The case for a Ron Paul Presidential campaign in 2012
rEVOLution 2.0 -- The case for a Ron Paul Presidential campaign in 2012 by George Dance
(libertarian)
Sunday, March 6, 2011
rEVOLution 2.0 is an occasional look at the 2012 Presidential election campaign in the context of the 21st century struggle for a free society (the 'rEVOLution'). The next few articles in the series will be on significant players in that coming campaign. The obvious man to begin with is the most significant player of the rEVOLution's first stage three years ago: Ron Paul.
Should Ron Paul run for POTUS once again in 2012? Of course. From the perspective of the rEVOLution (as defined), there is no better candidate.
First, Ron Paul's 2008 Presidential campaign, and so far only Ron Paul's 2008 Presidential campaign, has shown itself able to mobilize the cadre -- both as boots on the ground, and as donor base -- that the freedom movement requires to be a credible vehicle for political change. (1)
Second, a significant portion of that cadre is still connected, in a spontaneous order, via the internet: through organizations like Campaign for Liberty (2) and Young Americans for Liberty (3); on fansites like RonPaul.com (4), Runronpaul.com (5), and The Daily Paul (which bills itself as the 'Ron Paul 2012 | Sound Money, Peace and Liberty | Blog') (6) ; in discussion groups like the "Ron Paul 2012" forums at Liberty Forest. (7). These seasoned rEVOLutionaries are not only willing to march behind Paul again; for the most part, they are demanding that he get in front right now and start leading them.
Third (it follows from the above), a 2012 Paul campaign would now be light years ahead of where his 2008 campaign stood in March 2007. It would be able to immediately mobilize a support base that neither Paul nor anyone else dreamed of back then. With that much of a head start, there is no telling how much further a Paul campaign could go this time.
Fourth (and fifth, and sixth, and ...), there are countless other reasons to think that a Ron Paul 2012 campaign will exceed his 2008 performance.
Because there is no incumbent Republican POTUS, there will be no Republican candidate 'anointed' by the incumbent, as there was in 2008. Paul's supporters will not have to struggle against the party machinery working for another candidate (as was too often the case last time).
Because there is a Democratic POTUS who is unlikely to be primaried, Paul will probably be the only antiwar candidate in the race during the primary season, giving him a unique appeal to -- and a unique opportunity to reach out to -- antiwar Democratic and Independent voters in primaries not limited to Republicans, like New Hampshire (and in the general election as well).
Paul's libertarian ideology has vastly increased in appeal among even Republicans in recent years, even with respect to such Bushite sacred cows as the PATRIOT Act. When Paul first opposed that Act on its passage, he stood virtually alone in his party. But this year when a part of the Act came up for renewal, more than 25 House Republicans stood in opposition with him. (8).
Paul's perennial crusade to 'End the Fed' (abolish the Federal Reserve) may still be a minority concern, but his latest bill to audit the central bank attracted a majority of House members as co-sponsors. Among the bill's fans in the House was Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who became chairman of the powerful House Committee on Financial Services in January 2011 -- and appointed Paul to chair the committee's Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology subcommittee (which oversees the Federal Reserve).
All of this has led to a heightened media silhouette of a kind that Ron Paul has never enjoyed in all of his years in Congress. "Before, they'd totally ignore me," he told Atlantic magazine last year. "But after the housing bubble burst, people like [MSNBC host] Joe Scarborough and others started reading my speeches, and when I go on the air now ... he'll introduce me by reading some of my predictions from 2002, 2004, about how there's a bubble coming and we ought to remove the line of credit to the Treasury for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." Noting how Fox News had "derided him mercilessly" two years previously, the magazine asked of Paul: "And has anyone noticed that he's [now] a fixture on Fox News?" (9)
Atlantic argues that the course of events since 2008 "has carried Paul from the fringe of American politics toward the center -- or, really, carried the center toward him...."
Two years of economic trauma have fed a nationwide resentment. The clearest sign of this is the loose affiliation of angry conservatives, disaffected independents, Glenn Beck disciples, strict constitutionalists, and assorted malcontents who gather under the Tea Party banner. This heterodox mass distrusts the political establishment and believes the federal government has grown dangerously large. Some believe that it has usurped powers rightfully reserved for the states, rendering many of its actions illegitimate (the Constitution is the sacred Tea Party text). Above all, Tea Party followers share a profound objection to unchecked spending and expanding credit, as successive administrations and the Federal Reserve have done to the tune of trillions of dollars. This effort to stimulate the economy, they believe, has not only failed to end the recession but made it worse.
To address these grievances, Paul was ready and waiting. He is not the Tea Party's founder (there isn't one), or its culturally resonant figure (that's Sarah Palin), but something more like its brain, its Marx or Madison. He has become its intellectual godfather.... Today, on matters of economic politics, Paul is at least as significant as any of the Republicans he shared the stage with in the 2007 South Carolina debate." (9)
Paul's views on foreign policy, the Defense budget, and the role of Homeland Security are still minority if no longer pariah positions in the GOP. (By the same token, though, they are also the source of a unique appeal Paul has, among the GOP candidates, to some Democrats and independents.) An important question will be whether his criticism of the 'American empire' is a deal-breaker with the Republican grassroots. One notes that the holding of similar (though admittedly toned down) views was not a deal-breaker for Paul's son, Rand, who surfed a wave of Tea Party support straight into the U.S. Senate last year (and not because it never came up, nor because no one tried to exploit it). (10)
Ron Paul himself enjoys popularity among Tea Partiers. Most recently, in late February he spoke at the inaugural American Policy Summit conference sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots, and won its straw poll for POTUS. (11)
Interviewed at the conference, Paul repeated his now familiar "fifty-fifty" quote about making another run for President. But a look at other things he's saying and doing gives the impression that he is already running. In February he announced campaign-style speaking trips in March to both Iowa and New Hampshire, and relaunched his political action committee, Liberty PAC, as a fund to pay for such trips -- and the rEVOLution sent him more than $700,000 to do that, $400,000 of it in a one-day money bomb. (12)
So it looks as though Paul will be running. He probably has good reasons, due to campaign financing rules, media buzz, and other things, for delaying an announcement. But he doesn't need to make an announcement to run. My confident predictions are that Paul will run and that he will have a far greater impact on the race than he did three years ago.
A Ron Paul 2012 campaign will not be the whole of the rEVOLution in 2012; but I expect it to be the most important, and (to repeat) the most beneficial, series of events within it.
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Sources:
Photo:Ron Paul at the 2007 National Right to Life Convention, held at Crown Center Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, MO; June 15, 2007. Photo by R. DeYoung.Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license (CC-BY-20). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
(1) George Dance, "Ron Paul and his rEVOLution," Nolan Chart, Mar. 28, 2008. Web, Mar. 5, 2011. http://www.nolanchart.com/article3255.html
(4) RonPaul.com. Web, Mar. 6, 2011. http://www.ronpaul.com/
(5)RunRonPaul.com. Web, Mar. 6, 2011. http://runronpaul.com/
(6)The Daily Paul. Web, Mar. 6, 2011. http://www.dailypaul.com/
(7) "Ron Paul 2012 Forums," Liberty Forest. Web, Mar. 6, 2011. http://www.ronpaulforums.com/forum.php
(8) "Patriot Act vote fails in 'Tea Party uprising'," The Political Animal, Feb. 9, 2011. Web, Mar. 6, 2011. http://gdspoliticalanimal.blogspot.com/2011/02/patriot-act-extension-fails-tea-party.html
(9) Joshua Green, "The Tea Party’s Brain," The Atlantic, Nov. 2010. Web, Mar. 6,2011. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/the-tea-party-8217-s-brain/8280/
(10) George Dance, "The Battle of Kentucky," Nolan Chart, Mar. 21, 2010. Web, Mar. 6, 2011. http://www.nolanchart.com/article7526.html
(11) "Herman Cain & Ron Paul win in Tea Party straw poll," The Political Animal, Feb. 28, 2011. Web, Mar. 6, 2011. http://gdspoliticalanimal.blogspot.com/2011/02/herman-cain-and-ron-paul-win-in-tea.html
The views expressed
in this article are those of George Dance only and
do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates.
George Dance is solely responsible for the contents
of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated
with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
Paul's libertarian ideology has vastly increased in appeal among even Republicans in recent years, even with respect to such Bushite sacred cows as the PATRIOT Act. When Paul first opposed that Act on its passage, he stood virtually alone in his party. But this year when a part of the Act came up for renewal, more than 25 House Republicans stood in opposition with him. (
