I take it this means he’s officially given up trying to “work within the party.”

Maverick GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul has booked an arena in Minneapolis for a “mini-convention” that could steal some of John McCain’s thunder just days before he accepts the Republican nomination.

A Paul campaign aide said the Texas congressman hopes to pack about 11,000 supporters into the Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota on Sept. 2, which coincides with the second day of the Republican National Convention at the Xcel Energy Center in neighboring St. Paul…

The campaign hopes the daylong event will “send a message to the Republican Party,” Paul campaign spokesman Jesse Benton tells the Tribune-Review.

“There is a growing surge of people out there just craving” for a return “to traditional American government, limited government that places personal liberty first and places an emphasis on personal responsibility and essentially gets out of the way after that,” Benton said. “The buzz we get from supporters is that they are very eager to come to St. Paul and very eager to send a strong message.”

The message being, “Let’s compromise by adopting Ron Paul’s agenda wholesale.” Exit question per the Obama/Reagan post and yesterday’s Pat Buchanan salute to burning the village to save it: Is this the next stage of conservatism — the re-Bircherization of the party? Because if the only two options are Great Society II and Ron Paul poring over some (but certainly not all) of Al Qaeda’s pronunciamentos to buttress his isolationism then the time has never been riper for a third party.