Scan the headlines at National Review Online this morning, and you’ll find two featured columns focusing on the Republican presidential race’s most libertarian candidate.

Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute delves into the reaction to Paul’s message.

Let us stipulate that Ron Paul is a highly imperfect messenger. He has all too frequently trafficked in conspiracy theories; his justifiable caution about government can veer uncomfortably close to paranoia. He has not had a truly convincing explanation for how his name ended up attached to newsletters in the 1980s that contained racist and anti-Semitic writings. And some of his advisers and associates have more than dubious backgrounds.

Let us also stipulate that Paul is not going to be the Republican nominee for president. …

… But, all that said, it is worth asking why his message seems to be catching on. Could it be that in a race where the frontrunners are the godfather of Obamacare and a guy who wants to fight crime by installing giant mirrors in space to illuminate our cities at night, there is an unmet desire among grassroots Republicans for a genuine limited-government conservative?

At a time when our country is drowning in debt, the other GOP candidates seem unwilling to venture much beyond the idea of cutting “fraud, waste, and abuse.” Paul, on the other hand, has a specific plan to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget next year, including abolishing five cabinet agencies. That may or may not be practical, but it speaks to those seeking a smaller, less costly, less intrusive government, in a way that other candidates, with their 59-point plans for carefully trimming this agency or that, do not.

Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg focuses on Paul’s “naive promises.”

I like, even love, many of Paul’s proposals: turning Medicaid into block grants, getting rid of the Department of Education, etc. But he’s not the man to get them accomplished, largely because the president doesn’t have unilateral authority.

Presidential power is the power to persuade — Congress, the media, and, ultimately and most important, the American people. The power of the purse, meanwhile, resides on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Paul has been in Congress, off and on, for nearly 30 years. In that time, he will rightly tell you, Congress has spent money with reckless abandon, expanded the state’s police powers, launched numerous wars without a declaration of war, and further embraced fiat money (he got into politics when Richard Nixon took us fully off the gold standard). During all of that, he took to the floor and delivered passionate speeches in protest convincing . . . nobody. He authored precious little legislation of any consequence.

Paul’s supporters love to talk about how he was a lone voice of dissent. They never explain why he was alone in his dissent. Why couldn’t he convince even his ideologically sympathetic colleagues?