Weigel

I've confirmed that Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex., will announce his presidential exploratory committee tomorrow in Des Moines. At the same time, according to a source close to Paul, he will announced his Iowa leadership team, which will include three of the 19 members of the Iowa Republican Party's state central committee.

This will be Paul's third presidential bid, and his second as a Republican candidate. When I talked to Gary Johnson about his own presidential bid (when was the last time there were two libertarian candidates in a GOP presidential race?), he dismissed the idea that Paul would stop him from getting momentum, and said he'd studied Paul's 2008 campaign to learn how to improve on it. But Paul's done that, too. He ran a fairly low-key campaign in 2008 (the enthusiasm of his crowds besides), hitting the trail far less than the frontrunning candidates. There were multiple reasons for that, and one of them was Paul's reluctance to miss any votes in Congress. Congress, under GOP rule, has a somewhat lighter schedule now.

Here's video of Paul, 28 years ago, debating a Fed governor on fiat money. Go ahead and try to find a more consistent candidate.