“In an interview on Friday, Mr. Paul, 72, a retired physician and a grandfather, acknowledged that his Internet support had surprised even him. He said he did little online but read the news, especially from the Middle East.

“We always knew it was supposed to be important,” he said of the Internet. “My idea was you had to have someone who was a super expert, who knew how to find people. But they found us.”

As for the record one-day fund-raising, he said, “I had nothing to do with it,” adding that he had so far neglected to thank the people responsible. (James Sugra, 28, of Huntington Beach, Calif., acting on his own, posted an online video proposing one big day of fund-raising; Trevor Lyman, 37, of Miami Beach, then independently created a site, www.thisnovember5th.com, that featured the video.)

Mr. Paul estimated that the one-day haul had brought ”$10 million worth of free publicity.”

And where do Ron’s supporters come from? Left and right:

“Andrew Fox, 28, who described his day job as “sitting on a bench with a soldering iron” repairing cable TV boxes, agreed the other night to become the treasurer for the Albany group. “I’m really frightened with what’s going on in this country,” Mr. Fox said. “We have effectively lost our form of representative government. The war is the worst thing, but we also have a police state at home.”

While most meetup members said they were Republicans, David Weck, 54, a chiropractor from Schenectady, said he was a Democrat but that he believed in smaller government and that Mr. Paul was the only candidate who seemed committed to that.

“Never in a million years did I think I would be interested in a Republican candidate,” Mr. Weck said, “especially after this administration.”

Mr. Gould said the country was “in turmoil’ and that he began researching Mr. Paul after seeing him on “The Colbert Report,” the late-night political-satire show on Comedy Central.

“I started learning about our currency,” he said. “It’s scary. Those Federal Reserve notes we’re using like a loan off of a loan that’s physically impossible to ever repay. So our whole country will continuously be in massive debt.”

More here at the New York Times.