Sing a Song of Ron Paul

...He sings with a pleasing tomcat rasp, and when reaching for the bigger notes, sounds like he should be twinning harmonies with The Band’s Levon Helm...

...As for this journalist, I’ll eliminate Paultard paranoia by putting my cards on the table: By all accounts, Ron Paul is decent, principled, smart, and honest (John McCain once said he was “the most honest man in Congress...

...There’s Mark Thornton, an economist with the Ludwig von Mises Institute—Paul, who wishes to return to the gold standard, is a devotee of the Austrian School of economics—who’s tailored the Beatles’s “Revolution” into “The Ron Paul Revolution...

...While I don’t fully agree with him, I enjoy his underdog tenacity and his unslick tetchiness...

...And suggesting all his musical supporters are would be unfair—about as unfair as the government blowing the levees in New Orleans, and imploding the World Trade Center so that Dick Cheney and his Halliburton cronies could get free ExxonMobil gas cards...

...The Paul family has preordered 50 copies...

...Beaumarchais expired in 1799, well before the advent of today’s endless presidential campaigns...

...He now plays Sinatra not only in real life, but in Second Life, the online fantasy world, where his avatar performs three nights a week in a virtual Playboy Club...

...All this is to say, I like Ron Paul...

...As with Dean, the doctor theme is rampant throughout the songbook, though few want to recognize that Paul was actually an OB/GYN as it’s rather hard to rhyme anything with adnexal torsion or Fallopian tube...

...Fleming feels that limited government is underrepresented in rock and folk music...

...In actuality, only about 70 percent of Paulheads are conspiracy nuts...

...I am not guilty by association,” he emails of the grab bag of other Paul supporters...

...I’m not really sure what their Ron Paul song says...

...Dore explains that a long shot like Paul appeals to writers and artists, who are dreamers by nature...

...Paul disciples seem to like casually dropping “Rothbardian”—referring to libertarian economist Murray Rothbard—with no further explanation...

...A YouTube satirist named Pudgenet, who himself wrote a song called “You Forgot Ron Paul!,” even posted an outtakes reel in which he pinches Johnny Cash’s “Sam Hall,” singing: My name it is Ron Paul And I hate you one and all I hate you one and all Damn your eyes...

...It’s a nice notion, but maybe the mounting appeal of Paul, a politician beloved by those who hate politicians, can be explained in more prosaic terms, articulated by a YouTube songwriter named Sporty4Harvey: So here’s why I’m voting for Dr...

...He’s been playing music since he was 6 years old, and came of age in the sixties...

...If there is a Woody Guthrie of the Ronulan movement, he has to be Steve Dore, a San Jose-based blues musician and boogie-woogie piano enthusiast...

...I know it’s crazy,” he apologizes, “I shouldn’t have mentioned it...

...Faulting RP (or me) for some of his non-sanctioned supporters is like blaming Jodie Foster for the shooting of Ronald Reagan...

...Quoting Oscar Wilde, he says, “A dreamer is one who can only fi nd his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world...

...Ron Paul I believe he’s the best of all The candidates we have seen Not that it’s been any voters dream You gotta admit the fi eld is, uh, pretty lean...

...some are charming eccentrics...

...Then there’s a group called Griffenz, whose “Money Bombs” is an anthem for the upcoming “Tea Party” in which Paul supporters are striving to achieve a record $10 million donation day...

...Dore would’ve given them freebies, “but they believe people should be paid for their labor...

...But his heedless naivet...

...Coupled with the fact that Paul holds the one-day record for online fundraising ($4.2 million) and that money is pouring in from all sorts of unpredicted sectors (more active-duty military have given to Paul than to any other candidate), it’s small wonder Paul’s followers insist that they are underrepresented by conventional polling...

...In keeping with Paulian philosophy on currency, Dore will accept silver as payment, currently going for $14 an ounce...

...But the last two cycles, there’s been a slight return to original compositions...

...His laissez-faire libertarianism and old-style limited-government conservatism make me nostalgic for a more innocent time—let’s call it “1993”—when Republicans could talk about pruning the long branches of government without laugh-snorting Diet Coke from their nostrils...

...Perhaps the most talented Paul songwriter I’ve encountered is the Pittsburgh folkie named Daryl Fleming, of Daryl Fleming and the Public Domain...

...Despite their prodigious output, however, Deaniacs were positively slothful compared with those called everything from Paulheads to Paultards to Ronulans—the supporters of Ron Paul...

...Amended lyrics: It’s your right to choose It’s the American Way The Constitutional heart of it Ron Paul, Ron Paul...

...Here, if everything that was not worth saying were sung, the political arena would sound like the high school cafeteria in Fame—one couldn’t get down a sporkful of chipped beef without a musical number breaking out...

...And this page represents just a tiny fraction of the original Paul songs available on YouTube...

...Ever since, the music won’t stop fl owing...

...He’s a far cry from dancing pizzas and seems a bit self-conscious about the company he’s keeping...

...Griffenz boasts: Yo we’re having a tea party on December 16th Ron Paul taught us all revolution hits deep . . . If you wanna holla at us Hit up the Daily Paul . . . It’s our blog war weapon Boston tea party revolution keeps on steppin Note to white political rappers: Name-checking former transportation secretaries and boasting of your blogging prowess isn’t the best way to build street-cred in the hiphop community...

...To give an idea of Paul’s viral velocity, if you hit “Rudy Giuliani” or “Mitt Romney” into YouTube’s search engine, you’ll turn up about 3,700 hits apiece...

...In recent decades, things have grown considerably more milquetoast...

...He’s thinking about doing a virtual concert for the virtual Ron Paul...

...Drag him through a college campus, and he’s like a human lint roller, picking up cat-hair covered pamphleteers from all sides of the political spectrum...

...A requisite for being a Ronulan is incessantly complaining that journalists ignore your man...

...or to draw subtle policy distinctions between candidates, such as the William Henry Harrison ditty that educated voters about incumbent Martin Van Buren: Who rules us with an iron rod Who moves at Satan’s beck and nod Who heeds not man, who heeds not God...

...While many voters now have trouble even remembering the Dean campaign beyond the “I Have a Scream” speech, the songs still remain on songsfordean.com...

...He’s written so many Paul songs—everything from “Critical to Get Political” to “Fed Reserve Song”—that he’s now releasing a full CD, called “Early Songs of the Great Ron Paul Revolution...

...Matt Labash is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...can be forgiven...

...Or I thought I did, before seeing how much atrocious music he’s inspired...

...There is nothing wrong with white rappers, except that they’re white, and they’re rappers...

...Candidates today are most likely to pick an already existing pop song that exemplifi es their ethos...

...The melodies would pop into his head, but the words wouldn’t come...

...Van Buren...

...The 9-11 Truthers, white supremacists, and assorted kooks (perhaps some of the other songwriters...

...There’s the group A-Bomb, whose rhymes sound like distress signals from Planet Caucasian...

...It used to be that campaign songs featured original lyrics that strove to mobilize supporters (“Get on a raft with Taft...

...For instance, Hillary Clinton made a perfect choice with “You and I,” which is saccharine, turns on synthetic emotion, and is sung by Celine Dion, one of the few people with a voice more cloying than her own...

...Paul is the enchanter of the disenchanted...

...There’s the reggae group Three Shoes Posse, who seem to have some trouble distinguishing between subjective and objective pronouns, with songs such as “Can’t Fool We...

...Once on their website, I was too distracted by links such as “Understanding chemtrails,” “Bilderberg Watch,” “Preparing for Invasion,” and songs such as “FEMA Camp” in which Norman Mineta gets blamed for the “inside job” which was 9/11...

...Thornton also does a cover of George Harrison’s “Taxman”—“I Hate the Taxman”—with revised lyrics that change the voice of the song “to that of a Rothbardian tax protester...

...So long is the line to throw one’s musical backing to Paul that bands like MouthRot, Crash Martinez, and Clown Vomit posted demands to be included...

...The worst of the worst is Digital Funtown’s “Ron Paul Rap,” in which a dancing pizza slice attempts to elucidate Paul’s positions with rhymes like Every pizza likes to dance Ron Paul says no to immigrants . . . Tomato sauce, provolone Ron Paul says leave your fetus alone...

...Do the same with “Ron Paul,” and you’ll be wading through 63,000 offerings...

...who support Ron Paul do not invalidate his message...

...Good luck fi nding them all...

...To this day, I can’t watch Dean without thinking of the lyric: “We’re gonna need a doctor to fi x us up quick / We need to remove our Bush and our Dick...

...Of all the candidates, he’s the one I’d most trust to hold my purse if I had to use the Jiffy John at a Paulapalooza festival (a proposition his musical backers are considering...

...Then he started reading up on economics and infl ation (he cut a record called “Infl ation Nation,” which he calls “training wheels” for his current Ron Paul efforts), and went to see Paul at a hard assets conference in San Francisco, where he found himself standing on his chair numerous times, applauding Paul’s fi scal sense...

...Most rappers boast about the size of their tire rims or the extensiveness of their fi rearms collection...

...As a songwriter, he “had nothing to say...

...Thornton sings more like Ringo than John, but he keeps the lyrics simple, knowing its really un-rock ’n’ roll to go into the fi ne points of the Hayekian concept of intertemporal equilibrium...

...Four years ago in these pages, I explored the songcraft of the Howard Deaniacs...

...With a website that calls to “Let Jah Will Be Done,” they’d also seem to be out of step with Paul, who is a Baptist by way of Lutheranism...

...Ellis attends the virtual Ron Paul meet-ups in Second Life...

...They aren’t all stone-cold nuts...

...Ellis says he had an epiphany when toying around with “New York, New York...

...Likewise, they feature a photo of him in his doctor’s coat, administering defi brillator paddles to the Constitution...

...BY MATT LABASH ‘If a thing isn’t worth saying, you sing it,” the French playwright Beaumarchais once noted...

...On the Bands4RonPaul MySpace page, there are 16 artists listed who’ve written original Paul songs, with 181 more bands who support Ron Paul listed beneath them: everyone from Larry’s Broken Biscuits to Bloody Holly to White Trash and the Catholics to Fresh Cut Salads...

...Paul himself is not a conspiracy theorist...

...He’ll take gold, but at $800 an ounce, you should plan on a bulk order...

...But not all Paul singers are white rappers...

...The Paul movement seems to have attracted an unfortunate number of them...

...Then there’s Rick Ellis, who used to front the Screamin’ Sea Monkeys but, after meeting heartache and hearing In the Wee Small Hours, became a Frank Sinatra impersonator...