Only Ron Paul can win the election for the Republicans

by Roland Hulme

The Republicans will lose the 2012 Presidential Election - unless they nominate Ron Paul.

Love him or hate him, only R. Paul can win.

Winning a presidential election is easy. You just need to win more votes in more states than your opponent.

For the GOP, a roadmap to victory is already in place. All they need to do is identify who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and try to draw those voters towards a Republican candidate.

A swing of just a few percentage points could make all the difference in November.

But despite the simplicity and transparancy of this formula, it seems the Republicans are eager to throw their chances of election victory away in 2012.

In Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, primary season has heated up; and it seems clear that the Republican old guard have already decided who their 2012 candidate will be regardless of what the Republican voters actually say.

They've decided to root for Mitt Romney; and in doing so have lost the election even before it begins.

Mitt Romney cannot stand convincingly against Barack Obama.

He cannot appeal to the grass roots movements like the Tea Party and the Occupy movement because he comes from such a privileged background and is so entrenched in the corrupt system Americans are losing patience with.

He cannot credibly argue for the repeal of the lauded "Obamacare" health care reform because it was modeled on a system he himself introduced while governor of Massachusetts.  

He cannot tout himself as a champion of cutting taxes, when he has a record for raising taxes by $300 million as governor; mostly through slyly redefining fees and tariffs.

Mitt Romney's campaign is dead in the water before it even begins.

The truth be told, every other potential Republican candidate faces the same issue. They might talk tough, but not one of them has the credentials to put together a serious campaign against Barack Obama - with one notable exception.

Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is the only candidate who could beat Barack Obama; and he could do it by a landslide.

Why? Because he's the only candidate who will draw Democratic and Independent voters away from Barack Obama and make them tick the GOP box on election day.

There's proof. Astonishing proof. The fact that Ron Paul placed 2nd in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire; with almost 20% of the vote.

Just in case you missed the significance of that statement, it means Ron Paul came in second place in both the Republican and Democratic primaries in the state.

The GOP elite and the mainstream media have tried every trick in the book to squish news of Ron Paul's powerful support - with CNN even claiming that Jon Huntsman was the "real" 2nd place victor in New Hampshire "once you took Ron Paul out of it."

But the fact is you can't "take Ron Paul out of it." That's not how democracy works.

From a personal perspective, I'm not even sure I'm that much of a fan of Ron Paul and his policies! But I do know that only he has the ammunition to bring 2012 home for the Republicans - and it seems they're terrified of acknowledging that fact.

Look at it this way - if Ron Paul won the Republican primary, most - if not all - Republicans would support him in preference to Barack Obama.

Then, if the New Hampshire democratic primary was even remotely representative of America as a whole (and even with a 75% margin of error in either direction) enough Democrats and Independents would support him to easily bring home victory.

Whether that would be a good thing or not remains to be seen - one of the reasons the Republican old guard are so terrified of Ron Paul is precisely why he's so popular with voters on both sides of the political spectrum - he's a threat to the status quo.

But that's the price victory comes at - which is precisely why the Republicans will do everything they can to ensure Ron Paul doesn't win the GOP primary - even if it costs them the election.

And that's important.

Registered Republicans need to understand that mindset. In years to come, and in future presidential elections, we all need to remember than when Republicans had the means to achieve almost certain victory, they threw it away.

Instead, they'll run mainstream muppet Mitt Romney. They'll run him on a campaign of "vote for Mitt, because he's not Obama." And they'll lose, just like the Democrats did in 2004 when they ran John Kerry under the campaign: "Vote for Kerry, because he's not Bush."

In 2004, I supported the reelection of George W. Bush for precisely that reason - and it's why I'll vote for Barack Obama in 2012 rather than swallow the bitter-tasting poison that the Republican party elite is trying to spoon-feed their core electorate.

"Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know yourself but not your enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know thy enemy but not yourself, wallow in defeat every time."

Sun Tzu, the Art of War