I completely respect Ron Paul. It's great to see a Republican that's actually a conservative and not a neo-con (which has nothing to do with conservative values at all!) Unfortunately, I could never vote for Ron Paul.

Any candidate who is against the idea of the government helping it's own people will never get my vote. I like the idea of tax funded education and roads. All people should pay their fair share, not just those who happen to feel like it.

I wish Ron Paul luck though. I'm hoping that he can get enough Republican voters to come back and join us here in reality. That party's been badly damaged.

Ron Paul is very much to the right on the liberal/conservative scale, and very much to the left on the libertarian/authoritarian scale.  The neo-conservatives tend to be to the right on the authoritarian scale.  It's as takeru51 said, Paul is a true conservative and not a neocon.

I prefer to think of politics as a two dimensional graph with social and economical issues as one axis, and basically small/big government as the other, rather than a one dimensional one with just left and right. It's still a gross simplification of a complex issue, but beats every political discussion taking five times as long because of how long it takes to explain your views. =P

The way I see it, Bush has a big government with right wing policies, Ron Paul wants a small government with right wing policies, and I prefer a big government with left wing policies. All of your candidates are pretty far right to me, but Obama seems like the closest to me, and a very decent chap to boot.

He is a great candidate, if you want to get rid of the public education system....

Those initiatives are good. But Paul's biggest ones are END THE FEDERAL RESERVE and BRING BACK THE GOLD STANDARD.

That would single handedly remove the need for all this ridiculous wealth distribution and phoney wars/leaders.

Too bad Paul will never win the vote. The corrupt media outlets have already played up Clinton as the obvious winner, and it sucks. The sheeple will follow the news and vote for Clinton, even if they have no ideas what her policies are. God damn, Americans are so damn easy to manipulate.

Paul would not be able to disband the public education system, that's something Congress would have to do.  But Paul would probably refuse to sign any bills for new programs like No Child Left Behind which would be a good thing, IMO.

People have to realize, all these things Paul is in favor of like removing the Federal Reserve, the IRS, the public school system, are not things that a President can just snap his fingers and have done.  But he can prevent them from expanding to some degree, and it's possible that he could promote some scaling back of these programs.

According to that site I am dead center Libertarian.

Just for the record I agree with the points posted in the OP.  I wish more people would stop thinking about the short term.  In generations past people made sacrifices so that things could be better in the future, and today it seems like we are against personal sacrifice to secure and maintain our freedoms.

I honestly don't understand how you can put the future and security of our nation ahead of men and woman who come to this country illegally.  They are the ones who need to make the sacrifice here.  But these illegal immigrants are correct in the fact that we do need to fix our system, and I don't think a system would matter unless we can get the border under control and get the people who are already here illegally back to where they belong.

I must admit I am really tired of this "compassion" argument.  I have compassion for people who find themselves in a difficult situation through little or no fault of their own.  I do not have compassion for people who put themselves in a difficult situation knowing full well that they will be able to take advantage of the "compassion" of others. And let me stop you before you play the "they are just trying to make a better life for their children!" card. Mexico is not so bad that people are unable to live, work and survive there.  And so I once again say I have no sympathy for people unwilling to immigrate legally. But like I said above, we do need to fix our process and get rid of the bureaucracy, but that doesn't mean an opening of the flood gates.

Pro-Wall
Pro-Deportation
Pro-Sovereignty

But I also think we can achieve those things without de-humanizing and ruining the lives of millions of people.  For instance, the government gives airlines huge handouts (which I loathe), why not instead of giving the airline a handout, purchase tickets to fly these folks back home?  I don't think I have ever heard a politician brainstorm a solution to two problems like that, and that saddens me more than anything.