I'm impressed with the little bit I've watched of Ron Paul's event today. The mainstream press has been really unfair, basically ignoring him and his followers as an insane irrelevant group with radial views. I'm not a supporter of Ron Paul, but his views aren't insane or incoherent. I think the modern U.S. media just isn't equipped to handle third parties; they're used to framing political issues by just presenting the Democrats' position and the Republicans' position. Sometimes, there's a legitimate third view.
In a broad sense, you can break down policy issues into three categories: economic, social, foreign. Generally, most Democrats are for more socialist economic policies, liberal social policies, and dovish foreign policies; most Republicans are in favor of lower taxes and market-based economic policies, conservative social policies, and hawkish foreign policies. Of course, there's no reason why those three things should always be linked together. Ron Paul is basically in agreement with the rest of the Republicans in regards to two of the three categories, but has opposite views on foreign policy. Essentially, he's the Republican version of Joe Lieberman.
A lot of people have written about the "Reagan coalition" and pointed out that the Republican party could fall apart if the fiscal conservatives, evangelicals, and neocons can't all stick together. Nobody seems to mention that the Democrats' coalition is just as flimsy. There are plenty of union members who vote for Democrats just because of economic issues, plenty of people troubled by the Iraq war who will vote for the Democrats just because of that issue, and plenty of people who vote for Democrats just because they feel strongly about the right to choose an abortion and equal rights for gays. Those latter two groups are a little hard to identify, which is probably why nobody talks about them. But, I certainly know people who are strongly pro-choice, but don't agree with the Democrats on taxes or Iraq. And people who are strongly against the war, but otherwise agree with the Republicans.
Look, the two-party system has served us very well, but it distorts things in some ways. Would we be better served by a multi-party system that required parties to build coalitions?
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