Divided in Nevada: in America's most libertarian state, libertarians don't know how they'll vote.

• Author: Weigel, David
• Position: Column

IT'S GETTING HARDER to find remnants of Ron Paul's remarkable presidential campaign at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch. But they're still there. On the wall, next to clips from Playboy and Smoke, you'll find a framed local news story about a late 2007 press conference with brothel owner Dennis Hof and the libertarian Texas congressman. An eight-by-10-inch head shot of Paul hangs in the computer room. In the dining room, you can still see a picture of Hof and some of his girls clutching signs that spell out "Pimpin' for Paul."

But Hof's support is not transferable. In late August, as the Bob Barr campaign was scrambling for a national foothold, Hof was sitting in the Reno-Tahoe airport waiting for a flight to a Los Angeles charity auction. He told me he's a one-man candidate and has no interest in backing the Libertarian Party nominee.

"Anybody who's considering Bob Barr needs to understand that he's a hypocrite, and that he lied about paying for an abortion for his first wife" Hof said. He paused to answer a call from the plus-sized porn star Ron Jeremy. "I'd much rather these people just be honest. I've got my faults. I know what they are. I eat too much and I sleep with too many extremely hot 18- to-25-year-old girls. But I'm not a hypocrite.

Paul never seemed wholly comfortable with his Bunny Ranch support. Hof's enthusiasm was a symbol of just how far the rEVOLution reached. But the rancher's disinterest in what the Libertarian Party is up to now is a symbol of something else: the rending of the Paul movement. Walk through a brothel or a casino, look up the low tax rates, and you'd figure Nevada was ripe for libertarian politics. It is, but not in a way that's affecting the Obama-McCain slugfest.

The year began with a flurry of libertarian politicking. In January's caucuses, Ron Paul placed second, behind Mitt Romney and ahead of John McCain. Paul's army outnumbered and outsmarted the rank-and-file GOP, badly depleted by the national party's problems and state party infighting. "There wouldn't even have been a caucus in our area without Paul people," says Juanita Cox, the head (until this summer) of the Storey County GOP.

Paul groups swelled. A Vegas Meetup attended by webbie Arden Osborne grew from fewer than 10 people to more than 200. "It just kept going up until those numbers came in from the caucuses, and it was clear that we weren't going to jump all the hurdles the party had set up for us," Osborne says. On the other side of the state...