The real question that the Ron Paul candidacy poses for Democrats

[TheKentuckian]

128. It isn't being a racist that is putting wind into Paul's sails and you well know it.

You seem dedicated to avoiding the stances that give this clown traction and instead are focused on driving attention to his considerable negatives. A tactic that would have no necessity at all if the party was civil libertarian and anti-imperialist in its operating principles.

This ground should be held by the Democratic party, leaving the libertarian ideology unable to reasonate outside rightwing circles.
You keep focusing on the indivdual and ignoring the positions, it is the positions that have traction and by ceding the positions, an extreme right winger benefits from being the only "national brand" with any level of reconition as the only person even giving lip service (and largely consistent lip service over a number of years) to policy positions that are deeply held for many with no representation (phony as hell or not or conclusions arrived at by batshit reasoning or not).

Paul's dicey sanity and institutional racisim (personal bigotry being unimportant because he strives for a system with no protection from or remedy for such abuses) aren't important because he still gives air to good policy that is deeply important to people and in many cases integral to their personal ideologies.

You have to see the power of the attraction to the positions and push the party to disarm the far right libertarians by taking good ideological soil away from them.