Why The GOP Can't Win (and how it will lose BIG) Without A Ron Paul Nomination

If the GOP nominates a candidate other than Ron Paul, Obama is guaranteed a second term.

Neither Mitt, Rick or Newt can beat Obama and this is nearly indisputable. Newt needs no explanation: he is absolutely unelectable. He hasn't had a good showing except his home state of Georgia and its neighbor South Carolina. He is only getting weaker with each state and is not a serious candidate, no matter how good a debater his followers imagine him to be. Santorum cannot beat Obama as shown in every national poll and by the fact that he alienates every single voting bloc of the Republican coalition except for the religious right/Christian conservatives. And while they may have admirable aims, they do not represent a bloc of voters that can win an election. If they did, Pat Robertson would have been President already. Mitt Romney inspires absolutely zero enthusiasm in the Republican base or in any of its composite blocs except for the country club/wall street Republicans. But it is precisely their enthusiasm that makes every other segment of the Republican party feel blasé about him. The only positive trait that Mitt Romney has is that it is believed he can beat Obama. This is wrong. In fact, take away "Mitt can beat Obama" and what do his supporters have? Nothing.

Ron Paul, on the other hand, has an enthusiastic, energetic and very importantly, young following that would walk across burning shards of glass for their candidate. The vast majority of these supporters are Republicans. But whereas the other candidates are ONLY attractive to one segment of one party, Ron Paul attracts the following non-traditional GOP voters: civil libertarians who might typically vote democrat but refuse to support Obama because he signed the NDAA (and note only Ron Paul in the GOP race opposed it on its indefinite detention grounds); independent non-party followers who tend to be less conservative but view Obama as no better than any of the GOP candidates and view Paul as a party outsider who speaks to their concerns; the anti-war movement types who are typically democrat but again see no difference between Obama and the rest. But Paul's main foreign policy message of "bring our troops home" resonates with them; disaffected democrats that don't fall in any particular group but feel that Obama is a failure for not following through on campaign promises to: 1) close gitmo 2) prosecute wall street 3) end bush tax cuts 4) change the tone in Washington (hope and change!) and so on. There are many democrats who feel sold out by Obama for his cozy (crony) relationship with Wall Street and his continuation of Bush's foreign policy and domestic fiscal policy. These people will never consider any of the other 3 GOP candidates because what they hate about Obama is his similarity to Republicans. 

However, Ron Paul is not similar to any of them. He actually does represent hope and change and will create a whole new generation of what used to be called Reagan Democrats who defected to Reagan after the abysmal Carter administration. But this is a double-edged sword. The GOP has a chance to establish its base for the next 20+ years by embracing a Ron Paul candidacy or it will lose a generation of voters to the Democrat party. Those young, enthusiastic and energetic Paul supporters were in large part Obama supporters 4 years ago. Paul is the only chance to bring them into the GOP tent and deprive the Democrats of their numbers for years to come. But if the GOP stubbornly sticks to its marginalizing  tactics and dismisses these voters they will likely swear off the GOP for life. The GOP will then face its own extinction since its current base is quickly aging and dying off. 

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that it isn't just the "blue democrats" or independents that make up the Ron Paul support base. It's also lifelong Republicans (like myself) who are completely disenchanted with a party that massively grew the size of government for the 6 years they controlled all branches. The "small government" party that added Medicare Part D, grew the size of the Department of Education, created the monstrous Department of Homeland Security and the anti-Constitution Patriot Act. The "free market" party that bailed out the Too Big to Fail banks, bailed out the auto industry and "abandoned the free-market system" (to “save” it) as George W Bush said in 2008. For those of us Republicans who believe in a limited role for Government and free market principles, we see in Ron Paul a return to the values of Republicanism that made this country the shining city on a hill that Reagan spoke of. And for those who would say Reagan's values were "family values",  you must understand that the term didn't even rise to prominence until the second campaign of George HW Bush in 1992. The platform that Reagan ran on is more closely aligned to Ron Paul than any other candidate. 

To paraphrase a quote: Republicans have been subnormal for so long that when they finally act normal, people think they are abnormal. Ron Paul is a normal Republican. The GOP can't win without Ron Paul's supporters and it can't survive if it shuts them out. If, on election day, Ron Paul has to be written onto the ballot by voters then the GOP has already lost.