Zorn writes, "I doubt very much Paul would withstand the level of scrutiny and the attack ads from opponents that seems likely to derail the Cain campaign anon. I simply can't see a social libertarian galvanizing Iowa's conservative base. Legalize heroin and prostitution? Pull all aid to Israel? I just don't see it." When you are living with chronic 9% unemployment, increasing debt obligations and the forward demoralizing prospect of permanent immiseration, cutting a cheque to Israel or anybody else will be not be palatable. Nobody's going to give a damn about prostitution, drugs, and foreign aid when livelihoods are at stake. And, as price inflation continues to erode the individual's purchasing power (and savings) as the FED continues to buy out the long end of the yield curve to pay for the Treasury's $16T debt servicing obligations, don't expect social conservatism to be utmost on the minds of middle class Americans, or that overseas capital will have any incentive whatsoever to repatriate itself. Paul's cult, as you like to call them, are everyday ordinary people recognizing that simply changing the face at the top, while holding all else equal, will accomplish nothing in changing their "lot". If by extreme, you mean that Paul's positions are not necessary or desirable, then, perhaps I might agree with you. However, IMO a wholesale movement away from the status quo is precisely what is needed in order to effect any meaningful economic resolve to the multitude of problems that if not immediately addressed may become irreversible. To that end, I suppose Paul's positions are extreme relative to the continued dogmatic obedience to what has essentially become perverted capitalism. Government has never been altruistic, because there has never been any accountability for it, so, why do we continue to think it ever will be? Accordingly, I see Paul's cult as logically arriving at the idea of wanting to take charge of their own lives instead of being beholden to economic chaos and crisis that is inevitably created by the same government that promises everybody, everything, all the time. What is so extreme about that observation? While you and Vespa pontificate on the likely winning candidate of the GOP, I realize that none of that will actually materialize, given the context in which most Americans find themselves in. Put simply, none of that will matter! And in the same way, the issues of whether prostitution, pot, or abortion are legalized, these too won't much matter to Iowa's conservative base when it's busy just trying to find the means to pay for its basic necessities. So, when Paul's cult goes ballistic on people, it is because they have gotten past the trivialities of "ookiness" and recognized that there is significantly more at stake. They are beyond the quagmire of the immaterial and irrelevant because none of that, whether there is resolve to those issues or not, does not change their economic reality.