Lew, this is why I respectfully disagree with Holmes. Yes, it’s great that he’s been in the debates, and a single one-on-one debate with McCain would make it all worth it. But I very much doubt this will happen. Why would they have another debate and invite Ron? They have already crowned McCain the winner.

Second, I really think this idea of recapturing the GOP is deeply flawed. The GOP has always been evil. It has always been for big government. I don’t want more Reagans, Bushes, Nixons, Eisenhowers, Hoovers, Roosevelts, McKinleys and Lincolns. Every single Republican president, save Harding (who was still a protectionst, prohibitionist with policies that helped aggravate the 1920s bubble) failed to shrink the federal government. Republicans don’t want liberty and free markets; they want war and redistributed taxation to the poor through nominal tax cuts and increased inflation. There’s no there there to recapture. Ron Paul is a hero of liberty, probably the greatest classical liberal statesman in US legislative history, but he is a total anomaly in the GOP and always has been. There’s absolutely no chance of getting the GOP to return to its small-government roots, because such roots never existed. Yes, there was the unusually great Bob Taft, but even he wasn’t nearly as libertarian as Ron is. I indeed find it an insult to Ron to compare him to practically anyone in the history of the Republican Party.

I voted for Ron Paul on Tuesday. I registered Republican and signed up to be a delegate. But let’s not kid ourselves. The LP might have lots of problems, but the GOP is a coalition of murder-happy, central bankmongering police statists and we probably have more hope turning the Democrats back to its Jeffersonian, Clevelandian heritage than we do in returning the other party to a set of principles that it has never upheld, except rhetorically so as to blindside naive voters, give libertarian cover to their fascism and dirty the good name of free markets and individual liberty.