The Liberty Papers

Ron Paul was in Lynchburg today speaking at Liberty University and there seemed to be some indication that his people are already looking at a third party run:

[T]he important thing is this: his staffers were collecting signatures for a Ron Paul presidential run in Virginia. They talked as if he will be on the ballot no matter what. This is good news for his supporters, bad news for McCain. Dr. Paul has continued to be coy about whether he will run as an independent, but I feel confident that he will.

We’ll see.

Personally, I’ve always doubted it because running as an independent would put his Congressional seat at risk, and he’s given every indication that he is running for re-election to Congress. More importantly, though, is how they’d be able to get on the ballot nationwide — it’s not an easy task for a third-party candidate. If he ran as a Libertarian, then he’d be able to access their ballot-access operation, though. Of course, none of it will matter if he continues to poll below 10% nationally — if that happens he won’t get invited to debates and won’t get a lot of free media coverage.

H/T: Jason Kenney

Update: As one comment notes, there’s also a report that there will not be a third-party run:

Ron Paul will not run as a third party candidate. I was on his national conference call last night and he said himself, “we don’t want to lose my congressional seat”. He said he would continue in the Republican Presidential primary as long as the money and support are there, just like he’s been saying. But he very specifically mentioned his congressional seat and he was taking care of various votes and other business in congress the last couple days to ensure he would be ready for the primary vote for his seat in Texas next month. Texas has the “LBJ” law which allows anyone to run for congress and President at the same time. This is what Dr. Paul is doing and he cannot run as a third party candidate for President while running as a Republican for congress, the Texas Republican party would toss him out.

This is exactly what I would expect, but why were they gathering signatures in Lynchburg ?