Ron Paul’s Last Hurrah
At this point it is clear that Rep. Ron Paul is not going to be the presidential nominee of the Republican Party. Yet it seems likely that he will outlast all his rivals but for Romney, and that he will have a substantial bloc of delegates at the convention. Paul has the money, and the grassroots support, to make it all the way to Tampa—and beyond.
It’s when we get to the “beyond,” however, that things get interesting.
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What, exactly, is Paul’s endgame? What does he want? This is the question the pundits are asking, and the answer is maddeningly elusive.
On the one hand, Republican primary voters are increasingly open to his message of real free markets (as opposed to the crony capitalism championed by most Republicans), the defense of civil liberties (against largely Republican antagonists), and a noninterventionist foreign policy (an idea opposed by the leadership of both parties). He is regularly getting around 20 percent of the vote in GOP primaries, and his supporters are mostly (albeit not exclusively) young, independents inclined to vote Republican, and not that well off (under $50,000 per year).
His support grew by the day, in spite of a media blackout—and when simply refusing to report on his campaign didn’t put a dent in his support, the mainstream media turned to smear tactics. That hasn’t worked, either.
On the other hand, Paul’s support within the GOP has a definite ceiling: I’d be surprised if his poll numbers exceeded 25 percent in any state’s primary. This is a commentary not on Paul, but on the evolution of the Republicans, whose brand has been sullied by eight years of George W. Bush’s big-government conservatism. Since many Republican presidential primaries are closed, Paul’s political fortunes are left in the hands of those who are registered members of a party committed to eternal war, corporate subsidies, and the cult of the presidency. The political independents and disaffected Democrats who make up half his base are prevented from voting for him in closed GOP primaries, which is why we see polls showing him in a dead heat with Barack Obama in the general election juxtaposed against other polls showing him in the upper teens in the GOP primary pack.
GOP leaders are living in fear of a Paul third-party candidacy in the general election: Polls show Paul would garner 18 percent of the vote as an independent, and as the election draws nearer and scrutiny of Romney gets more intense, I fully expect that number to rise.
Provocatively, Paul hasn’t ruled out a third-party run, but he says he isn’t planning on it, and doesn’t want to do it. Of course he doesn’t want to do it: Who would? After all, even getting on the ballot is a Herculean task; and besides, he’s having too much fun right now running in the major leagues to be sent down prematurely to play third-party “gadfly,” which he did in 1988 with negligible success. So he’s likely to keep them guessing until the very last moment.
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If the GOP bigwigs are hoping Paul will eventually endorse the nominee, and bring his supporters into the Romney camp, they don’t know anything about the Texas congressman, who has spent his whole political career fighting the very forces represented by Romney and his backers. Take it from me: It isn’t going to happen. And even if it did—if Ron Paul were suddenly possessed by an evil spirit—he wouldn’t bring very many of his supporters with him. His followers are just like him: principled, cantankerous, and uninterested in merging with the “mainstream.”
The GOP hierarchy thinks it has Paul over a barrel. By holding his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), hostage, the wags inform us that Paul is unlikely to launch a third-party campaign, because it would supposedly end Rand’s career.
Maybe, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. This isn’t just a political campaign—it’s a cause. The many followers who have been recruited to his banner are expecting something more than a fizzle-out in Tampa. They have put their hearts and souls—and, more significantly (for libertarians), their cash—into this effort, and they aren’t going to be happy with some anticlimactic end to the Ron Paul story. They want closure. They want to know they at least did everything they could to avoid the apocalypse Paul has spent the last 30 years or so warning us about: an economic downturn that will make the crash of ’08 look like child’s play, and the end of liberty in America.
In my view, a third-party campaign by Paul is the logical outcome of his entire career: After being rejected by a GOP mutated beyond recognition, he and his brigades of fervent followers will not be content until they’ve stormed the gates of the federal Leviathan and made a good-faith attempt at bringing the monster down. It will be Paul’s last hurrah—and, perhaps, the last hurrah of our Old Republic.
This article first appeared in the March 2012 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here to subscribe, so you won't miss one of Justin Raimondo's exclusive columns!
Entries(RSS)
"he and his brigades of fervent followers"
Mr. Raimondo, such language implies that you and other supporters of Paul are nothing more than a personality cult.
Send in the mimes? Without such relief one has to be something akin to a masochist to follow 'politics' in America?
"The mimes of Sophron (420 B.C.) long remained a favourite amusement of the Greeks; and at Rome this type of entertainment became so popular under Augustus and his successors that in the end it virtually superseded the legitimate theater." So indicated Aurelius, I'll take his word for it until I look at it further myself.
On a more serious note I wonder without blood and soil attached to religion [again] in the West if Christianity by which I mean Eastern Orthodox and Rome if she reverts theolgically, can survive?
Otherwise the legitimate vapors and dreams of the soul--without as it were the body as Augustine knew, the blood and the soil collectively here--have too little context, and so too little instructive purpose.
Ron Paul in speaking to the soul to our souls in its old tongue resonates only in that it incarnates a whiff from the past of blood and soil of context. Without which perhaps not even Christianity will survive.
Without context without blood and soil it's as if the soul already separated from the body prior to its death and went to limbo the limbo of the lost where it awaits reattachment to the yet living collective body.
It's a particularly strange twist or wrinkle in reality, these post blood and soil times.
I wouldn't count Paul out yet.He doesn't have to win one single state to win the nomination.He is aquiring delegates and he may even be leading in actual delegates.His supporters are very active and willing to do the work and to become delegates.That is the name of the game,the popular vote means nothing.
Maybe it’s time to join together behind Ron Paul in a third party anti-fascist popular front. A Paul-Nader freedom ticket is significantly better than the alternative.
If Ron Paul goes the third party route, particularly as late as September, after the Republican Convention, the only viable possibility would be an arrangement with the Libertarian Party, which is on the ballot in all 50 states, to have him replace their otherwise nominee. I would think this not too difficult, as a Ron Paul candidacy would draw votes to their party they have never received before, certainly more than in Paul's 1988 run. But I would like to see some actual reporting on whether this is being discussed and by whom in LP circles.
I would not consider it a betrayal of his principles if he endorsed a Romney-Rand Paul ticket, though. Given that even as the LP nominee Ron Paul will not be elected President in 2012 and that someone totally unacceptable will be, it is more than consolation to have the right man in the Office of Vice President, or even as defeated V-P nominee. For this is the path most likely to elevate the one so selected to the status of favorite in future years of presidential nominations. And, think of all the possibilities that would then NOT be that running mate!
Be assured that whatever Faustian bargain is pffered Ron Paul by the GOP, it will carry the same weight as Bob Dole allowing Pat Buchanan to write the party platform in 1996...
The answer seems simple to me. Ron Paul should take it all the way to the convention and garner as much national support as he can muster along the way. At that point it would be a waste of time and energy to try and get on the ballot in all fifty states as an Independent with just 60 days to go until the general election.
I agree with Mr. Dolton that the "only viable possibility would be an arrangement with the Libertarian Party". Where I differ is that there doesn't need to be any arrangement. All that would be needed would be for Gary Johnson to pick Ron Paul as his running mate. A Gary Johnson/Ron Paul ticket would be the best option available for all voters looking for someone other than Romney or Obama.
There was an article written by James Jaeger titled "Why Ron Paul Can Win" that makes the case for there being enough votes to pull off a victory for Ron Paul. Basically he could get 12% of the Republican vote, 15% of the Independents an 11% of the Democrats and Ron Paul could win with 38% of the vote.
Time to end Republican campaign and get third party movement underway?
I agree with Mr. Raimondo.
Because of the incapability of the Republican Establishment to engage in fair play, and (I hate to say it) the resulting near-impossibility of Dr. Paul securing the Republican nomination, I suggest he begin to sow the seeds of a third-party run.
But until then, and with the lull of a couple weeks in the primaries, Dr. Paul should now name his running mate (Judge Napolitano, Pat Buchanan, Walter Jones) and perhaps even persons for cabinet positions. All these people should sent out into Michigan and Arizona to build support in all regions of those states.
If, however, the results of those efforts are disappointing, then Dr. Paul should break away from the shackles that the Republican party has put on him and go after votes as an independent conservative—as James Buckley did in New York when he challenged Senator Charles Goodell, the incumbent liberal "Republican", who was actually endorsed by the Republican Party. As many of you know, Buckley, without the regular Republican endorsement, and on the Conservative Party ticket, won the seat narrowly. Also we have the more recent example of Ross Perot running as an independent, being admitted to the debates and winning 20% of the vote in the three way race.
Getting to speak at the Republican Convention, which seems at times to be the goal of the campaign, would be an almost meaningless victory—not even a pyrrhic victory—that would soon lapse into forgotten history.
@William - having Paul get the Libertarian Party nomination would be best, but for him to do it, he needs to drop out of the GOP race by the LP convention on May 5th, and go to the convention to seek the nomination.
I'd like to see a Gary Johnson/Ron Paul LP ticket, but even for the VP slot Paul will need to drop out of the GOP race for the LP convention.
I don't see it likely that Paul will drop out before the GOP convention in August since he's doing better than he did in 2008 and he didn't drop out of the GOP race until after the convention last time.
September it will be too late, and there might be issues with sore loser laws which might prevent Paul from being on the general election ballot in some states. -- it would probably be up to the courts to sort that out.
At &:58 PM on 13 February, Prateek Sanjay had fantasized:
Horseapples. Contrary to Mr. Raimondo's discussion of Ron Paul's "followers" is the evidence that Dr. Paul has gained his present political advantages by virtue of increasing numbers of Americans fundamentally facing incontrovertible proofs of the damages done by flagrantly profligate, corrupt, and cement-headedly normative government at all levels, but particularly in federal governance.
One might as well speak of Dr. Paul "leading" such a tide of angry opposition as of a surfer "commanding" the wave on which he rides.
Ron Paul is simply the only "mainstream" candidate we have had in almost half a century who has dared to commit himself explicitly to the policy positions that run diametrically opposite to the "go along to get along" practices of his colleagues throughout the Congress and the Executive branch. invoking the protections clearly articulated in our Constitution as the source of solutions to the hammering we've been taking as the result of government-gone-juramentado.
The popular sentiment has always been there, dismissed, vilified, denied, refused acknowledgement, but with the ineptitude and cronyism of our permanent political incumbency now so obviously malignant that deniability is no longer an option, Ron Paul can ride that wave of anger to great effect.
A Ron Paul 3rd party campaign is needed but what is more needful is a Ron Paul victory. If he can get 18% right now, just think of what he could get if he had a Dennis Kucinich or a Bernie Sanders as his running mate and together they developed a platform that stressed agreements among between libertarians and progressives like non interventionism, civil liberties and ending the drug laws.
What if they went beyond that and ironed out a deal which called for significant and real reductions in federal government spending, replaced income taxes with a progressive consumption tax and human rights based tariffs? What if they designated half of the savings from reduced spending as well as half of any gains in revenues to paying down debt and the other half of savings and revenue gains to block grants for the states based exclusively on population to be used by each state as it sees fit with only one condition reporting where every dime goes publicly and online? What if they agreed to consolidate several domestic departments and cut their budgets by 20% while putting progressive in those fewer cabinet posts?
My hunch is such a coalition campaign could win and such a coalition government would be exactly what our country needs. Why settle for 18% when he could get 40% and the White House? If libertarians and progressives would get beyond their sectarian ways and come to the realization that separately they are two small a majority but in temporary alliance they constitute a majority.
A number of other creative strategies and policy ideas that advance both libertarian and progressive causes can be found here: http://progressivesforronpaul.blogspot.com/
Mr. Brantley,
If that were to happen, Dr. Paul's plane would experience engine trouble over Texas.
Mickey, Unfortunately you're probably right.
It is your inference, not his implication, which, of course, you cannot know!
It is truly a shame that you so willingly buy into the left-right concepts -- "replace income taxes with a progressive consumption tax and human rights based tariffs"! Consider this: repudiate the debts attributable to any federal program unsupported by the provisions of Article I Section 8 Clauses 17 & 18, and refuse to pay them?