Why the Ron Paul movement stumbled

Whether you liked him or not, the Ron Paul campaign made a splash in the GOP primary, but why only a splash and not a tidal wave? He had a large, vocal, supportive base. He raised record amounts of campaign funding, and he had a solid message, reduce the bloated federal government, reduce federal spending, and return to the constitution. He supported gun rights, he was pro life, he opposed government spying on it's own citizens. So, what happened?

As someone who vocally supported Ron Paul, I'll give you my perspective, the 9/11 "truth" movement.
These nutjobs, yes, nutjobs, sidelined the libertarians and constitutionalists such as myself supporting Ron Paul's message of reduced federal government, reduced spending, and returning power to the people, and used the Ron Paul campaign as a bullhorn to further spout their misguided rantings. They, in turn, associated Ron Paul's campaign with their silly notions. I've watched their "truth" videos, read the articles, and am only convinced that, while perhaps mistakes were made, the greatest mistake is giving "truthers" any sort of attention.

They turned the Ron Paul campaign from a viable movement protesting an overgrown and overreaching big brother government into a CT mockery. It got to the point where anyone I attempted to talk to about Ron Paul who didn't already understand his positions immediately associated him with the tin hat crowd and wanted nothing to do with him.

Ron Paul never encouraged the "truthers" message, in fact, his position outright defied it "blowback anyone?" but they kept screaming on, refusing to cloud the issue with facts, and turned off people such as myself, their quest for "truth" in spite of facts derailed a message of actual truth, and now we are, once more, stuck with politics as usual, with a democrat and a republican who are both worthless, both advocating increased government, or voting third party.

The Ron Paul message of freedom was hijacked and sidelined by the "prison planet" extremist crowd, and I believe our nation is worse off for it.

I haven't decided yet if I'm voting for Bob Barr (L), Chuck Baldwin (C), writing in Ron Paul, or maybe I'll vote for mickey mouse, but I know this, the 9/11 "truth" movement has weakened my belief in the intelligence of the individual