The real reason Ron Paul's message is becoming popular

Brian Doherty puts his finger on the real reason for Ron Paul's rising stock in the polls:

The real lesson of the Ron Paul phenomenon might be not, as standard right wingers now seem to think as they rise to attack him, that the country is unexpectedly full of dangerous freaks who are being arbitrarily ordered by the voices they hear in their fillings to venerate this out-of-nowhere madman Ron Paul, but rather that the "smaller government" stuff isn't as unpopular as Goldberg thinks, especially when it is surgically detached from the endless international policing and adventurism that, alas, Goldberg's institutional home of National Review has tried to link with small government rhetoric for the past half century.

It must have been tough to be a genuine Republican over the last few years . . . while the talk has still been vaguely market-friendly and constitution-observant, the practice has been corporatist and constitutional-abusive. And let's face it, even the talk hasn't been particularly inspiring. And the Democratic party certainly wouldn't welcome small-government fans, so more and more of them have become alienated from both major parties. Ron Paul is talking to a group of voters who clearly feel that neither party represents them at all. It's going to be interesting to see how many of them go back to the Republican party due to Paul's campaign . . . and whether they stay if Paul falls by the wayside.

You could say that he's providing (temporary) shelter for the politically homeless.