Ron Paul is a white-haired, soft-voiced, 74-year-old doctor who has twice failed in presidential campaigns and is frequently derided by his Republican colleagues as an ideologue from the party’s libertarian fringe.

No one would have been surprised if the Lake Jackson congressman had slipped off the political radar after his 2008 quixotic bid for the presidency, his ambitions for higher office thwarted.

But Paul has refused to go out to the political pasture to live in comfortable irrelevance. As odd as it may seem, he has become one of the most influential Republicans in a capital city dominated by liberal Democrats.

The subject that has brought him to prominence is the same issue that subjected him to ridicule from establishment Republicans for years: his long-standing opposition to the nation’s monetary system and the Federal Reserve Board that prints money and controls its supply.

“On economic matters, he was seen as a way outside the mainstream,” University of Houston political scientist Richard Murray said. “His views were somewhat 19th century in the view of a lot of economists.”

Well, they say history repeats itself, and suddenly Paul’s “19th-century” thinking seems appealing to those suffering through the first economic meltdown of the 21st century.

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