“This is more than a flip-flop. This is a backflip,” Justin Raimondo, the editorial director of Antiwar.com, told me on Wednesday. “This was the last straw. I’ve put up with a lot from that guy! I’ve had to defend him like a Jesuit. I’m done. Let somebody else do it.”

To say Raimondo was a supporter of Paul wouldn’t quite be correct. Raimondo has acted like Paul’s personal bodyguard on the Internet. More often than not, any comment that could be perceived as being remotely critical of the senator was met with a response from Raimondo that was so vitriolic it veered toward cyber-bullying. (When I wrote an article in July making the case that Ron Paul might pose a political problem for Rand Paul, Raimondo called me a “professional sleaze-ologist.” Other times when he was unhappy with my coverage of Paul, he criticized my appearance.)

Now Raimondo acknowledges that he was much like many of the other Paul supporters I’ve spoken to: not entirely satisfied with the senator but willing to tolerate him if it meant hearing some of what Raimondo believed expressed on the national stage. “I thought he was going to start a real debate about foreign policy in this country, and I thought he was a reasonably principled yet pragmatic politician,” Raimondo said. “And now, apparently he’s just a panderer who would do anything to please people who hate him anyway and will continue to hate him no matter what he does—even if he changes his last name.”

Raimondo said he believes the rarified confines of the Senate and the media spotlight Paul has been cooking under have made him lose touch with reality.