Notes & Observations

Strictly in terms of votes and delegates,  Ron Paul has performed respectably but largely below expectations throughout this past primary season. His problem, ironically, is the Republican Party.

I say ‘ironically’ because the party–while in many ways stupid and evil–gave Dr. Paul a platform to tell millions of people about liberty. Without the televised primary debates in 2007 and 2011, he would still be largely unknown. And, as a result, the libertarian movement would be far weaker.

Many Ron Paul supporters realize this, and many hope to build on the success they’ve already achieved within the Republican Party. One typical activist, for example, hopes that the Ron Paul people currently being elected as heads of the local Republican Party, as town councilmen, and as state legislators will come of age and finally hold real positions of  power in about twenty years time.

Right now, however, despite the Ron Paul movement’s impressive growth and intense enthusiasm, it’s a relatively weak constituency in the GOP. Think, how many Republican candidates for national office are running on a platform of reducing defense spending and ending the federal war on drugs? To ask the question is to answer it.

Despite consistently drawing large crowds around the country, many of the people who attend these rallies do not vote in Republican primaries. As Nia-Malika Henderson explains:

The problem is this: Although Paul is running to lead a party that looks like him — older, whiter, Southern — his crowds are younger, war-weary, more diverse and less likely to identify with one party or to vote.

The same independent streak that leads the young and the restless to Paul’s libertarian philosophy seems to make it more unlikely that these supporters will pick a side and a party, which is a requirement for many of the primary and caucus contests.

And so electoral success has remained elusive.

The movement’s leverage comes entirely from the possibility that it will defect to a third party in November. As Scott Clement of The Washington Post reports, “Paul as third party candidate could doom GOP in 2012.” But if the Republicans manage to keep Ron Paulians tied to the party with false promises and empty rhetoric–as they are desperately trying to do–they’ll have a strong shot at winning the presidency and will essentially have a blank check to start a war with Iran.

If Ron Paulians don’t leave the party when it nominates Mitt Romney, when will they leave?  And if all it takes to keep Ron Paulians in line is cheap talk, why would the party apparatchiks ever give anything more?

If we choose to pursue this go-along-get-along strategy within the GOP, it’s far more likely that the Republican Party will co-opt the Ron Paul movement than the other way around. It’s co-opted every other movement its ever brought under its wings (what ever happened to the ‘Buchanan Brigades’?) And what a long, slow, and pitiful death it would be for a movement that was born in such fiery optimism–ten thousand Ron Paul Republicans agreeing to water their message down just a little bit every year for twenty years in exchange for the perks of party leadership and the illusion of influence. What would be left at the end?

Justin Raimondo is right:

Republicans need to be taught a lesson, one they will never forget. By disdaining the substantial and growing libertarian wing of the GOP, and ignoring the desire for peace on the part of the larger public, they have earned nothing but defeat.