Here’s a pretty sympathetic if not uncritical profile of Ron Paul in the New York Times Magazine by Christopher Caldwell.
One of the things I took away from this piece is that Paul’s ability to attract a broad spectrum of support from people who are alienated from the political status quo is the flip side of his tendency to attract people from the political fringes (money cranks, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, etc.).
Still, I’ll give him this: on some really important stuff where all the “sensible” and “serious” people went badly wrong (the Iraq war, civil liberties in the post-9/11 national security state) Paul got it right. Sometimes it pays to stand outside the bipartisan consensus.
A Thinking Reed 
“on some really important stuff where all the “sensible” and “serious” people went badly wrong (the Iraq war, civil liberties in the post-9/11 national security state) Paul got it right. Sometimes it pays to stand outside the bipartisan consensus.”
The way I might put it is “Even a broken clock is right twice a day”.