Am I the only one who is just turned off by this guy being a 72 year old millionaire from Texas who doesn't believe in evolution or gay marriage? I realise there's serious discontent towards current economical policies in the US, but the amount of young educated people behind Ron Paul suprises me almost daily.

After reading more on his stances, I would have to retract my original thought that he is a maybe. Instead he is a definite no. There is really no Republican I want to see as president. Maybe, McCain, maybe.

Can't stand the pushing of religious ideas on politics...

Ron Paul will look like a superstar if he can breach the top 3, but I doubt he’ll do better than 5th. Got to give him credit though; of all the candidates he has the fiercest supporters, hands down. The more fascinating scenario would be if he ends up a third party candidate. It’s a real toss up just which party he would draw more votes from. Overall, I’d guess Romney to be on top.

On the Democrat side, I don’t know that the electorate sees much in the way of policy differences among the top three candidates. Their positions don’t appear to vary greatly. The chief concern of Democrats is just getting somebody, anybody, into the White House. Electability trumps any policy differences in this one. That will probably put Obama over in Iowa. The Hillary campaign has been downplaying her odds there for a few weeks now. The last thing she needs is the media analyzing her vulnerability in what was supposed to be a sure bet.

That’s strange.  I saw an eerily similar post after spending days arguing the superiority of Mario Galaxy over Halo3 at the moveon.org forum.

I spoke to some people I know and trust in Iowa who are convinced Paul will end up around 11%. 

Can't win though...he'd get shot if he won I think.  Obama, Clinton, and Romney would face assassination attempts as well.

I'll admit up front I have not read this whole topic, I'm just going to throw in my two cents.

Ron Paul seems very much insane. Given all the bizarre and scary ideas he has, I am really surprised that he has so many young educated people backing him. The dude is just nuts.

See, this is what I see a lot from those who don't support Paul.  He's insane, bizzare, scary, and nuts -- but no reasons why you think so.  The only one of those I agree with, btw, is 'bizzare', and he's only bizzare relative to many of the other candidates, who are themselves bizzare relative to what I think is sensible.  What's so scary about Paul's ideas?  Why is he so nuts?

Its not so much that he is scary...its just he is by far the most unique of the candidates with the chance to pull of some sort of legendary upset.

Right now, the Republican position is "government has the right to interfere on moral issues, but not economic issues"

The current Democratic position is "government has the right to interfere on economic issues, but not moral issues"

The libertarian poistion is "government has the right to do what the Constitution says.  Anything less is anarchy, anything more is socialist or fascist in nature".

Personally, I resent the Republican position, but tend to meander between the libertarian and Democratic position.  My ideal candidate would be between the Democratic and Libertarian position.

He doesn't believe in evolution for one. We don't need a president that denies common scientific knowledge. That is scary to me.

It seems like a pretty long shot, but ron paul supporters seem awfully devout.. which means they are more likely to take off work, brave the cold weather and stay at the caucus.

An interesting site to look at would be rasmussenmarkets.com where you can buy or trade "stock" in candidates. Ron Paul doesn't even register on the site, which shows Huckabee slightly ahead. I don't know about the "futures market" portion of the site, but its polling is usually dead accurate.