In regards to Ron Paul and his 20-30 something internet fanbase: That age group has lived basically their entire life watching two parties fight and run the country into the ground. They probably voted for Obama or at the very least were intrigued by his anti-Wall Street stance. They've graduated from college in the past decade and have no other option but to work a corporate dead end job to try to live a shadow of whatever the American dream is these days. So, while I wouldn't vote for Ron Paul, you're blind to state of American youth if you don't understand why they rally around him.
What I can't believe is that more older conservatives don't love him. My dad likes him a lot and he's a 60 year old moderate who's voted Democrat the past 20 years because he's rational enough to know how terrible neo-conservatism is. You don't have to like Ron Paul's ideas and you don't have to vote for him, but we could do a lot worse and have done a lot worse than Ron Paul as the Republican nominee. At least his campaign is based on ideas, right?
Two reasons:
1. He's perceived to be weak in the area of national defense, which is a huge black eye against him in the minds of many conservatives. The isolationist foreign policy that Paul espouses may have won him favor in the Republican Party of 70 years ago. But in the hawkish GOP of today, it's rendered him a pariah.
2. Rightly or wrongly, he's perceived to be on the wrong side of certain social and cultural issues (i.e. marijuana decriminalization, prostitution, etc.) While social issues aren't going to dominate this coming election cycle (as they did in 2000 and 2004), the social conservatives still wield a great deal of influence in the Republican Party. And his stances on those issues aren't going to win him many supporters within the socially conservative wing of the GOP.
Those two things seem to be the principal points of contention when it comes to Ron Paul. At least that's what I've gathered from reading various conservative blogs over the last few years.
