The meteoric rise and equally cataclysmic fall of Ron Paul’s campaign continues to be a source of amusement for us all.

Accomplishments of the campaign included a second-place finish at the Values Voter debate in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl. and the purchase of a blimp – yes, a blimp – to advertise in New Hampshire. But while the campaign once posted record fundraising totals, including a staggering $4.2 million on Nov. 5, reality appears to have sunk into its supporters, who offered up a meager $123,523 in the month of March.

One shattering blow was dealt when Fox News refused to permit Paul to appear on their Jan. 6 New Hampshire debate. The debate inexplicably featured Rudy Giuliani, who had as much appeal in this race as a case of amoebic dysentery, and Fred Thompson. Come on, Fox. Seriously.

Paul took another hit when a few decades’ worth of racist newsletters went public, though the real gems – including Paul’s fear that the Fed is placing holograms, diffraction gratings and chemical taggents on money to secretly track us – slipped mercifully under the radar. Being the official candidate of white-supremacist Web site

Stormfront.org probably didn’t help much, either.

A Paul presidency probably would not have been that bad. Vetoing each and every bill that comes out of Congress is a great way to stop their pile of empty, soulless legislation from growing any larger, and leaving Iraq while preventing the dollar from becoming a laughable third-world currency should be high on the next president’s list of priorities. It’s just a shame that the invisible hand of the free market couldn’t overcome the juggernaut of the collective conspiracy by the mainstream media, the Federal Reserve, the future North American Union and the Illuminati themselves.

Taylor Kessinger is a junior majoring in math, philosophy and physics.