The people powering the Paul phenomenon

Old enough to be the father of such students is Paul’s Iowa campaign chairman, Drew Ivers, a retired plant geneticist who worked on the Ronald Reagan campaign in 1980, the Pat Robertson campaign in 1988, and the Pat Buchanan efforts in 1996 and 2000.

Ivers praised Paul’s belief in “limited government, anti-establishment, biblically based values.”

For Ivers the enemies are “global socialism, the New World Order, empire building… The neo-cons, the elitists who are promoting global socialism” and who say, “We’re smarter and wiser than the masses.”

He added, “This is not a conspiracy: the Bilderbergers meet, the G-8 meets” to plan an agenda of globalism. (The Bilberbergers is a secretive informal group of U.S. and European government officials and business executives who meet annually.)

Favorite target: the 'neo-cons'
“Neo-cons” is an epithet that the Paul people use with scorn.

Tom Curry / MSNBC.com Drew Ivers, the chairman of the Ron Paul campaign in Iowa.

Steve Anders, a business executive from Council Bluffs, Iowa who turned up at Paul’s meeting with Christian pastors Saturday in Des Moines, said, “The Republican Party has been morphed into a neo-con group. They’ve lost the original roots of the party. Even President Bush has shifted far away. Ron Paul is a strict constitutionalist; he’s also a man of faith and he believes in the sovereignty of God and God’s laws and the Constitution.”

Flying in from Florida to make the case for Paul was his ally, Dr. Chuck Baldwin, pastor of the Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola.

Baldwin told Paul’s conclave of pastors Saturday that Christian conservatives had been “duped” and “co-opted” by the “neo-cons.”

Paul “opposed the unprovoked and pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, and rightly so. Time has certainly vindicated Dr. Paul’s principled position,” Baldwin said.

He added, “Before G.W. Bush changed the landscape, conservatives — especially Christian conservatives — mostly subscribed to Augustine’s just war theory, regarding accepted protocols for the conduct of war. Today many of my Christian friends have foolishly followed Bush’s pre-emptive war theory which before now was practiced mostly by pagan emperors.”

For some, stance on Israel is stumbling block
But some pastors are struggling with Paul’s position that Israel would be better off if it pursued a policy independent of U.S. aid and U.S. restraint.

Pastor Jim Hartman, who heads an Assemblies of God church in Conrad, Iowa, told Paul, “It seems like what drives the Christian right is the idea that we need to defend Israel.”

“I don’t think we do Israel any favors and we actually weaken them” by generous U.S. aid, Paul replied. “It’s like spoiling your child.”

But he added that individuals could still support Israel. “I don’t feel that I am unfriendly or would hurt Israel,” Paul told Hartman.

Afterward, quizzed about his views on Paul, Hartman said, “I’ve been supporting Mike Huckabee, but I would say I’m leaning real strong toward Ron Paul…. I wish a lot of my pastor friends were here.”

Hartman supported Bush four years ago and explained, “Up until the last six months I had not allowed myself to imagine that we’d been let down by Bush.” As for Iraq, “I don’t think we were prepared to understand that culture and to work with that culture.”

He said he now feels “humble and I feel kind of bad that I haven’t done a better job of being faithful to Ron Paul’s kind of integrity.”

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