In today's Republican Party, it's easy to win forgiveness for being wrong. It's being right that gets you into trouble.

Take Ron Paul, for example. In the run-up to the Iraq war, the Texas congressman asked, "Are we willing to bear the economic burden of a $100 billion war against Iraq, with oil prices expected to skyrocket and further rattle an already shaky American economy?"

And then when he made a run for the GOP presidential nomination earlier this year, Paul warned repeatedly of the dangers of funding that war and other out-of-control expenditures with dollars hot off the printing press.

That's two for two. But the Grand Old Party has been treating Paul like a pariah rather than a prophet ever since John McCain won the nomination. McCain could have been magnanimous and offered Paul a speaking role at last month's convention. Instead, the GOP wouldn't even permit Paul to go on the floor without an escort.

Paul is now returning the favor by calling for Republican voters to reject McCain in favor of one of the third-party candidates to McCain's right. When I spoke to him on the phone the other day, Paul told me he is backing Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party. But he also is telling voters to look at Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party, "just so they don't vote for the establishment."

As for McCain, Paul said, "The Buchananites and the libertarians have trouble getting along with him. He's really building his alliance with the Liebermans of the world."

That would be Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, a Democrat who has a National Taxpayers Union rating of F compared with the straight-A rating of the physician-politician known as "Dr. No" for his habit of voting against spending bills. Lieberman got a prime speaking spot at the convention and was even reported to be McCain's first choice for the GOP vice presidential nomination.

That would have been the last straw for many conservative voters. But I wrote off McCain after one of his encounters with Paul during the debates. The subject was the Iraq war, which McCain had predicted would be "a short war - a month or two months."

Instead of admitting he was wrong, McCain lashed out at Paul in one debate, saying, "We allowed Hitler to come to power with that kind of attitude."

Has so much ignorance ever been expressed in so few words? "We" didn't allow Hitler to come to power. The German people elected him, just as the Iranians elected McCain's current designated Hitler, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That's why conservatives have traditionally been against the Wilsonian idea of spreading democracy by force.

"People are made uncomfortable when they're being challenged on principle," Paul told me. "That was annoying to him. I was sort of exposing him for his lack of credentials as a conservative."

That lack of credentials was what led McCain to nominate Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, according to Paul.

"I guess it was sort of pandering to everybody," he said.



It seemed to work at first. But Palin quickly endorsed the worst of McCain's ideas and even added a few of her own, though at this writing no one can tell just what those ideas are. And then the economy collapsed for the reasons Paul had cited in the primary debates.

"They sort of mocked me for talking about the dollar," he said of his GOP opponents.

Well, he who laughs last has to be rolling on the floor this October. McCain's dropping in the polls, with his prospects for a comeback resting on the hope that Palin can speak in sentences rather than in tongues at tonight's debate.

If the Democrats do go on to win the White House, Paul said, one positive effect might be to restore Republicans to the conservative foreign policy positions they held when Bill Clinton was president.

"When Clinton was bombing Serbia and Kosovo, about 98 percent of Republicans were complaining," he said.

So a McCain loss wouldn't be all bad for the party. Meanwhile, a McCain victory could be a disaster if he goes on to start those vague "other wars" to which he has alluded.

The Republican Party is supposed to be a "big tent." And there was plenty of room in it for Lieberman, Mike "I Am Not a Primate" Huckabee and the beauty-contestant-turned-moose-hunter. But somehow there wasn't room for the guy whose views most closely mirror those of Barry Goldwater, the founder of modern conservatism and the man who once held McCain's Senate seat.

I enjoy a circus as much as the next guy. But this year there are just a few too many clowns under the big top.