No one other than Ron Paul‘s acolytes believes the 76-year-old retiring Texas congressman will win this year’s presidential election. But a new Bloomberg Businesweek article explains that Paul’s impending departure from the political scene doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the road for his political ideas.

After 12 terms in the House, Paul, who is 76, says he’ll retire at year’s end. Though he gamely insists he can still defeat Mitt Romney and capture the Republican nomination, his presidential runs have always been about forcing other candidates, and the public, to pay attention to his libertarian arguments for eliminating most taxes, closing federal agencies, bringing U.S. troops home from overseas, legalizing drugs, outlawing official secrecy, dismantling the Fed, returning to the gold standard, and generally getting the government to get out of the way.

If forcing his don’t-tread-on-me, minimalist philosophy into the mainstream is the benchmark, Paul can claim victory and return to Texas a happy man. The professional political class may ridicule him as an eccentric kook leading a cantankerous army of potheads who invade chat rooms with ALLCAPS rants about government overreach. (And no doubt there’s something to that—the most worshipful Paul evangelists can be hard to stomach.) But listening to his rivals in the GOP debates demand that the Fed be audited and the Departments of Energy and Education be shuttered, it’s clear that many of Paul’s positions, once considered extreme, are now routine Republican talking points—and that his influence over conservative politics greatly outweighs his low poll rankings and back-of-the-pack primary returns.

A graphic linked to the article depicts Ron Paul-inspired candidates across the United States. The map lists six in North Carolina. That’s the second-largest contingent in the nation, trailing only the 10 Paulite electoral candidates in Texas.