So, I was reading up on Ron Paul the other day. I dunno if I can get behind him, but he certainly is an interesting Presidential candidate. As a Congressman and whatnot he’s voted strongly to his beliefs, and seems to be more or less a decent guy. I don’t like his policies on isolationism (breaking from the UN), on immigration, and a few others. However, he’s fiscally sound by favoring a balanced budget, he likes Constitutional Democracy, he’s for ending the war in Iraq and the war on drugs, and he’s for personal privacy. The plus column has a lot to like there. He’s campaigning as a Republican, but in the past he’s also run as a Libertarian, and he doesn’t run strictly on party lines.

The thing is, is that Ron Paul is an internet candidate! He’s not polling too badly right now and he’s got some cash, and almost all of it came from internet pledge drives. That’s precisely why he’s interesting. See, the sphere of influence of this internet thing has grown pretty quickly – we’re talking the ability to support Presidential candidates! Ron Paul perfectly perched himself as the internet’s candidate – he embraced internet technology, which allowed his supporters who were already using youtube and del.icio.us to be able to promote him and got new faces seriously looking at him (and donating, of course!). At the same time he’s being shut out of debates and not getting much major media consideration, but he’s actually polling well and people are starting to know who he is.

It’s always been my belief that people are willing to support some kind of out there characters for political office if given a good one that promotes the will of the people instead of other interests. Because, let’s face it, public policy and public opinion don’t seem to meet much anymore. That deficiency can actually work to give an honest guy a chance amongst a sea of corporate bland, and if they further capitalize with the social networking structure of the internet, it’s turning out to be a winning combination.

We’ll see how it turns out, I guess. If Ron Paul happens to jump into the top tier of the Republican Party candidates, he’s got a decent chance, more likely as a VP I’m guessing, but that’s still a pretty strong resume builder. That, and I heard some wacky Ron Paul – Dennis Kucinich ticket idea was floating around. That might be a little too wacky…

Update 12/17 – He just keeps going! 6 million in one day, and a blimp! Very interesting…