heck knows? everybody seems to think that ron paul is somehow too out there, and surely enough, some of the things that he said about iran and, you know, iran being justified in getting a nuclear weapon and, you know, a lot of the other things that ron paul has said would seem to put him out of the mainstream of american politics, but we're at such a weird point in the republican party's history, kind of collective nervous breakdown here, where they're kind of at the end of an era. they don't know quite what's next. the reagan era is over. george bush and the bush father and son kind of followed on ronald reagan. now the republican party is split in a million ways. they don't know where to go. ron paul represents a consistent, if minority, part of the republican party, which is the strict libertarian view. anti-government, anti-defense spending, no foreign aid, no foreign entanglements, no federal reserve, you name it. and for 15% to 20% of the hard-core republican electorate, that's where they're at.