On the Constitution Party ticket?

The story isn't well sourced, but it certainly wouldn't shock me if true. Despite the fervent hopes of his followers, his chances of getting the Republican nomination are nil, and I can easily imagine them continuing to support him as an independent or another party.

The conventional wisdom would be that this would be bad news for Republicans, but I disagree. When you look at where most of his support is coming from (mostly anti-war), and the fact that none of the Democrat candidates will surrender as fast as the anti-war left wants them to (plus all his support from Soros & Co.) I think that he'd pull more from the Democrats than from the Republicans.

But that depends a lot on who the Republican nominee is. In the unlikely event that it were Huckabee, I can actually imagine a four-way race with another independent run by someone, so that there would be at least one candidate for those who want to actually win the war. And I think that it would fracture both major parties along libertarian/collectivist lines (something that is long overdue).

John McCain may be the unexpected guy to jump to the front of the Republican race.

Rudy has too many scandals in his past, Romney is fading fast, the Huck-a-boom should deflate after Iowa and then only Fred Thompson stands in the way of the Straight Talk Express.

But then, if its D-Clinton versus R-McCain versus I-Paul I predict McCain benefits from Ron Paul running and could very well win since Hillary will lose the rabid anti-Iraq war voters.

But, if its D-Obama versus R-McCain versus I-Paul I predict Obama loses many fewer votes to Ron Paul given Obama's pre-war view (Senator Jim Webb's view) that the invasion of Iraq was a strategic blunder.

Naive speculation and irrelevant commentary over on ModernConservative.com ... the Constitution Party has ballot access almost nowhere; the Libertarian Party has ballot access in most states and a repeatable process in place to acquire it in the remainder. The LP's standing and expertise in this area is by far its most financially valuable asset; its total expenditure would be a few hundred thousand, whereas anyone starting from scratch, as the CP would be, would be looking at (my very rough and probably low estimate) $7-10 million, all of which must be spent as a prerequisite to any real campaigning.

And Ron would easily get the LP's nomination (he was their candidate in 1988). The actual effect on the election would of course depend entirely on who the major-party nominees are, but the one candidate capable of unifying the GOP base is HRC, who polls at something like 47-48% who will vote for the Republican ticket no matter who is on it. She would therefore only have to lose about 1/25 of her support to become unelectable unless the third- (or a fourth-) party candidate draws more away from the GOP (eg Perot in '92).

It seems Mr. Derbyshire has made his preference known. Care to comment? http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZWIzYWI4NTBjYTc3NGE1OGEwYWMyZjE1NDZjOWVmMDQ=

Reagan called the Republican Party "The Big Tent" for a reason. The GOP has always been fractured and at odds with itself, the religious right, the fiscal conservatives, the Law and Order types and the lazes-faire capatalists have never liked each other. The only thing realy holding them together is that as much as they hate each other, they hate the democrats more. Hilary getting the nomination would be gods gift to the Republican party. Nothing could be better garanteed to bring out the base.

The same fractured nature of the GOP is why Ron Paul has such support. His support is only from portions of the party, but he has strong support from the free-market types, the fiscal conservatives and the RKBA folks. He has huge support from the non-interventionist wing and the get US out of the UN types.

The Republicans lost the last election only in part due to the "war" in Iraq. The big reason was that the fiscal conservative base stayed home, because Republicans spending like drunken sailors is just as bad to those folks as Democrats doing so.

Thus I'd have to say that as a third party candidate, Dr. Paul would probably draw more "Goldwater Republican" votes than anti-war votes for a net benifit to the Dems.

Note to the Constitution Party: Ron Paul's Libertarian Party run in 1998 earned 0.47% of the popular vote - you think he can do better this time? Especially now that we have a blogosphere, which, thanks to Dan Rather's least-favorite blog, has preserved Ron Paul's photo-op with St0rmfr0nt founder Don Black for posterity?

I just fisked the McCain-winning-the-nominee prediction at the Volokh Conspiracy:

McCain has burned way too many bridges with conservatives, the most serious being the McCain-Feingold Censorship of Citizens Within Sixty Days of Elections Act, and the "Gang of 14" appeasement of the Democrats. (Proves that having a majority in the house and controlling it are two different things.) If McCain wants the nomination, his strategy should be to convince Republican conservatives to vote in the Democratic primaries.

The Stormfront correction from the NYT:
http://themedium.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/the-ron-paul-vid-lash/?ex=1199163600&en=7b25470d94ea3b8b&ei=5070&emc=eta1

The Ron Paul Vid-Lash
By Virginia Heffernan

Editors’ Note: The post below, which appeared on The Medium on Monday, contained several errors. Stormfront, which describes itself as a “white nationalist” Internet community, did not give money to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign; according to Jesse Benton, a spokesman for Paul’s campaign, it was Don Black, the founder of Stormfront, who donated $500 to Paul. The post also repeated a string of assertions by Bill White, the commander of the American National Socialist Workers Party, including the allegation that Paul meets regularly “with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review and others” at a restaurant in Arlington, Va. Paul never attended these dinners, according to Benton, who also says that Paul has never knowingly met Bill White. Norman Singleton, a congressional aide in Paul’s office, says that he met Bill White at a dinner gathering of conservatives several years ago, after which Singleton expressed his indignation at the views espoused by White to the organizer of the dinner. The post should not have been published with these unverified assertions and without any response from Paul.

Heh.