SIOUX CITY, IA - DECEMBER 15: Republican presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) answers a question during the Fox News Channel debate at the Sioux City Convention Center on December 15, 2011 in Sioux City, Iowa. The GOP contenders are in the final stretch of campaigning in Iowa where the January 3rd caucus is the first test the candidates must face before becoming the Republican presidential nominee. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) Scott Olson

With six days until the Iowa caucus, which marks the official opening of the 2012 election, all signs point to victory for a man who wants to abolish five government departments (Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Interior) slash the federal budget by a trillion dollars, eliminate the income tax (and the taxes on inheritances and capital gains), abolish the Federal Reserve system, restore a gold standard, end foreign aid, repeal the “Brady Bill” and the ban on sales of fully-automatic assault weapons, gut labor unions, repeal Roe v. Wade and pass a “Sanctity of Life Act,” pull the United States out of the United Nations, give big tax breaks to homeschoolers, and repeal Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and Sarbanes-Oxley.

Is this a big deal? Not according to many big-name political pundits and political strategists. If recent polls from Iowa showing Ron Paul ahead prove reliable, and he finishes at the head of the Republican pack in the caucuses there on Tuesday, it won’t mean very much at all, say these authorities, most of whom regard the spindly, seventy-six year old Texas congressman as some sort of novelty act. The savants have already moved past Iowa, and past New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, and the other forty-six primaries, too. Whether they’ve said it publicly or not, and some of them have said it, they agree with the unnamed Romney operative who remarked to New York magazine’s John Heilemann: “I don’t see any scenario where we’re not the nominee.”

That’s it, then. To save the other candidates and the American public the bother, and to preserve the sanity of writers (myself included) who would otherwise have to spend the next six months covering a contest with a preordained result, we might as well call the whole thing off and hand the nomination to Mitt. (It would be doing him a favor, too. Just think—no more rope lines or meet and greets where he has to think of something to say to folks who can’t afford to bet Rick Perry ten thousand dollars and who might consider it cruel to strap their Irish setters to the tops of their cars.)

Wait a minute, though. Out there in Iowa, thousands of Paul supporters, many of them young and enthused, seem determined to go ahead with this meaningless exercise in democracy. They are busy putting up posters, making phone calls, knocking on doors, and packing the candidate’s appearances in places like Sioux City and Maquoketa. In a primary in which many of the other candidates have largely forsaken one-on-one campaigning in favor of televised debates and television ad blitzes financed by super-PACs, Paul and his supporters represent a reassertion of old-fashioned shoe-leather politics. The other candidates have campaigns: Ron Paul, for good or ill, has a movement.

What sort of movement? From a brief reading of the national coverage of Paul’s campaign, you might be driven to the conclusion that his support is largely made up of racists, gun freaks, isolationists, homeschoolers, and Friedrich Hayek enthusiasts. Certainly, there are some of these. Paul’s decision, back in the early nineteen-nineties, to try and move beyond his econo-libertarian base by embracing other right-wing groups, including some linked to militias and neo-Nazis, is rightfully coming back to haunt him in the form of front page articles in the Times and elsewhere. When Newt Gingrich, as he did yesterday, describes the views of a fellow conservative as “totally outside the mainstream of virtually every decent American,” you know there is a problem.

But many of Paul’s supporters, particularly the younger ones, can’t be categorized as traditional right-wing extremists. What draws them to his campaign isn’t his views on welfare-dependency, Israel, or monetary policy, but his reputation as an outsider, a plain speaker, and a scourge of the political establishment. In a piece in the Des Moines Register a few days ago, the reporter Mary Stegmeir, who has been covering the Paul campaign, quoted some of them:

Patrick Batey, a twenty-seven-year-old from Mount Pleasant: “He doesn’t have that glossy sheen that all the other candidates do. I guess I don’t feel like he’s trying to deceive me.”

Micah Stolba, a thirty-two-year-old from Cedar Rapids who recently completed three years in the Army: “What he says makes sense. People in the military, especially, they have to think about our foreign relations with countries.”

Danijel Pejkanovic, an eighteen-year-old student from Kalona: “He’s real. That’s what makes the difference for me.”

In one of the latest polls from Iowa, which has Paul leading Romney by four points and Newt Gingrich by ten points, confirms that Paul is attracting support from across the political spectrum. Indeed, many of his supporters, far from being right-wing Republicans, aren’t even Republicans. (In the Iowa caucus system, independents and even Democrats can register as Republicans on the night of the caucus and vote.)

Here, courtesy of Public Policy Polling, are some of the key findings:

Paul’s strength in Iowa continues to depend on a coalition of voters that’s pretty unusual for a Republican in the state. Romney leads 22-20 with those who are actually Republicans, while Paul has a 39-12 advantage with the 24% who are either independents or Democrats. GOP caucus voters tend to skew old, and Romney has a 34-12 advantage with seniors. But Paul’s candidacy looks like it’s going to attract an unusual number of younger voters to the caucus this year, and with those under 45 he has a 35-11 advantage on Romney.

The fact is that many of the young activists backing Paul have more in common with Occupy Wall Street demonstrators than they do with Texan anti-Semites and Wyoming militia men. Back to Public Policy Polling’s take on its latest findings: “The independent/young voter combo worked for Barack Obama in securing an unexpectedly large victory on the Democratic side in 2008 and it may be Paul’s winning equation in 2012.”

The comparison with Obama is telling. At this point in 2007, the young senator from Illinois seemed to many Democrats to be something thrillingly fresh: an independent-minded figure who would challenge a stale and corrupted politics. Paul doesn’t have Obama’s youth or his charisma, which was partly based on the anticipation of seeing a whip-smart black man in the White House. But a surprising number of disillusioned Americans find in Paul, for all his impractical proposals and extremist baggage, a similar hope for a new type of politics: one that isn’t beholden to the two major parties.

That is why Paul is important. Even a big victory for him next week won’t necessarily tell us much about the ultimate outcome of the Republican race: the pundits are right about that. It is virtually impossible to see Paul emerging as the nominee. But his popularity tells us something deeper about American politics and the popular alienation that now attends it—on the left and the right. As 2012 proceeds, this disgust with the two parties could well give birth to a third-party candidacy, quite possibly in the person of Paul himself. Even if that doesn’t happen, the growing alienation from mainstream politics, especially among the young, is something the next President, be it Obama, Romney, or A. N. Other, will be forced to confront. And it won’t be easy.

Photograph by Scott Olson/Getty Images.