican congressman from Texas nicknamed "Dr. No" break most of the conventions of modern campaigning by promising them less largesse from their government not more and spending more time discussing what he wouldn't do as president than what he would. "Thank you for inviting me to your revolution," Ron Paul announced as an extended, raucous standing ovation finally simmered down. The roaring crowd would no doubt surprise members of his own party as well, many of whom -- if the booing and grumbling at Republican debates are any indication -- largely view him as little more than a pestering gadfly. Yet here Paul was, standing before a throng as large as those crowds many of the frontrunners for the Republican nomination draw in similarly sized towns. It is difficult to imagine any candidate save Paul uniting those non-interventionist/anti-war activists who will also cheers calls for dismantling the Federal Reserve with local farmers, lawyers, scruffy college students and earnest young women wearing Prolifers For Ron Paul and Ask Me About Ron Paul buttons, all rising to whoop as one at promises to cut the North American Union off at the pass. The crowd was brought to its hollering feet at promises to get the U.S. out of the UN, out of NAFTA, out of CAFTA, the WTO, NATO, the IMF... There are moments, truth be told, when a Ron Paul rally can make the John Birch Society look like a committee that might as well be weaving welcome baskets for United Nations delegations. On television, Paul frequently comes across as a crotchety neighbor, exasperated that the damn federal government keeps kicking its ball into his yard. This night, however, he is warm and at ease, adopting a conversational tone as he leaned casually on the lectern, even telling jokes not so different from those his colleagues crack. The crowd is attentive and animated. When someone asks how many are new to the caucus process, hundreds of hands shoot up. Not long before Paul took to the dais, I asked him why he thought that after decades of extolling the virtue of these principles -- during ten terms in Congress and a 1988 campaign as the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate, no less -- his message was finding a fervent following now. "I've been presenting these views since the Seventies and they were pretty unknown back then," Paul, who admitted he had initially been "skeptical and reluctant" to make a 2008 run, said. "The most significant change since then has been the education of many, many intellectual leaders in this country in economics and limited government through the study of Austrian economics. The groundwork has been laid...and now comes a time when the failure of the system is becoming very evident. Social Security isn't working. Foreign policy isn't working. Taking care of New Orleans didn't work very well. It's just that government doesn't work very well and people are beginning to realize we can't continue this." The fervor of Paulites is undeniable. Many Paul events and fundraisers -- including the record-breaking November 5 and December 16 hauls -- are dreamed up outside the campaign infrastructure. "I always marvel at what is happening now because at the beginning of the campaign we were told you have to come up with a logo and make everyone do the same thing," Paul said. "The main characteristic of our campaign is that everything is different. It's a lot of creative energy that really shouldn't have surprised any of us since that's exactly what I believe in: Individualism with no centralized planning."
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