Gotta be careful how you debate f3lix. He makes numerous idiotic claims, demands that you provide evidence refuting his numerous claims, and if anyone slips up, he declares victory. So now he's going to say "No, but he won the nomination" and act like he just won the argument. Let the grown-ups handle this, Shaw.
The biggest problem facing Ron Paul, the way I see it, is that he still has the lable "unelectable" attatched to him, which the other R candidates will repeat again and again until everyone believes it, and the nomination will go to a more traditional candidate... my guess is Romney, because he looks like he has cross-party appeal, since he's from MA. The ironic thing is, Paul is actually the most electable republican because he would capture a huge chunks of independants and also probably some dems. His percieved weakness is that he wouldn't put up big nnoumbers within his own party, but let's face it, nobody from within the GOP could beat Obama last time around and now he's playing with home court advantage.
People who think that he's going to be weaker because of missteps he's made in the past 3 years are forgetting what a good fucking campaigner he is. I mean f3lix even claimed that he was a poor debator (sp?) This man whips the left into a fucking rabid furor. He's going to have a bigger budget and he's not going to have to go to war with hillary, instead he gets to sit and laugh while the republicans take chunks out of each other. It's going to be awesome.
Maybe Paul should run as an independant. Although I think it's a mistake to say he's not conservative (he so is), he has nothing in common with the republican party anymore, most of whom see themselves as "value" voters. I can see a scenario where we get to November with three candidates... Obama, Ron Paul, and a battle-weary GOP candidate. There are two scenarios here which could benefit Paul: 1) the republican candidate gets marginalized early, or 2) it turns into a free-for-all. Neither of these scenarios seem likely, but it might still be his best shot (when you're being priced at 4% likely, it doesn't hurt to shake everything up.)
But in the end I think the GOP candidates will do their best to make Paul seem unelectable and try to take him out early. Then they'll rip on each other for a while, and whoever emerges out of the shitstorm loses, Obama wins by a slightly smaller margin than he beat McCain by. If he wins by a larger margin, then there is a very good chance that the GOP is on the outs by, let's say, 2024.
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