Libertarians for Ron Paul

Mr. Conservative 2.0

“Last night Rep. Ron Paul made a wistful kind of trip to the Clarendon neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia for a speech to the Robert Taft Club, a paleoconservative salon launched in 2006. Planning began long before news broke of Paul’s $5.1 million summer fundraising haul. That news turned a small event into a monster lecture, around 300 people lining up and around stairs to get into a small, oak-panelled room at a chop house. Journalists from ABC News and C-Span set up cameras as print journalists milled around.”

“Paul arrived a bit after 8 p.m., agog at the crowd. “I asked how many people belonged to this club,” he said, “and they said ‘oh, about 35 people.’ I’m used to speaking for… little groups of 35 people,” he said.”

“I saw Paul speak to a smaller, younger crowd of conservatives at CPAC six months back and his speaking style’s changed since then, if only slightly. He still wanted to barrel through a 30-minute address but was ready to pause and soak it in when people cheered at statements like “We need to go back to Revolutionary times and pick up the pieces!” Paul had a campaign to brag about, and re-enacted the moment from a Michigan rally (of 2000 people on the State campus) when he started talking abut fiat money and “some people started burning Federal Reserve notes!” He reared back his head and laughed. “Sometimes people will hand me a Fed note to sign and I ask them: ‘Is this going to increase the value or is it going to drive it down?’”

Dave Weigel’s full report @ http://www.reason.com/blog/show/122950.html