Congressman Paul's Legislative Strategy? He'd Rather Say Not.

Mainstream party platforms are riddled with inconsistencies; Paul tries to run what he believes is a straight course through every vote. Smaller government is better. That's why he winds up aligned with the most liberal of Democrats and the most conservative of Republicans. He takes inspiration from free-market economist Ludwig von Mises, whose photograph is mounted on a wall by his desk.

"He's like a gyroscope," says Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), who is allied with Paul in opposition to the Iraq war. "No matter what happens, boom , he comes back up and goes exactly where he wants to go."

Paul doesn't just question conventional wisdom. He stomps all over it. According to him, Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war; there were better ways of getting rid of slavery. He often attempts to prove his political theories by pointing to how things used to be. For instance, the federal government banning drugs like heroin doesn't work for the same reasons Prohibition didn't. The IRS doesn't need to exist for the same reasons it didn't exist before.

"We had a good run from 1776 to 1913," he says, referring to the years before the modern income tax. "We didn't have it; we did pretty well."

As for Social Security, "we didn't have it until 1935," Paul says. "I mean, do you read stories about how many people were laying in the streets and dying and didn't have medical treatment? . . . Prices were low and the country was productive and families took care of themselves and churches built hospitals and there was no starvation."

("Where to begin with this one?" asks Michael Katz, a historian of poverty at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied charity case records from the early 20th century. "The stories just break your heart, the kind of suffering that people endured. . . . Stories of families that had literally no cash and had to kind of beg to get the most minimal forms of food, who lived in tiny, little rooms that were ill-heated and ill-ventilated, who were sick all the time, who had meager clothing . . .")

Paul views his opposition to the status quo practically. He'd prefer no federal income tax, but barring that, he'd love the government to cut spending enough to bring the income tax rate down to 2 percent. He envisions a transition period for eradicating the Federal Reserve and for Social Security, to ensure that no one is cheated of the money they put in.

He figures party leaders get irritated with him sometimes, but for the most part, they leave him alone. On his opposition to war in Iraq, he told a radio interviewer a few years ago, "I'm generally very much ignored." He says he doesn't trade votes and as a result is rarely pressured.

Still, he says, if his fellow Republicans are "very desperate," he may allow himself to be talked into changing a "no" vote to "present."

Research database editor Derek Willis contributed to this report.