the_content includes a paragraph

You could still wrap the entire lot in a div and reference it in CSS as:

#divname P

and define

#divname P P

as the paragraphs inside the enclosing p’s

It’s part of the CSS standard, not really a work-a-round.

vkaryl
If you don’t like jaredquinn’s solution, your only other option will be to hack core code….

What file would need to be hacked in order to do this?