This Sunday’s New York Times Magazine features a long profile of Ron by Chris Caldwell of the Weekly Standard.

I’ll post the URL just as soon as it is publicly available (this is all there is now).

There are some nasty bits in the article, as well as the slight disdain that characterizes the Times when treating flyover country and any non-leftist, but it’s probably as fair a profile as could come out of the once pro-Stalin newspaper. For example:“There is something homespun about Paul, reminiscent of ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.’ He communicates with his constituents through birthday cards, August barbecues and the cookbooks his wife puts together every election season, which mix photos of grandchildren, Gospel passages and neighbors’ recipes for Velveeta cheese fudge and Cherry Coke salad. He is listed in the phone book, and his constituents call him at home. But there is also something cosmopolitan and radical about him; his speeches can bring to mind the World Social Forum or the French international-affairs periodical Le Monde Diplomatique. Paul is surely the only congressman who would cite the assertion of the left-leaning Chennai-based daily The Hindu that ‘the world is being asked today, in reality, to side with the U.S. as it seeks to strengthen its economic hegemony.’ The word ‘empire’ crops up a lot in his speeches.”

“This side of Paul has made him the candidate of many people, on both the right and the left, who hope that something more consequential than a mere change of party will come out of the 2008 elections. He is particularly popular among the young and the wired.”

(Thanks to Chris Westley.)