The Prophet

How Ron Paul became one of the most influential voices in Republican politics

Photograph by Marco Grob for TIME

Twilight descends in new Hampshire as an old man climbs onto his soapbox. LIBERTY: TOO BIG TO FAIL reads a banner hanging in the jam-packed tent. He is hardly a commanding figure, but a thousand people chant his name and lean in to listen, ready to follow, as Ron Paul delivers his genre-bending stump speech. There are no focus-grouped slogans, no empty calories: Paul's talk is more like a high-fiber graduate seminar on economic theory, forgotten history and the nooks and crannies of the U.S. Constitution. "The Federal Reserve system and all their members have been counterfeiters for a long time,"...

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