The diehards behind perennial presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) haven’t had to keep too busy counting delegates, but they have been doing the math on what it will take to get a Paul — any Paul — into the White House.

Paul supporter Ron Holland made his case over the weekend for having “Paulites” sit out the general election unless presumptive nominee Mitt Romney shows the Paul camp some love. Under his “No Paul = No Vote in November” strategy, the Paul faithful, which he guesstimates control 15 percent of the Republican voting bloc, withhold their votes from the party unless Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is offered the vice presidency and Ron Paul gets “an appropriate cabinet level appointment such as Secretary of the Treasury or Defense.”

Oddly enough, he’s not the first person to relegate the entire Ron Paul campaign as a jumping-off point for a Rand Paul run toward the White House. We heard it at CPAC, too.

But if you believe James Jaeger, Ron Paul should jump ship and take the whole she-bang-a-bang as a third-party candidate. Jaeger never explains his methodology, but he asserts over and over again that if Ron Paul bailed on the GOP, he’d own 38 percent — 12 percent from the GOP, 15 percent from independents and 11 percent from Democrats — of the vote this fall and would walk away with the presidency.

“If the public were to become too ‘hopeful’ — if they were to understand the mathematics of the situation—even more people would vote for Ron Paul if for no other reason that to be on the winner’s bandwagon,” Jaeger suggests.

We’re not 100 percent on the whole voting counting predictions. But blackmail + secession = big fun in our book.