Ron Paul

One bone of contention between “small ell” libertarians (including, somewhat, myself) and the Libertarian Party is that the LP seems rather nutty and unlikely to ever be a particularly effective organization.

I think Ron Paul might have similar thoughts.  Buried in the hoopla over his alternate convention event in Minneapolis/St. Paul during the GOP Convention is word that Dr. Paul is launching the “Campaign for Liberty“:

The work of the Campaign for Liberty will take many forms.  We will educate our fellow Americans in freedom, sound money, non-interventionism, and free markets.  We’ll have our own commentaries and videos on the news of the day.  I’ll work with friends I respect to design materials for homeschoolers.

Politically, we’ll expand the great work of our precinct leader program.  We’ll make our presence felt at every level of government, where just a few people with our level of enthusiasm can make a world of difference.  We’ll keep an eye on Congress and lobby against legislation that threatens us.  We’ll identify and support political candidates who champion our great ideas against the empty suits the party establishments offer the public.

I’ll say it again — I think Dr. Paul is rather nutty.  However, I’m not happy that the notion of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism (or at least tolerance) is so poorly represented on the American political stage.  So, if Dr. Paul’s Campaign can avoid descending into the land of unrealistic goals…more power to them.

Well, it looks like Ron Paul is bowing out of the race for the GOP nomination (now that McCain is the nominee-apparent), and will instead focus on getting himself reelected to the House. And, if anyone was wondering about the chances of his making a third-party run—the answer is “no”.

From Ron Paul’s campaign blog:

With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero. But that does not affect my determination to fight on, in every caucus and primary remaining, and at the convention for our ideas, with just as many delegates as I can get. But with so many primaries and caucuses now over, we do not now need so big a national campaign staff, and so I am making it leaner and tighter. Of course, I am committed to fighting for our ideas within the Republican party, so there will be no third party run. I do not denigrate third parties—just the opposite, and I have long worked to remove the ballot-access restrictions on them. But I am a Republican, and I will remain a Republican.

I also have another priority. I have constituents in my home district that I must serve. I cannot and will not let them down. And I have another battle I must face here as well. If I were to lose the primary for my congressional seat, all our opponents would react with glee, and pretend it was a rejection of our ideas. I cannot and will not let that happen.

Long live the duopoly, I guess.

Did a few folks not get the memo that the GOP is supposed to come-together around McCain?

• Kansas caucuses: Huckabee 60%, McCain 24%, Paul 11%, Romney 3%
• Louisiana primary: Huckabee 43%, McCain 42%, Romney 6%, Paul 5%, Giuliani 1%
• Washington caucuses McCain 26%, Huckabee 24%, Paul 21%, Romney 17%

Even in the one state where McCain “won”, he still received fewer votes than did candidates who have already dropped out.

The Kansas and Washington results have me wondering if it might be easier now for some small-ell libertarian types to vote for Ron Paul, given that the nominee is all-but-decided  (or is it a function of lower turnout and/or the caucus effect).   However, I also find the disconnect between the Louisiana caucus and the Louisiana primary results interesting.

So, in addition to the Democratic and Republican party presidential primaries, California also saw the Libertarian Party’s presidential primary on Super Duper Fat Tuesday. Third Party Watch shared some entertaining speculation about the results:

However, it appears that Smith was beaten by “write-in votes.” The 12 ballot candidates received a total of 13,750 votes statewide, out of about 80,000 who are registered statewide.[...]

A check of major counties shows that, in each case, the number of “write-in votes” exceeded Smith’s total. For example, in Los Angeles, the largest county in the state (making up a third of the state’s population) reported 2,157 write-in votes, compared to Smith’s total of 746.[...]

Unfortunately, the write-in votes will not be counted, since no one filed as an official write-in candidate, but one can make an educated guess as to what candidate LP registrants would write in.

So, maybe Dr. Paul was possibly a winner someplace, for someone? Sadly, it seems we’ll never know.

632-626 was the “pledged delegate” count between Hillary and Obama which I woke up to this morning, according to CNN.  (Throwing in the superdelegates, CNN has the tally as the still-close Hillary 825, Obama 732)

Wow.

I guess I need to add a few more primaries to my calendar.  Many of us armchair election-watchers quietly expected one candidate to come out of Super Duper Fat Tuesday with enough of a lead to be able to claim solid front-runner status….but that’s not the case.  The Dems’ race could very likely come down to the superdelegates and the squabble over the exclusion of Michigan’s and Florida’s delegates.

Meanwhile, over on the GOP side, CNN has the delegate count as McCain 615, Romney 268, Huckabee 169, Ron Paul 16.   (A count that is at least a little inaccurate, because it doesn’t reflect the Huckabee-Paul deal in West Virginia which netted Paul 3 additional delegates.)

I realize that McCain hasn’t yet hit the magic number of 1,191 delegates, but can we just go ahead and put a fork in the Romney and Paul GOP campaigns, and call them done?  Romney’s attempt to buy the nomination failed spectacularly in the south, and the revolution never materialized.  (Dr. Paul had a good night in Montana, and hit double digits in Minnesota as well…but the expectations that he could win Alaska didn’t pan out.)

So, Ron Paul’s most loyal supporters have been promising that the Revolution would start any time now. First it was to be the Free State of New Hampshire. No, it was risk-taking Nevada that would throw its support to Ron Paul. No…contrarian Mainers would see the merits of Ron Paul.

Well, now it’s Alaskans. Even the Wall Street Journal (free link) is speculating on how Alaska and Ron Paul might be a match made in…well, the icebox, I suppose:

The libertarian-leaning candidate’s vows to slash federal spending and pull out of Iraq have attracted Mr. Paul a fervent following. While other long-shot candidates have dropped out of the race, Mr. Paul has been able to keep at it and hope for a surprise win because he has raised huge sums of money, largely from individual contributors over the Web.

Some of his more radical ideas, like abolishing taxes and letting people carry firearms in national parks, have kept him from rising above fringe status in most states. In Alaska, where residents don’t pay state income tax and often own guns for hunting and protection, his message has a more concentrated appeal.[...]

Mr. Paul needs all the help he can get. The Texas congressman—who placed third for president in 1988 when he ran as a libertarian—scored a third-place finish in Maine this weekend and a second-place finish in Nevada, with 19% and 14% of the vote, respectively, but has picked up few delegates. Alaska gives him a shot at getting a few more.

While there have been no official polls in Alaska, local pollsters and officials say Mr. Paul could garner at least 10%—and possibly upward of 20%—of the vote. That compares with 4% to 6% of the national vote, according to polls of Republicans.

Like most other libertarian-leaning moderate-minded folks registered as Republicans, I know that Ron Paul isn’t going to win the nomination. I’m voting for him on Super Tuesday only because I think parts of his message merit more attention…but the fact of the matter is that small-government, personal liberty-minded folks don’t really have a home in either of the major parties. We’ll be effectively un- or under-represented in political circles until an effective messenger comes forward.

And, while I welcome Ron Paul’s gospel-preaching…he’s not that messenger.

I realize that many folks would like to see Dr. Paul run as an independent, or for a third party (the Libertarians, the Constitutional Party, or a union ticket of the two). However, I’m not so sure that that’s the best idea (especially with anti-spending McCain currently in the most-likely-to-get-the-GOP-nomination position).

Instead, perhaps interested parties should work towards identifying a better messenger—someone who is respected enough in the country to have credibility, without some of the baggage that Paul carries (e.g., the content of his newsletters, allegations of his affinity towards and with the conspiracy theory crowd), or quite as much emphasis on 19th century failed economic theories?

Seen at Politico:

I just now spoke to Ralph Nader, who said the launch of his exploratory Web site wasn’t timed to Edwards’ withdrawal, but that Kucinich’s withdrawal had made space in the race for him.

“We’re testing the waters on the overriding issue of corporate control, of our political economy, and anything else the dogma of commercialism wants to latch on to,” he said.

He also said he’d make third-party ballot access a major issue, after what he sees as a “national conspiracy” by the Democratic Party to deny him a place on the ballot in 2004, subject of a recent lawsuit.

Well, if he enters the race, perhaps Nader could offset some of the benefit Dems would receive should Ron Paul or Bloomberg run and dilute moderate/centrist/libertarian support for the GOP candidate.

Seen at Rasmussen:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that roughly 15% of voters would currently vote for [either Ron Paul or Michael Bloomberg] in general election match-ups.

When the two candidates are mentioned as independent options in match-ups between Mitt Romney and the two Democratic frontrunners, Paul and Bloomberg attract roughly the same level of support. When John McCain is mentioned as the Republican candidate in a match-up with Barack Obama, Ron Paul earns 11% of the vote while Bloomberg attracts 5%.

At this time, the net impact of such third party efforts appears to benefit the Democrats.

Of course, the question still remains—will Dr. Paul launch a third-party or independent bid, and will Bloomberg get in the race.

I don’t know what the answer to the first question is. Ron Paul’s core supporters definitely want him to…however, I haven’t gotten a strong impression of Dr. Paul being quite as enthusiastic about that prospect.

Personally, while I’d like part of the economic responsibility / individual liberty message to get more media play (thus the reason I’ll be holding my nose and voting for Ron Paul in Connecticut’s primary), I sill really wish that message were carried by a more credible messenger….especially when that messenger will need to poll 15% or better to get into the Presidential debates this fall.

As to the second question—presumably we’ll have a better feel for the odds of Bloomberg entering the race after next week. If McCain can break ahead of Romney on Super Tuesday…I’ve got to believe Bloomberg will stay out, due to the likelihood of fracturing the moderate/centrist vote. If Romney turns it around, or if the picture remains clouded…who knows?

One additional thought—personally I doubt that Paul can do much better than low, maybe mid, double digits in national polls, due to his quirks and certain of his definitely non-mainstream views. However, I wonder how much of Bloomberg’s low-polling is simply the result of being unknown.

A bit of advertising should, presumably, at least buy Bloomberg a podium at the Presidential Debates. After all, look at how many votes Romney’s millions have been able to buy.

Obama gets a moderate blogger’s support at Donklephant:

Here’s the thing…if a politician can actually make us feel that there’s hope, that there’s a chance to actually mend our partisan wounds, we shouldn’t ignore it. That’s what Barack brings to the table, and that’s why I’m excited about his candidacy.

I can agree with that sentiment. However, perhaps it’s been too much exposure to politics, combined with my experiences witnessing the sausage-making that takes place in government in this country, which keeps me too cynical about any face the media and conventional wisdom deign to shine a spotlight upon.

I’ve enjoyed listening to Obama, and his talk of working across party lines has a definite appeal to me. However, I’m reminded of the hope and optimism many of us felt when Bill Clinton was elected in 1992. We looked forward to the handoff to a new generation of politics, with the expectation that everything was going to be better.

While Bill definitely chalked up some significant accomplishments during his stint at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, much of what we were optimistic about faded quickly, as the political climate quickly degenerated into the perpetual battle of the Clinton political machine and the Right-Wing’s hatred of “Billary”.

I think I would prefer Obama in office over Hillary…but frankly, I don’t see anyone active in the political arena that I particularly want as President (although Bloomberg, if he would run, might be the exception).

(For whatever it’s worth, I’m still planning to cat my protest vote for Ron Paul on Super Tuesday. He’s flawed as a candidate, and definitely not viable given Connecticut’s winner-take-all status with the GOP, but his running has, at least, gotten the concept of fiscal conservatism and individual liberty as a campaign platform a few minutes of media attention.

I still think that he’s not viable, and he did suffer from a little bit of conspiracy-theory-ness leaking out…but Ron Paul’s response at the end of the debate was wonderful.  When asked about whether he’d leave the Republican Party, he took the party to task for having left its principles, audibly wishing that the GOP would be big tent enough to accept lovers of individual liberty.

It’s a shame that in the past few weeks, that message has been lost in questions about Ron Paul’s newsletter.

It’s also a shame that that message doesn’t have a more capable messenger.