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I've said it before elsewhere and I'll say it again here: Ron Paul makes a much better congressman than he would ever make a president. Embittered and disappointed Paul supporters let their idealism cloud their judgment and became lost in dreams of "reLOVEution." Politics, however, is about the art of the possible. That said, I think Paul did the Republican party and America a service by running. He added to the conversation in a way no other candidate possibly could. So I found myself nodding in agreement often as I read Bruce Ramsey's assessment of Paul's candidacy in the May issue of Liberty magazine. 

Here is Ramsey's central point:

I made a modest claim in the August 2007 Liberty: "What Paul can hope for -- and it would be a very big thing -- is to lead a group willing to identify itself as Republican and opposed to a foreign policy of preemptive war."

He has done something broader than that, maybe more like what (Lew) Rockwell says. He has run an explicitly libertarian campaign within the Republican Party. If a political party is imagined as a tent, Paul has enlarged the tent to include people who were outside it, or maybe were in it and about ready to leave. Now they have a champion. Paul uses classic Republican language to defend a libertarian point of view and to demand that his small-government, constitutionalist, antiwar, and free-market faction be recognized and accommodated as Republicans.

This faction is far from a majority. The idea that most Republicans believe Paul's philosophy, and that they would flock to him if he enunciated it, was always a delusion. But before Paul's campaign, they could ignore it. Now they have to argue with it. When they argue for continuing the occupation of Iraq they can no longer pretend that all their opponents are Democrats. They have opponents in their own tent. It is only a faction, but other factions, such as the foreign policy realists, may be able to ally with it. Having a faction also allows new issues to be put on the table -- in Paul's case not only a withdrawal from Iraq but also the currency issue. It might not be a gold dollar, but even a Republican emphasis on a strong dollar would be a change.

I think Ramsey is basically correct. And although Ramsey is a Paul supporter, he is no fanatic. His assessment is sober and clear-eyed.

Truth is, Paul's constitutionalist, limited government message is one that more Americans need to hear. But Ramsey also understands the limits of such a message coming from a candidate such as Paul. At CPAC, a libertarian friend of mine asserted that if Ron Paul could inch up his support to 10 percent, he could "spark a revolution." I disagreed, for reasons that Ramsey articulates far better in his essay than I did at a D.C. Irish pub two months ago. "He is a radical in a non-radical nation," Ramsey writes. "That is not the kind of candidate who suddenly appeals to great masses of voters who have no ideology and are only vaguely paying attention."

But what I suggested to my libertarian friend, and what I reiterate here, is that Ron Paul could leverage his organization and his supporters to get like-minded libertarian-Republicans elected to state and federal office. Paul's message might not have caught fire nationally, but it isn't crazy to imagine that message winning legislative districts in states like Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Alaska, Nevada and perhaps even parts of California.

Now that would be revolutionary.