There are things I like about Ron Paul but I’ve been watching politics for far too long to have any illusions that he will win the white house. As things stand now, all he’s doing is helping to insure the worst of both parties will win their nominations.
Even in the wildest fantasy that he actually ended up in the white house he would still be powerless. Both parties would isolate him and render him totally impotent as a president.
Incrementalism got us into the mess we’re in and wildly swinging a baseball bat isn’t going to get us out. It will take someone who can at least work with his own party to get us back on the right path.
Ron Paul is doing amazingly well in fundraising, and it is ironic that the very people who decry the conspiracy minded 9-11 Truthers themselves fantasize the machinations of George Soros as Paul's hidden money source. The fact remains that all polls show Paul in single digits, and, more significantly, over half of potential GOP voters in at least one state have a negative opinion of him. His negatives far outweigh those of the two arch-Yankee RINOs in the race, Giuliani and Romney. George Stefanopoulos was right when he told Ron Paul during an interview that he would bet every dollar he had that Paul would lose. (Even a liberal can be correct occasionally!)
However, his campaign has introduced thousands of young people who are inclined leftward to the benefits of laissez faire economics and limited government. These are people who are culturally incompatible with the GOP base and with traditional conservative ideology. Frankly, evangelical Christians, a group to which I belong, have drifted too far toward support of big government and social welfare schemes, baptized as "faith-based initiatives." Republicans in general who were quick to condemn the big government schemes of Clinton stood by as Bush introduced his own statist programs like No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D.
To the extent Paul can shift the domestic agenda of the GOP away from liberalism with a "family friendly" facade and back to its limited government, low tax roots and can attract new converts to laissez faire economics and minimalist governance, he will benefit the conservative cause.