Do you really think any Democrats will vote for Paul because of his anti-war stance, in spite of the fact that everything else he stands for is diametrically opposed to the Democrats' socialist agenda? Dems are stupid, I grant you that, but are they THAT stupid???
If Paul runs 3rd-party, I fear he'd draw more conservatives who will hold their noses about the anti-war part, than he'd draw liberals who will hold their noses about everything else he thinks.
On the other hand, Paul's impossible blend of far-right and far-left positions may mean that NOBODY will vote for him except a few Paulistinians to whom that blend makes some sort of sense.
‘Do you really think any Democrats will vote for Paul because of his anti-war stance,’
Every leftwing zealot will, because they are appalled Hillary Clinton voted for the war in the first place.
And given she finally denounced the moveon.org ad yesterday on the Sunday talk shows, they are even more angry with her.
I'm afraid you need to distinguish between democratic party leadership--what you're talking about--and democratic party voters--what I'm talking about.
First of all, you only need to take a brief stroll around the internet (Slashdot, Digg, etc.) to find out that, yes, Ron Paul would get quite a bit of the voting block that I had mentioned. These people are practically drooling over the prospect.
Second of all, the people who vote Democrat are only fractionally liberal, just like the people who vote Republican are only fractionally conservative. Most of them are not even registered Democrats.
You are quite right that Ron Paul's conservative inclinations will be too much for most of the Democrat fringe... but that is hardly relevant, since they would not vote for anyone who wasn't a Democrat.
The point is that we have run pretty much the crappiest counter-media campaign imaginable lately, and a lot of the people we've lost who would otherwise be drawn to the Democratic party are fairly likely to get behind Ron Paul instead.
Yes, they are that stupid. Especially after several bags of free pot!
And RuPaul is all about free pot!