Brian Doherty on the Ron Paul Moment

Ron Paul does not have just voters; he has activists. Many observers have underestimated Paul's electoral ceiling precisely because of this energetically loyal base, arguing that the folks on street corners waving homemade Paul signs or flooding every online poll that includes the name Paul constitute all his potential voters. But as Senior Editor Brian Doherty observes in the cover story from our April 2012 issue, the 83,000 people who voted for Paul in Iowa and New Hampshire would not exactly all fit in Mom's basement. The movement now dwarfs the already impressive Ron Paul rEVOLution of 2008. America hasn't seen such a youthful, driven, hopeful, radical youth cadre driving a political campaign since, well, Barack Obama in 2008.