Ron Paul: 2012 witnessing the rise of a guru to the downwardly mobile.

WASHINGTON—Radical. Dangerous. Crazy. Unworthy of mainstream attention. Just too out there. And don’t forget about all those old racist newsletters.

That was the conventional Republican playbook on Ron Paul in December, when the eccentric 76-year-old Texas libertarian began showing the first real signs of traction in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

Plenty of conservatives could get their head around Paul’s doomsday pledge to drastically shrink the federal government. But his vow to completely upend American foreign policy, ending its role as “the world’s police officer” for being neither helpful nor affordable, whoa.

Add in Paul’s unbending opposition to the freedom-squelching Patriot Act and the U.S. war on drugs, all in the name of individual liberty, and the Republican establishment was in eye-rolling overdrive, with American conservative media outlets dutifully following suit.

No worries, Fox News reassured its viewers. If Ron Paul won Iowa, the Iowa caucuses would be meaningless. If Mitt Romney won, well, that’s different.

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