Perfect President

[Donerail]

We will never have someone who appeals to everybody; however, I think we could have someone who appeals to nobody, making their opponent appeal to everybody. IE: President Barack Obama (D) vs Rep. Todd Akin (R).

[Donerail]

We will never have someone who appeals to everybody; however, I think we could have someone who appeals to nobody, making their opponent appeal to everybody. IE: President Barack Obama (D) vs Rep. Todd Akin (R).

See, Akin is probably going to lose his race, but he'll still pull 40% or so of the vote. Which is enough to win a few states on a presidential level. We need someone thoroughly unacceptable to members of both parties. I nominate Ron Paul.

Except Paul is thoroughly acceptable to members of both parties, simply not the party establishment.

[Donerail]

Except Paul is thoroughly acceptable to members of both parties, simply not the party establishment.

Ahaha, what. Polling has shown that is clearly not the case. For one, a horde of Democrats are not going to crossover to Paul. Even Democrats who have a favorable opinion are not going to vote for their own guy (unless he is thoroughly unacceptable, which is very unlikely). And even 1/3rd of Republicans crossing over (and very depressed Republican turnout), should probably give a mainstream Democrat a landslide victory. Plus, independent voters will probably to turn away because there's literally so much dirt on RP. The only reason his favorability is even that high is because nobody in the GOP primary bothered attacking RP because he had no chance of winning.

A popular Democrat (think Bill Clinton circa 1996), has a decent shot of winning every state over RP. Though it's not a certainty. I do suppose it's possible one of those libertarian-leaning, heavily Republican states (Wyoming?) to narrowly vote for Paul.

Polling has shown that this very clearly is the case. If he is the Republican candidate, Republicans will vote for him, and Democrats who actually care about things like drug policy reform and a sane foreign policy would possibly cross over, and independents certainly would (and you discount independents for no reason whatsoever). Paul could win at least 12 states, bare minimum.

[Donerail]

As said, polling probably overstates Ron Paul's position because nobody actually attacks Ron Paul. It's like punching a daruma. There's no point. Really, there'd be so many attack ads flying around. Not to mention that whoever is the non-Ron Paul candidate will probably get drowned in huge amounts of donations and will probably have billions of dollars to play those ads.

Proving that libertarianism wouldn't actually benefit large corporations like so many claim?