Why do you think the right wing talk show pundits are fighting tooth and nail to trash the man at every opportunity when he is clearly winning the polls?
Insofar as they do, there are two reasons.
1. They don't agree with his politics.
2. They think he can't beat whomever the Democrats put forward in November 2008.
I don't think he can win because he doesn't appear to be someone who can present a positive message in a way that gets a good number of the American people fired up. Not just nodding in agreement, fired up.
That's a big part of winning the Presidential election, or of getting votes for a third-party candidate.
Who could do that?
JFK, Reagan, Clinton (and Perot who nose-dived at the end but still swung the election).
Who couldn't, but beat other uninspiring or despised opponents? Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Bush II.
The Democrats will have a candidate who can stump, this time around. There won't be a Kerry or a Gore to beat. Bush II has dragged down the GOP and perceptions of conservatism (mainstream libertarianism along with it, in terms of vote-getting power). A candidate who can't get people excited means the Democrats have this one in the bag. They're the default winners, going into it, and no analyst denies that. All they have to do is shut up and win, unless there's someone who will FIGHT to win on the other side.
This guy will fight:
http://www.bobkrumm.com/blog/2007/05/15/fred-thompson-a-most-unusual-candidate/
Interesting OODA Loop commentary.
Paul isn't that kind of a fighter. He might be on the right side of things, but I don't see that he's the sort of take-no-prisoners fighter that it will take to beat the Democrats in an election that is truly theirs to lose.
That's my opinion. It's not defeatism. It's not bashing Ron Paul. Saying that a great scientist can't play the piano, or a great blues musician knows nothing about mapping the human genome is hardly bashing a person.
I might be wrong. But I'm trying to be realistic, too.