Do it, Ron!

There has been a lot of discussion about the possibility of a Ron Paul independent/3rd Party/Libertarian run for President if he does not get the Republican Nomination, which at this point looks likely. Today, new poling numbers from Rasmussen, arguably the best name in the polling business around, that more than justify such a run.

In short, these polls plot three different scenarios of a race involving Ron Paul and Mike Bloomberg as independent/3rd Party candidates: Romney as the Republican Nominee, Obama as the Democratic Nominee; Romney as the Republican Nominee, Clinton as the Democratic Nominee; and Obama as the Democratic Nominee, McCain as the Republican Nominee. The numbers are, needless to say, striking, and both worrisome for the Republican Party and quite discouraging for Mike Bloomberg. They are as follows:

With Obama and Romney:

Obama 42%
Romney 30%
Paul 8%
Bloomberg 6%

With Clinton and Romney

Clinton 46%
Romney 32%
Paul 7%
Bloomberg 7%

In both those scenarios, Paul and Bloomberg are statistically tied, but Paul is ahead. The fact that he is still able to draw this much support with another well-known 3rd Party candidate in the race is quite telling.

However, this doesn't even begin to tell the story. Here are the numbers in the scenario that I personally think will be most likely from the Democratic and Republican perspective:

With Obama and McCain:

Obama 40%
McCain 33%
Paul 11%
Bloomberg 5%

McCain and Obama are, quite simply, surging toward their nominations. McCain has racked two of the historical big three, New Hampshire and South Carolina, and he's topped it off with a huge win tonight in the most demographically diverse (and CLOSED) primary in the GOP contest this year: Florida. With the Giuliani endorsement coming, I just don't see how he can be stopped in the huge delegate states. Huckabee will probably win the southern states, but McCain has shown he can do extremely well there already with wins in South Carolina and Florida. It's POSSIBLE that the anti-McCain contingent in the party, which is certainly strong, will mobilize and try to stop him, but they've already failed in South Carolina and Florida. Romney will still rack up some delegates, and he'll probably win a few more states, but the evidence suggests that McCain is set to take the big delegates states of California and New York. With the Giuliani endorsement (I'm sensing an AHNULD endorsement will come with it in Cali), this should pretty much seal the deal. Lot's of my fellow Paulites are hoping for a brokered convention, but I suspect there would be some type of deal in the works (particularly between McCain and Huckabee) to prevent this from happening and us from enacting our 2nd ballot strategy. I think a McCain-Huckabee ticket is a safe assumption from the Republican side at this point, especially with Lieberman saying today he wouldn't run as Veep again on the GOP ticket with McCain.

Obama has shown that he can energize and turn out his base, the black community, with a monster of a win in South Carolina that positively shocked everyone and blew the polls out of the water. I just don't see how he can be stopped; Hillary's biggest asset, Bill, has turned out to be a net negative for her. She can't make the electability case anymore, because Obama is besting her in head-to-head matchups in polls. Hillary may win more states on Super Tuesday (although I dispute this is as certain as the pundits are making it out to be), but with all of the heavily black-populated areas in states next Tuesday, it's quite possible (I'd argue probable) that Obama will come away with more delegates. Even in the event of a brokered Democratic Convention, I think we can safely say that Edwards would release his delegates to Obama. Hillary's got no energy; Obama's got it all. Obama will be the Democratic Nominee.

This is Paul's time to strike to promote the liberty movement. Obama and McCain are two candidates who can be hit hard on issues relevant to the liberty movement. McCain has made the "100 years" declaration in Iraq, and Obama can't make the commitment to get out before 2012. Furthermore, Obama has a voting record on Civil Liberties that is less than sterling: he voted for the Real ID, and he voted for the Patriot Act reauthorization. Paul will be able to draw substantially from anti-war voters in the Democratic Party who will not wait another 4 years for a withdrawal and will not stand for a candidate who essentially supports the creation of a police state. Furthermore, McCain has done little to support the notion that he is a small government conservative: he voted against both Bush tax cuts, he campaigned in 2000 on a prescription drug benefit for senior citizens, he is a co-author of the McCain-Lieberman bill on greenhouse gas reductions that will impose a serious cost, he is using his earmark crusade, which will do NOTHING to resolve our fiscal problems since funds will be distributed by the executive branch and not Congress, as a smoke-and-mirrors campaign for fiscal conservatives. Add to that the addition of Tax Hike Mike as a potential Veep, and you have a match made in hell for small government and fiscal conservatives still in the Republican Party. From these sources, Paul will be able to substantially build his libertarian base, which we can assume in a general would be a substantial amount of the 20% of the voting populace estimated to be libertarian by CATO, and he would certainly be able to get into the debates in October with more than 15% support in polls.

I am a Republican. I've been a registered Republican as long as I've been a registered voter. But my commitment is to my principle, and my principle is the defense of liberty and small government. These are, of course, the stated principles of the Republican Party. If the Republican Party is willing to nominate not just a Presidential candidate, but a Vice Presidential candidate, who is virtually indistinguishable from the Democratic nominee on so many issues regarding economic and individual liberty, then the Republican Party deserves to be punished for nominating a candidate that fails the test twice in a row and for not hearing the message in the Midterm Congressional elections. Ron Paul is the leader of the Liberty movement right now. If he splits and runs as a Third Party candidate due to the Republican Party being too stupid and unprincipled to nominate him, then I will have no choice but to support him.