He raised over 4 million dollars in a single day, he has captured the internet momentum, and he excites Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.  The only thing between Ron Paul and the White House seems to be the Republican Primaries.  He won't win.  It's hard to say right now who will win.  But it's easy to predict those who don't have a chance.   The Republican party rank and file are not inclined to support a candidate who wishes to withdrawal immediately from Iraq.  And Dr. Paul has less than two months to change their minds.  Alas, this is only the first of his hurdles.
He is clearly a candidate outside the mainstream of either party.  Historically these maverick candidates run as third party alternatives.  And they lose the race, and cost the party they're most closely aligned with the election. 
While most of the candidates at U4Prez.com identify themselves as "independent", and a growing number of average Americans are labeling themselves that way, when November comes, they vote either Democrat or Republican.

How can he win?
Ron Paul has managed to build a nice sized war chest.  His only chance is to use that money in the early primary states, and build his case for winning these races, and building momentum.  I believe he can maintain his isolationist tendencies, but he must temper it with a dose of reality.  He must build a case, and then deliver a message of balance in foreign relations.   Men and nations have warred for thousands of years.  When a world power walks off the stage of the international theater, the vacuum is filled by despots and tyrants.
When this occurs there are two results, one immediate and one long term.  The immediate result is that the people living under these tyrants see a deterioration in their standard of living, and exercise of freedom.  A few years later the people become restless, and the tyrant begins a war to distract, or to increase his cash flow and quiet the masses.  With the balance of power corrupted by isolationism, the tyrant gains strength. 
Adventurism in foreign policy creates a slope just as slippery. This is more so the case in the United States right now than in any other world power since the Spanish empire when money flowed into the country through one port in silver ingots, and out the other side of the Iberian peninsula in warships. 

This is an important point for us, and it's rarely explained well, so let me take a stab at it.
When Ron Paul says we are importing debt and inflation he isn't just yakking.   When a nation  brings in money, or "creates money" without increasing productivity, the supply of money goes up.  Without a corresponding increase in productivity (in manufacturing goods or services) the money must be spent on buying things from other countries, or paying more for the things produced locally. Money rarely idles.  In today's world, this increases the manufacturing and service productivity of countries like China and India.  When our capacity to produce goods and services decreases the suppliers of these goods and services can increase the price.  So we simply borrow money to keep the good times going.  Now we are all flush with cash (most of it fiat) but we need to keep building things.  So we build warships and airplanes, and we pay soldiers to go protect our interests.  This compounds the problem because now we are taking a portion of our productivity, and shipping it right back out to another country to be destroyed, or do the destroying.  This doesn't help your standard of living, or increase your economic security.  After  a few decades this pattern reveals itself to the producers. We've become the middle man adding nothing to the product, just skimming off the top.  When the loophole is closed the system collapses under its own inflationary weight.


The question concerning Paul is thus, "Is the message wrong, or is it the principal?"

What people hear from Paul is  isolationism.  Which plays well among college history professors, and people making minimum wage.  The rest of the country, having more skin invested in the game, is a bit more skeptical.  Insulating ourselves from the realities of the world at large, doesn't change the world.    And rather soon the world comes knocking at your door to remind you of the fact that you have something someone else wants.
Ron Paul understands this, and I don't believe for a moment that he would be an ostrich like isolationist.  But to win the hearts, minds and votes of the Republican party, he must appeal to a higher level of intellect, and explain where exactly the balancing point rests. 

In Iraq, we went to war for a few reasons.  Some of them sound, some not.  If the Bush administration really believed Sadaam was building weapons of mass destruction, he had a duty to stop it.  Nothing to see here, move along.  This is simply the exercise of power to secure our peace. If Bush felt that Sadaam was harboring and aiding our enemies; again, remove the problem, nothing new under the sun.
The problem comes about with nation building.  And here, we need to get right down to the gut of the issue.  The American people really don't feel a responsibility to create a free market capitalist democracy in every nation we fight.
We came and removed the tyrant. We lingered around awhile to allow Iraq to build a semi-functional government.  And then we found out that there were some internal issues (that are pretty big) and some internal fighting that still needs to be worked out. Good luck with that, let us know if we can help, but we're packing up our bags and going home.

This is a message that both Republicans and Democrats can understand.  And this is historically the way wars are fought.  So what is corrupting this pattern?
The myth of the worlds' police force.
When you read that the world is small, you are reading the opinion of someone who has travelled the world, and stayed at all the best hotels, and eaten at the best restaurants.  The lobby of the Sheraton hotel in Podunk Arkansas, doesn't look much different than the lobby in the hotel in Bangalore India.  But the trailer park thirty miles from downtown Podunk, and the slums of Calcutta, are very different indeed.  And the mindset of the average citizens of Fallujah, Bejing, Wajir, Kenya, and Philadelphia, PA are also very different.  When we try to "police" the world, we are trying to impose our morality, and view of the world on a culture as diverse as the universe itself.  In short, It ain't gonna work.
Now we are starting to get to a message Ron Paul can embrace.  But we're still left with one question.  "Where is the balance?"  To say it lies within the interests of The United States, is not only simplistic, it's a cop out.

How do we condense this to Ron Paul's big picture?  He knows we can't keep importing debt, inflation without destroying the economic vitality of the country.  The surest way to do this is to disentangle ourselves from the interests of every nation we trade with.  This is where he gets painted with the isolationists brush.  At the same time, we must engage enough to keep the trade routes that we depend accessible to us, and our trading partners.
The balance is not external, it is internal.  The more self sufficient we are economically, the less our need to import debt, and the less our need to send our troops overseas to "stabilize" various regions of the world.

Can Ron Paul win?
Yes, but he'll need to be less emotional and more intellectual in his approach. This can't be done in a "debate" of sound bites.  He'll need to condense his message of self sufficiency in to no  more than six or seven, one minute advertisements, and then run them until he is flat broke.

Of course he'll also need to speak much better than I write.