If he had the chance, Ron Paul might well vote against baseball and apple pie. In 1997, when Congress awarded a gold medal to Mother Teresa for her humanitarian work, the Texas Republican was the lone voice of dissent.

It was one of the many positions Paul has taken over his 17 years on Capitol Hill that earned the GOP presidential hopeful the nickname “Dr. No.” As the only declared Libertarian in the contest, Paul believes the government should take no action not specifically authorized by the Constitution. As Congress prepared to bestow its highest civilian honor on the elderly nun, Paul challenged his fellow lawmakers to contribute $100 each toward the expense of the gold medal. “Of course, it is easier to be generous with other people’s money,” he sniffed.

In his career, Paul has voted against prescription drug benefits for the elderly, educational programs for disabled children and federal money for bicycle trails though he’s an avid bicyclist. He’s gone against the Republican Party on some of its bedrock issues, decrying tax breaks and subsidies for big business and advocating the legalization of illicit drugs.

Running for president a second time, he has attracted a small but loyal national following. Through September 2007, Paul had raised $8 million for his campaign, the bulk of it from small contributors online. However, fervent support over the Internet has helped Paul ramp up his fundraising in recent weeks. On Dec. 16, the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, the campaign reported that Paul raised more than $6 million online, surpassing the $4.2 million one-day record his campaign set the previous month. As of Dec. 17, Paul had raised $18.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2007, putting him on track to rank as one of the top GOP fundraisers for the three-month period. In 1988, the first time Paul ran for president, he received 432,000 votes, or, 0.5 percent of the total.

This time around, Paul has broken with the GOP pack most notably on the war in Iraq. He was one of just six Republicans who voted in 2002 against giving President Bush authority to wage war, saying the resolution was unconstitutional because it transferred the right to declare war from Congress to the executive branch. He also was one of 17 Republicans who supported a February 2007 Democratic resolution that disapproved of Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq.

‘Don’t Get Involved’

During the early presidential debates, Paul often got rousing applause for his anti-war views. Asked during an August 2007 debate in Des Moines, Iowa, about his strategy for ending the war, Paul replied, “We shouldn’t be there. We ought to just come home.”

The United States, Paul says, should not participate in undeclared wars. “We should mind our own business and take the advice of the founders,” he told MSNBC in March 2007. “And that is, stay out of entangling alliances; don’t get involved in nationa?`building; and don’t get involved in the internal affairs of other nations.”

Paul takes the role of contrarian on other issues as well.

In 2006, Paul favored authorizing construction of a fence along the Mexican border and opposed Bush’s plan to create a path to legalization for millions of illegal aliens currently working in the United States. During the Republican debate in New Hampshire in June 2007, Paul said, “If you subsidize something, you get more of it. So we subsidize illegal immigration, we reward it by easy citizenship, either by birthright or amnesty. But we force states and our local communities to pay for the health care, to pay for the education. Why wouldn’t they bring their families?”

He also voted against the 2003 Medicare prescription drug law, which most Republicans backed and Bush signed into law. Paul called it an unconstitutional expansion of the federal government. He was one of only three House members in 1997 to vote against a bill to reauthorize an educational program for disabled children. “The way for the federal government to help improve education in our country is to get out of the way,” said Paul, who was then a member of Education and the Workforce Committee.

Paul typically is among the least loyal of the Republicans in Congress. In the 109th Congress (2005-06), he backed Bush only 37 percent of the time on votes on which the president took a public position. On key votes pitting Republicans against Democrats, Paul backed his party just 70 percent of the time. Only two House Republicans had lower party unity scores, according to Congressional Quarterly’s vote studies.

The one area where he seems to agree with the GOP is on tax cuts, which he has consistently supported in recent years. “I think our economic system is in a lot worse shape than most people believe,” Paul says. “One of these days the country will wake up and realize how far in debt we are.”

On the hot-button social issues that have preoccupied his party in recent years, Paul often agrees philosophically with Republicans but draws the line at amending the Constitution. He says marriage should be the union of one man and one woman, yet voted in 2004 and 2006 against a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage, saying, “Everyone is an individual and ought to be treated equally.” He also opposed a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning.

Paul opposes abortion rights, and has repeatedly voted against expanding federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, done on cells harvested from surplus embryos from in vitro fertilization.

A Doctor, Then a Politician

The son of dairy farmers, Paul grew up in a small town west of Pittsburgh. Along with his four brothers, Paul began working at the family’s dairy at age 5. Later, he delivered newspapers, worked in a pharmacy and became a milk delivery truck driver.

In high school, he was a standout as an athlete. A track and field star, he won the Pennsylvania state championship in the 220-yard dash as a junior, and also played football and baseball and was on the wrestling team. Paul was also student body president.

He considered becoming a Lutheran minister like two of his siblings, but chose the field of medicine instead. Paul earned a bachelor’s degree in science from Gettysburg College in 1957 and a medical degree from the Duke University School of Medicine in 1961.

In the early 1960s, he was a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force. He and his wife, Carol Paul, moved to Texas in 1968, where he opened an obstetrical practice in Brazoria County.

He first won a seat in the U.S. House in an April 1976 special election to replace Democratic Rep. Bob Casey when he defeated former Democratic state Rep. Bob Gammage. But in the next regularly scheduled election in November, Gammage challenge Paul and won by just 268 votes. In 1978, Paul won back the seat by 1,200 votes.

In 1984, Paul left the House for an unsuccessful Senate bid. Twelve years later, he won election in the 14th District, which included areas he had represented in his earlier House career. In the primary, he ousted Republican Greg Laughlin, who had held the seat since 1989 but had switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party in 1995.

Paul won the general election by just 3 percentage points, despite criticism for his support of the legalization of drugs. He was unopposed in 2004 and won by 20 percentage points in 2006.

As a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Paul has decried U.S. foreign policy as “worldwide imperialism” that spurred the Sept. 11 attacks. “A growing number of Americans are concluding that the threat we now face comes more as a consequence of our foreign policy than because the bad guys envy our freedoms and prosperity,” he said.

Paul also was the lone Republican dissenter on a July 2006 resolution backing Israel and its bombardment of Lebanese targets in retaliation for attacks by the terrorist group Hezbollah. During floor debate, Paul said foreign interventions do not work and the resolution would only increase Middle East violence.

He also takes a dim view of U.S. aid to foreign countries, and he opposes U.S. support for the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. Paul has sponsored legislation requiring the United States to withdraw from the United Nations.

Although he has in the past voted for trade liberalization, Paul voted against the 2002 bill renewing presidential fast-track trade negotiating authority. Paul and independent Bernard Sanders of Vermont introduced a bill in 2004 to block federal assistance to companies that outsource U.S. jobs to foreign countries. And he was one of only 27 Republicans to vote against the Central American Free Trade Agreement in 2005.