Here's how I feel about it. If Mitt Romney is the nominee, it's better to have a Paul in the White House than no Paul at all. I think if Rand Paul is Romney's running mate, Ron Paul would endorse this ticket. Most Ron Paul followers would listen to Ron Paul, like myself. This would put the libertarian movement in the white house. You know that Rand would influence policy decisions and that would be a great thing.
If Ron Paul doesn't get the nomination, I would vote for a Romney/Rand Paul ticket.
It's also possible that some one can influence me on why I'm wrong so I would listen to what any one has to say about this.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but let me give you the counter-arguments.
The vice-president has relatively little mandated influence in our government. With Rand, it makes even less sense, as he may have more real political influence in the Senate than he does as Vice President.
I grant that he would be more in the public eye, but there would be a very difficult tension with Romney (let alone Gingrich!) when their views are so different. I grant that Rand could do this more successfully than Ron.
In return for Rand becoming the VP, most Ron Paul fans would vote Republican instead of Libertarian, and basically skip over our efforts to work on other projects to break the 2 party duopoly.
Even if Romney was a disaster, but we helped him win, he would be the Republican nominee in 2016. So, no Rand Paul presidential run at that time.
There are counter-arguments to this, especially when concessions are more inclusive, like who will be the next Fed Chairman. But I'm not sold on that either, and here is an important reason why:
The Fed Chairman can precipitate a boatload of pain on the economy. If this is not done at the same time that the government is cutting spending and regulations and easing over our relations with creditors like China and so forth by stepping back from being the world's policeman, it will make the process much worse.
Paul Volcker was the most hated Fed Chairman in history back in the early 1980s, and there were moves to impeach him. The same could easily happen with Ron. Frankly, Ron as Fed Chairman could be the most hated individual in America, because he would be in control of only part of the process of fixing things.
In a lot of ways, I would frankly rather build up the movement, let the economy collapse in say 2014 or 2015 during Obama's second term, then be ready to move in and fix it.