Ron Paul in the main stream?

Houston Chronicle:

Ron Paul is a white-haired, soft-voiced, 74-year-old doctor who has twice failed in presidential campaigns and is frequently derided by his Republican colleagues as an ideologue from the party's libertarian fringe.

No one would have been surprised if the Lake Jackson congressman had slipped off the political radar after his 2008 quixotic bid for the presidency, his ambitions for higher office thwarted.

But Paul has refused to go out to the political pasture to live in comfortable irrelevance. As odd as it may seem, he has become one of the most influential Republicans in a capital city dominated by liberal Democrats.

The subject that has brought him to prominence is the same issue that subjected him to ridicule from establishment Republicans for years: his long-standing opposition to the nation's monetary system and the Federal Reserve Board that prints money and controls its supply.

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Paul's proposal to audit the Federal Reserve — first introduced by the Texas congressman more than 20 years ago — recently sailed through the House Financial Services Committee.

His bill has an astonishing 317 co-sponsors in the House, three-quarters of the chamber's members.

In the Senate, where Paul asked Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont socialist, to introduce a similar bill, the measure already has 30 co-sponsors.

And while he was once ignored by his political antagonists at the Federal Reserve, Paul is now engaged in a very public policy debate with Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, who has criticized the Texan's legislation in speeches, interviews and an op-ed last month in the Washington Post. Asked about Paul's proposal, the chairman declared it would be “bad for markets, bad for the Fed's credibility, bad for inflation expectations and bad for the dollar.”

But not bad for Paul. The lawmaker has been booked solid with media interviews and college speeches; indeed, the Don Quixote of congressional Republicans has had more success in 2009 than any time in his three-decade legislative career.

“I never had so many calls as I had last week,” Paul said.

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Paul has a core constituency that is very passionate and his Presidential run broadened that constituency to many across the country, He also seems to have politically prospered from the economic decline and the Fed's roll in fighting that decline. I suspect his problem with this bill may come from the White House. It is unlikely that the Senate could override a veto.