Still, it was instructive. He was in the lead pretty quickly, before he dropped out. Now, take someone with good name recognition (Rush, Palin, Ted Cruz, Dr. Carson) and a few tens of million in startup costs, and you will start a brush fire. You can't build the infrastructure to get victories in the House and Senate in the first election cycle, but you can identify those you are allied with, the conservative wing of the GOP, and ask your supporters to vote for them in the general.
If the conservative then wins the White House, he can either force the GOP to surrender to him and let him run the GOP, and he comes in and cleans house (not likely, given the corruption of the GOP) or start a new organization with a different name and invites conservatives to join. In conservative districts and states, you'd get most GOPers to join. It would be a coalition government for a time, with the GOPe forced to go along with the conservatives or join with the Dems. Eventually, though, the GOPe would go the way of the Whigs.
That's my view of the way to proceed. If we try to work within the GOP this presidential cycle, we are going to be very disappointed, and that may open the way for another lib to be elected when people stay home. I'd rather take my chances on a conservative alternative. The GOPe hates us. They don't hate Obama. They hate us.
He wasn't a loony toon. He had a visceral hatred for Bush. He had no desire to be president. He just didn't want Bush to be president either. Seemed to have had his way too.