More than 1,000 people skipped their Labor Day barbecues to show up at Rosedale Center on Monday for a chance to spend 7 seconds with Ron Paul.

Paul, who ran unsuccessfully for the GOP presidential nomination, appeared at the Borders bookstore to sign copies of “The Revolution: A Manifesto,” his call for a return to Constitutional principles. A Borders spokeswoman said the store laid in a supply of 1,300 copies for the event, although many of the attendees already had copies.

It wasn’t just locals — in fact, I’d venture to say the outsiders outnumbered the locals. I talked to people from Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Tennessee, Texas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Arkansas. Most of them were also planning to attend Paul’s big rally later that night.

Paul signed books at a breakneck pace and didn’t make time to talk to the media. But his supporters were happy to make up the deficit.

Melina Brajovic and Jim Barr from Pittsburgh and Hank Lane from North Carolina (L-R) donned Revolutionary-era garb to make their point.

If you look closely at the photo above, you can see that Brajovic sports a poster showing Paul with the Founding Fathers, applying defibrillator paddles to a copy of the Constitution.

“The fact that he’s not on the ballot doesn’t change anything,” she said. “He’s still my president.”

Paul shocked the political world last year when his supporters dropped a couple of Internet “money bombs.” In November, Paul supporters raised more than $4 million in one day online, then topped that in December with a $6 million online haul in 24 hours. At the time, it was the largest amount of money a presidential candidate had ever raised in a single day.

He’s not on the presidential ballot this year, but he’s clearly got a movement going. We’ll see if he has more staying power than other outsiders of recent years.