But Paul's popularity can't necessarily be explained by a previously undetected craving for gold-standard debates on college campuses. His message, even if packaged in obscure economic lectures, is that there is something very corrupt, very Halliburton-Blackwatery going on with our military-industrial complex, and that can attract some pretty weird followers. At the Iowa State event, a student stood outside in a tricornered hat and Revolutionary War–era suit, ringing a bell. Representative Tom Tancredo, another long-shot GOP candidate, tells me that after a debate in New Hampshire, one of his staffers walked up to a guy in a shark costume and asked him if he was a Ron Paul supporter. "No. They're all nuts," replied the shark. "I'm just a guy in a shark suit." There is a subset of Paul supporters who believe 9/11 was an inside job by the U.S. government. And there are anarchists as well: they've picked Nov. 5, Guy Fawkes Day, for a fund-raising drive.
"His supporters are the equivalent of crabgrass," says GOP consultant Frank Luntz. "It's not the grass you want, and it spreads faster than the real stuff. They just like him because he's the most anti-Establishment of all the candidates, the most likely to look at the camera during the debates and say, 'Hey, Washington, f____ you.'"...
And that is a bad thing?
Imagine getting college students excited about politics and this is suppose to be a negative part of his campaign?