To your first point, just how are his views extremist? It seems to me that politicians who want to invade third-world countries willy-nilly without a declaration of war are extremist. It seems to me that politicians who want the Federal Reserve, a private institution, to govern the value of our currency, are extremist. It seems to me that politicians who support a failing and pointless "War on Drugs" that have cost the taxpayers millions of dollars are extremist. And it seems to me that politicians that don't recognize the danger of "blowback" in the interferece in foreign affairs are extremist.
That's great, but it doesn't matter what it seems to you. Extremism is relative. And relative to the rest of the country, most of Ron Paul's views are extreme.
To your second point, where do you get your information as to what a majority of Americans and Republicans believe in? So few people vote in elections and polls, it really is hard to tell, and I don't pretend to know where we are now.
Well, elections are one good indicator. It doesn't matter how many people don't vote, because those who vote are the only ones whose opinions matter, policy wise. And voters (outside of his Texas Congressional district) overwhelmingly reject Ron Paul. Polls also show this, using a random sample of Americans (some of whom don't even vote) to draw conclusions about the views of the country as a whole within a margin of error. In actual scientific polls (and not straw polls which he floods with his supporters), Ron Paul is a distant fringe.
However, we can look at history. Historically, Republicans like Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater opposed many of the things that today's Republican Party stands for, including interventionism. The election of the far-right Ronald Reagan really pushed the Republican Party into a new era, governed by "Neo-Conservatives."
"Interventionism" is very broad and general, and not just something most people are either for or against. I don't know why you seem to think that Goldwater was "anti-interventionist", but his Cold Warrior-esque rhetoric was so extreme that it in part led to his defeat in 1964.
Also, Goldwater supported Eisenhower over Taft in 1952, so I don't know why you'd lump the two together as having one foreign policy.
Maybe you should read this, which is written from a non-interventionist perspective:
The Mises Review: Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein and and
And finally, "neo-conservative" obviously does not mean whatever you think it means. I suggest you look it up.
In truth, people like Goldwater, Taft, and Paul were once considered to be quite in the Center of the political specturm.
This is a very strange thing to say, considering the 1964 Presidential election. Goldwater lost by one of the largest margins ever, in
large part because not only was he labeled and considered an extremist, he practically admitted to having extremist views.
You see far-left extremists in Iran overthrow a dictator that we help to install, in favor of a dictator that they install. This dictator tries to turn his people against the country that installed the first dictator. Other countries whose affairs we have interfered with also come to hate this country. Logic says that our interference in these countries caused this hatred. This is what Ron Paul says. According to televised debates from the 2008 elections, pretty much every other candidate thought that this idea was nonsense. Giuliani even wanted an apology. You might not see it as that way, but then again, you might not think that the animal is a duck.
You can argue all of this, but logic does not
prove it to be true in any sense. In complicated situations like foreign affairs, there are so many factors at play it is pretty much impossible to determine with certainty what causes what and why. Taking one's own views as flawless logic comes across as condescension, which again, is why so many people have come to hate everything associated with Ron Paul.