John Hawkins of Right Wing News and Conservative Grapevine makes his case against the Ron Paul candidacy in this week's column over at Townhall.com.

After noting Paul's flirtations with Trutherism, NAU conspiracism, and isolationism (among other things), He really gets to the heart of the matter in the final point of his column.

#9) Ron Paul is the single, least electable major candidate running for the presidency in either party: Libertarianism simply is not considered to be a mainstream political philosophy in the United States by most Americans. That's why the Libertarian candidate in 2004, Michael Badnarik, only pulled .3% of the vote. Even more notably, Ron Paul only pulled .47% of the vote when he ran at the top of the Libertarian ticket in 1988. Granted, Paul would do considerably better than that if he ran at the top of the Republican Party ticket, but it's hard to imagine his winning more than, say 35%, of the national vote and a state or two -- even if he were very lucky. In other words, having Ron Paul as the GOP nominee would absolutely guarantee the Democratic nominee a Reaganesque sweep in the election.

Now I don't know that I entirely agree with the assessment that he is the least electable major candidate -- I think that the American people would be more inclined to send Dennis Kucinich back to keep billy goats from crossing his bridge -- but Hawkins is correct in pointing out that the American people would not accept much of what Ron Paul stands for. Even in his district, he maintains his hold less because his constituents are in lockstep with him than because he is an incumbent with a war chest drawn from a national base who is therefore able to discourage primary challenges.