The impossible became the favorite in Iowa today as Ron Paul plods into first place in two polls. by Walt Thiessen
(libertarian)
Monday, December 19, 2011
This has long been a race between the tortoise and a handful of hares. One after another, the hares have raced to the lead, only to fall back for one reason or another.
First, it was Mitt Romney, who led the race from day one. Then, it was Sarah Palin who was the odds-on favorite, until she made it clear that she wasn't going to enter the race at all. Michele Bachmann jumped into the lead at that point, but she fell back when it became clear that she didn't realize how ill-informed she is on a number of facts and issues. It should be noted that everything Bachmann knows about the Federal Reserve she learned from Ron Paul in a special caucus he organized for the purpose, although she has not been lady-like enough to acknowledge this publicly during the campaign.
After a staged prayer meeting, Rick Perry became the next hare to lead the pack, but he soon fell back for similar reasons to Bachmann. Then it was Herman Cain's turn, until his past history with women came back to haunt him. Finally, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich became the latest flavor of the month, but a series of negative campaign ads have reminded voters exactly why his flavor is pretty sour.
Meanwhile, the Ron Paul campaign has plodded along below the radar. The news media have routinely ignored him, and even when they've mentioned him it has been mostly in negative terms. The one mantra they all had in common was, "He can't win." In fact, a series of opinion pieces that have appeared in the New York Times over the past few months, all titled "Why Ron Paul Can't Win" or a similar title, continue to be highly cited in Google News.
Paul has never surged during the race. He was in the low single digits for months. Then he was in the upper single digits. Then he snuck over 10%. Then 12%. Then 13%. Slowly, ever so slowly, he plodded up in the polls, without a 100 yard dash to his credit. Like the proverbial tortoise, he and his team kept putting one foot in front of the other. While Paul showed off his lack of sophistication in dress and speech-making ability, he continued to amaze audiences with his ability to speak the truth as he sees it, no matter how unpopular that truth might be. He has been a model of consistency in his message over the past 30+ years, and he is finally getting credit for it. In an era when public confidence in the double-talk of politicians is at an all-time low, the honesty caught people's attention.
Meanwhile, his campaign team put together the best on-the-ground effort in Iowa of any candidate. They made phone calls. They distributed leaflets. They staged events. They sponsored coffee klatches and university appearances. They planned and executed: wash, rinse, repeat. Slowly, one person at a time, they've been winning over Iowa voters the old-fashioned way.
When he reached 17%, his critics stopped laughing and started mocking. When he reached 19%, they said he might get lucky in the Iowa caucuses, but he could never win the nomination. Now that he's at roughly 23% as Jake Towne has reported and at 24% in another poll reported by The State Column, he has become the new frontrunner. Will his treatment at the hands of the press improve now? No. It's going to get much worse.
Now that he's the frontrunner in Iowa, count on the press to do everything they can to destroy his candidacy. Already, his opponents are dredging the gutters to look for every 'crazy" thing he's ever said or advocated in the hope of turning his loyal following against him. Count on the last two weeks before the Iowa Caucuses to get very, very messy.
What's not likely to happen, however, is a crash and burn like the hares have experienced, because unlike them Paul has a solid foundation of support that never went away during the lean times and is not likely to desert him in good times. What the media and his opponents still haven't grasped is this: Ron Paul is the anti-establishment candidate, with credentials in this area that discredit all the hares by comparison. Ron Paul is the one who warned about the housing bubble, its subsequent collapse, and the aftermath of all the loose money policies of the Fed. Ron Paul is the one who has consistently called for a full audit of the Fed. Ron Paul is the one who put a real, concrete plan on the table to cut $1 trillion from the budget and balance it his first year in office. None of the other candidates have anything close to offer of their own.
You can count on the interventionists and hawks among them (virtually all the other candidates and major media folks) to start hounding him on his foreign policy stances, but it won't work. First of all, his stances are much more in line with what the majority of Americans feel today, regardless of what the neo-cons would like you to believe. But even more importantly, foreign policy is not the big issue this year. There is, in truth, only one issue. That issue is the economy.
With millions of people who have lost their homes, millions being unemployed, millions more having lost their unemployment benefits, a Euro crisis in gear, and no end to the suffering in sight, only Ron Paul stands apart from the other candidates with a campaign that the masses can latch onto. Only Ron Paul supporters generate excitement at all events, including debates, that their candidate attends. The other candidates' supporters are quiet by comparison. In fact, Mitt Romney is reputed to have noted plaintively that it's always Ron Paul signs that he sees at all the debates.
Paul is now in a territory he was not supposed to be able to enter. He has long since passed the threshold of support his libertarian supporters can give him. Now he is reaching out to the non-libertarian masses, and his message of smaller government is playing well with them. That will likely continue, unless the Eurozone manages to pull off a miracle (not likely) and survive their financial mess without falling apart in the next few weeks and the economy miraculously takes off all of a sudden. Barring that, Paul is on track to win the Iowa caucuses. And don't think for a minute he'll be done there. Next in sight will be New Hampshire, where my friend Jake points out that he is now in the low 20s in polling and closing in on the leader there, Mitt Romney.
"Slow and steady wins the race" is the moral of the old Aesop fable. So true.
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