Oliver Burkeman reports from the Campaign for Liberty



guardian.co.uk

Wild cheers often fill the Target Centre in Minneapolis, home to the Minnesota Timberwolves basketball team. Until this week, though, it hadn't usually been because someone had urged the crowd to unite to fight the secret government plan to merge the United States, Canada and Mexico into a single entity, or because they'd mentioned the name of the economist Friedrich Hayek.

But these were regular occurrences at the Rally For The Republic, a libertarian counter-convention held just across the river from the official one by the former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. A crowd that organisers estimated at 10,000 clapped and screamed as conservative heroes such as Barry Goldwater and Jesse Ventura took the stage. These were dark times for America - "the future of the Republic is bleak," Paul himself warned in a speech during the 10-hour proceedings. But there was solace in coming together to plot the revolution.

Exactly what that revolution might entail, though, was unclear. Paul supports what he sees as a strict return to America's constitution, including the abolition of federal income taxes, the Federal Reserve, and most departments of the US government. But his is also an exceptionally broad church. The cable news host Tucker Carlson, who introduced the day's events, remembered first meeting the Texan congressman: "I didn't agree with his whole outlook," he said, "but he didn't care. He was completely uninterested in having me, or anyone else, sign up to a 30-point programme that was in effect a cult of personality."

If anything, Paul's is a cult of no personality: the 73-year-old is a diminutive, avuncular presence, courteous without being overly warm, a vessel for his supporters' widely varying preoccupations. "People talk about a big tent," one supporter said, "but Ron Paul has taken a razor blade and cut the tent wide open."

This is one reason why his presidential bid proved a surprise phenomenon, using a well-organised internet campaign to rouse independent-minded voters disaffected with both major parties. But for liberals, discussions with Paul and his supporters are disorienting.

They are opposed to the war in Iraq, and to government invasions of privacy, and to the unfettered power of corporations. On the other hand, they oppose gun control, government welfare, abortion, most taxes, and the United Nations; some suspect 9/11 was a US government conspiracy.

"Most of America doesn't really understand the issues the way Ron Paul supporters do, so a lot of them think we're nuts, or just extreme," said Drew Delavera, a young former Republican from Florida. "But if they took the time to read the constitution, they'd see we're not so nutty. They'd see we're just going back to the basics." To drive home the point, supporters at the rally handed out copies of the Bill of Rights; some wore costumes of the American revolutionary era.

Paul won only a handful of delegates to the official Republican convention, and says the party refused to give him proper access credentials. Not that he seemed to care much: "I think the two parties have blended together, over many years," he told the Guardian.

Some supporters argued that his defeat in the primaries actually helped. "If we had sent Ron Paul to Washington, he would still have had to battle the machine of everyone else," said Jennifer Riley, from North Dakota.

The very-big-tent approach has attracted controversy: Paul was forced to dissociate himself from racist statements contained in newsletters issued under his name, and he refused to return money donated by a supporter with connections to a white supremacist group. "If somebody sends me money and has a weird belief and I didn't know about it, I don't see that as a big deal," he said. "If they're bad people, why should I give them back their money? I'd rather see us use their money for good things."

The revolutionaries had descended on Minneapolis from across the country, many travelling in bus charters known as Ronvoys; after the rally they were due to decamp to a Minnesota dairy farm for a six-day festival, Ronstock. Paul seemed quietly thrilled to be the incongruous star of the show. "The campaign for the presidency is over, but the enthusiasm is not," he said. "It has really only just begun."