This is Not the End of Ron Paul
Ron Paul has announced that he will not be seeking reelection for his House seat and will instead be focusing on his presidential campaign. (Or will it be more accurate to call them "multiple future presidential campaigns?")
After serving almost 24 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Ron Paul told The Facts this morning he will not be seeking another term for the District 14 seat.
Paul, 75, will instead focus on his quest for the presidency in 2012.
“I felt it was better that I concentrate on one election,” Paul said. “It’s about that time when I should change tactics.”
It's appropriate that Paul says he will now "change tactics". This is not the end of Paul's political career. Instead, it sounds like a change in approach. No more time will be wasted having to vote "no" to every piece of legislation, now he gets to go out into the world and do TV interviews 24/7.
Paul will leave the US House and can now focus on being a public intellectual who can use his time and energy to advocate for his own peculiar brand of Paleo-Conservatism.
If Ron Paul chooses to hit the lecture circuit, then I think he will find that there is a lot of money to be made being paid to give speeches attacking the Federal Reserve. He might also start starring in some of the ads on Fox News which try to convince retirees to "invest" their money into gold.
He will also have more free time to run his inevitable 2016 and 2018 presidential bids.
This is not the end of Ron Paul.
UPDATE: The commentators correctly point out that in 2016, Ron Paul will be 81 years old, so age is probably a large factor in this as well.