Is Ron Paul left of Obama, or a throwback to Ike?

Washington -- GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul's antiwar stand is considered so out of sync with his party that rival Rick Santorum put him in league with liberal Democrat Dennis Kucinich, to the left of President Obama.

But to his supporters, Paul is returning the GOP to its cautious foreign policy roots, articulated in President Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 warning about "the military-industrial complex."

In their view, the Republican Party lost its way starting with the Reagan military build-up in the 1980s and reaching a crescendo with former President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"George Bush was the worst thing that ever happened to the Republican Party," said Paul supporter Robert Nadeau, owner of Nadeau Family Vintners in Paso Robles (San Luis Obispo County). "When I look at the Republican Party going back to World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the Republican candidates were the end-the-war candidates.