Does Ron Paul Matter?

I'm no expert, but my guess is Paul's supporters can be divided into three groups: constitutional federalists, libertarian hippies, and people who just like Ron Paul. Of the three, only the former can be expected to vote for [a Republican] who isn't Ron Paul or his son.
-Me, a week or so ago.

I've looked back over some of my older posts and realized that if you were a Ron Paul supporter, you might think I'm slagging your hero a lot. I said he doesn't count as a candidate for the Not-Romney contest, and I gave an award for Favorite Quote From Someone Other Than Ron Paul at the most recent debate.

Fair enough. I did. I actually didn't mean any disrespect. I'll explain the quote thing first: Ron Paul's a virtual compendium of anti-government one-liners, so if I included his quotes in that contest, he'd almost always win. My favorite quote of that entire debate was either Ron Paul's line about sending politicians to the moon, or Ron Paul lightly ribbing Blitzer about age discrimination, or Ron Paul, well, being Ron Paul.

Why doesn't Ron Paul count as a candidate for the Not-Romney contest? Because when Santorum leaves the race, his supporters will go to Newt. If Newt leaves the race, his supporters will go to Santorum. If/when Ron Paul leaves the race, his supporters will... oh...

Well, as I insinuated in the quote at the top of the page, most of them will follow him into third-party oblivion (and if you're a Ron Paul fan and you're offended by that, well, sorry, but the third-party oblivion thing is true, and you are welcome to prove me wrong about the "follow him" part). The ones that don't? They're not going to go for the social conservative (Santorum) and I doubt they'll go for the big-idea big-government Gingrich. Romney's paid more lip service to federalism than Santorum and Gingrich combined; my guess is most of Paul's fans will go to him. That's why I think Ron Paul doesn't count as a potential Not-Romney.

Finally, does Ron Paul matter?

Oh, hell yes.

His presence on that stage is a reminder that people really do mean it when they say they want a smaller government, even if their spokesman is prone to the occasional bout of cantankerousness. And what a spokesman he is. You know in advance that every answer is going to be "reduce the size of the government" or "stop policing the world," and you still watch him go.