Like I said: he's not actually a candidate because he doesn't want to be president bad enough to be willing to pay the price. The price being to adapt his views and statements to cater to the voters' taste. Some candidates compromise more than others, give up more of their beliefs than others, but any serious candidate has to compromise rather a lot. Paul doesn't want to; he cares more about being consistent and true to himself than he cares about becoming president. As long as that's the case, he won't *be* president.

The Republican field is hopelessly divided, and Paul has the advantage that his fans tend to be the most loyal by far, and aren't very likely to run from one flavor of the week to the next, like so many of the Republican voters. But as Random Thoughts points out below, Paul's views on numerous issues are so far from the mainstream that his negative ratings are far higher than most other candidates' - most of the people who aren't already for him are very unlikely to ever get there. Iowa is massively biased towards candidates with particularly loyal followings, what with the caucus system. NH is not, but hardly representative for the country as a whole - there's a reason why that one project (whose name escapes me, sorry) chose NH as the state to found its Libertarian republic in.

That is extremely unlikely. If Ron Paul does get the nomination, and if he continues to stand by all of his key stances, the Republican party will get the soundest beating it's gotten since Barry Goldwater, or quite probably even worse. Being admired for your honesty and integrity is all good and well, but it won't compensate for having crazy policies, and as noted before, Paul's combination of stances is such as to make just about everybody find at least one of his stances crazy. There are definitely some independents and some Democrats who are attracted to Paul - but you'll forgive me for saying most of them are attracted either because they realize he'll never be a viable candidate anyway, or because they aren't aware of some of his stances. Or because they're foreigners - Paul's status as cult hero in student circles isn't limited to the US.

Agreed about Huntsman, I think, but I really wouldn't be too sure Obama will have such an easy time with Romney. Or even with Gingrich, should he make it there. The other two, agreed.

One would think that your current President was the perfect demonstration of how vital political skills and knowing how to reach compromises with Congress are for a president.

A large part of the experiment is of course in the war between the president and his own party's Congress that would ensue, and in seeing how much a president can get done in opposition to Congress. You may have seen one of his opponents point out that "the policies of Paul that I like are the ones he couldn't pass anyway, while he could pass the ones I dislike on day one"; while I suspect my view of which policies I like and dislike is rather different, there may still be some truth to the point.