I think Romney WILL get the GOP nomination, RP is too extreme for the moderate voters in the party...heck, even most of the GOP voters I know personally (including my father) refuse to vote for Ron Paul, so turned off are they by his extremist stance on issues (and DON'T tell me why they should totally vote for RP and how awesome he is and why he's the greatest thing since Jefferson--he is NOT, I consider him a piss-poor inheritor of the Jefferson mantle, but to each his own, whatever--as, after all...*I* wouldn't tell my GOP friends, would I, being an Obama-booster?) ;)

BUT...

Roosevelt ran as a 3rd party candidate...Ross Perot did, too, it CAN be done...

But neither Perot nor Roosevelt in 1912 won, and the Split of 1912 really did allow Wilson to become the first Democrat president in DECADES...I mean, the GOP had the White House locked up for decades after Lincoln, excepting A. Johnson and Alexander (and look what a great job they did, all those memorable presidents, minus Roosevelt, of course, they sort of were...at 3:46...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8jOWWsSb_g)

And Wilson won, in part because of the Split, and oh, how that changed US AND World History (want to be the US wouldn't have jumped right into WWI in 1914 if Rough Rider Roosevelt, not Wilson, had been in Office? Not a slam against Wilson or a bonus to Roosevelt, just a thought, how different the rest f the century might have unfolded, if Roosevelt was Roosevelt, entered WWI in 1914, and the war turned out differently, as it surely would have then.)

SO!

Could Ron Paul, ever the radical but with a strong core of followers--*apparently!*--stage a 3rd party campaign if, as I predict, he's NOT the GOP candidate, and if he does...would that split the vote to allow an Obama victory?