WASHINGTON -- Rep. Ron Paul remembers the day he was transformed from a mild-mannered physician into the feisty political Nostradamus of the Republican Party.

It was the evening of Aug.15, 1971. Then-President Richard Nixon announced that he was taking the United States off the gold standard, which had anchored the dollar based on a fixed amount of the precious metal.

“He just, by executive order, ended the gold standard, put on wage and price controls, put on tariffs,’’ Paul, R-Texas, recalled in an interview with McClatchy. “And I thought that was bad news for America and it was going to usher in an age of rampant inflation and financial bubbles and, finally, bankruptcy.’’

Nixon’s actions launched Paul’s four-decade political career. At times it has been a lonely journey. Paul has predicted a coming U.S. economic Armageddon, with hell to pay for overly aggressive American military and foreign policies. He also has called for a strict interpretation of the Constitution. At times his views were greeted with derision and laughter, even within his own party.

But a funny thing has happened to Paul as he runs for president a third time: Some of his positions once dismissed as kooky or quirky don’t seem so bizarre anymore to many voters or to his fellow Republican lawmakers.

Federally funded bank bailouts, trillion-dollar deficits, high unemployment and the nation’s weariness with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused some Republicans to view the 76-year-old Paul in a different light.

Many of his ideas are now part of the standard GOP playbook, including some that once deviated from Republican doctrine. Now they all want to tame federal spending and debt, and to rein in the size of the federal government. And increasingly, many Republicans are considering reducing America’s military and diplomatic role overseas. Some even favor Paul’s long crusade to return to the gold standard.

“In terms of seriousness, he’s taken more seriously this time around,’’ said Michael Tanner, author of Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution. “There’s more of an appreciation for cutting back government, cutting taxes, even issues with the Fed.’’

Paul, in Tanner’s view, has become a less “fringy’’ commodity and “much closer to the mainstream because the party has caught up to him.’’

“There’s recognition that the problems that the people have worried about and I’ve talked about are now here,’’ Paul said at a recent breakfast with reporters sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. “The financial crisis hit. There’s no resolution. The wars that I’ve talked about are endless and aren’t ending. This is confirmation that there’s something seriously wrong with our foreign policy and our entitlement system.’’

His remedy? As president, he would immediately eliminate five departments — Energy, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Interior and Education — and end war spending. He also advocates recalling U.S. forces from overseas, ending all foreign aid, and abolishing the IRS and the Federal Reserve.

Paul’s message and libertarian streak appealed to a small but fiercely loyal base of supporters who helped propel his unconventional 2008 presidential campaign. But more than 2008, when he ran as a Republican, and unlike his 1988 run as the Libertarian Party’s nominee, Paul’s 2012 campaign, again as a Republican, will be flush with cash.