Kooky libertarian Ron Paul has already lost the Republican presidential nomination to John McCain, but he's technically still in the race and even picked up 16 percent of the no-doubt-minimal Republican voting in Pennsylvania. And Paul apparently still commands an army of internet zealots who spam online comment boards in between World of Warcraft guild quests, because his troops just pushed Paul's new book Revolution to the top of the May 18 Times bestseller list for nonfiction. Vanity Fair took a look at some of their shady tactics, happily confirmed by Paul's publisher Grand Central:

Paul loyalists have been responsible for much of Revolution’s success, with more than 7,000 supporters pledging to buy copies at ronpaulbookbomb.com, a site affiliated with neither the publisher nor the Paul campaign, and individual Paulheads buying as many as “five, ten, fifteen” copies at a time at signings. “A big email blast” from Paul’s presidential campaign to its list of supporters has also helped. “It’s been its own sort of phenomenon,” [a publisher spokeswoman] says.

Revolution currently has a level of reader-review praise rarely seen on Amazon, with 236 reviews out of 245 giving it a perfect five stars.

The Times put a dagger next to the book's ranking because of all the bulk orders.

But of course Paul supporters could care less about that, they just want to influence the Republican platform at the nominating convention. Which is why we'll soon be allowing deportation of native-born Mexicans, paying for lattes with gold coins and banning abortion. Yay Ron Paul!

[Vanity Fair]