Ron Paul, "Paulites" and the future of the Republican Party

I'm going to start out by saying I have quite a few friends, some good friends, who supported Ron Paul during his run for president. Try as I may to dissuade them for voting for someone who was so clearly deranged, they got excited anyway and one even claimed she was going to Re-Register as a republican in order to vote for him (think about that for a second). Paul, like I was convinced he would, flamed out early on but stayed in the race due to his own misguided beliefs that he was the last true republican in a party of apostates. It has been suggested, that since Paul raised huge sums of money and motivated a large number of voters to vote for a republican candidate that had never done so before, we should give a serious look to his platform, because by gum, he's got something going for him!

Short Answer- No

Long Answer- Hell No.

Unless we build a giant army of Ron Paul clones to populate the senate and house (something Ron Paul would oppose because of his strong pro-life views), the overwhelming majority of these supporters are already democrats. I'll admit that among there were some disaffected far-right republicans on his side who basically fell into the Pat Buchanan mold of non-interventionism, but we all know the primary reason he caught on with young people was...

Drugs. Obscene amounts of drugs. He even did an interview with "High Times" in 1988 when he ran on the libertarian party ticket for president. The man wants to make everything, and I mean EVERYTHING legal. This is the issue and the War are the two issues that Ron Paul supporters care about the most and they are two issues that the Republican Party cannot shift on.

Pauls supporters by and large are Liberal or "Liberaltarian" voters who belong to the democratic party anyway and will never support non-paulite republicans. They are a waste of our time and effort to go after because they fundamentally agree with the democrats on most things.

So what shall we republicans do? Shall we add Pro-Stoner and Anti-War planks to the party platform in order to roll the dice on America's future and try to pick up a group of people that don't vote anyway? Or shall we back our Hippie loathing War Hero candidate and keep America safe and prosperous into the future? It's not exactly a tough choice...