Ron Paul is so awesome. I really hope he wins the Republican nomination. No one really gives him a chance, but the Republican Party of 2012 is a whole lot more like Ron Paul than the Republican Party of 2008. Why settle for Bachmann when you can have the original loony-tune? Frankly, the way the Tea Partiers won primaries in Nevada, Alaska, Colorado, Kentucky, and Delaware, I wonder why more people aren’t taking Ron Paul seriously. His “let people die to avoid moral hazard’ political philosophy is spectacular and it might even help Obama win Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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agreed, 100%. He might also end the war on drugs!
and believe me, if the GOP gets what they want in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, we’re gonna want a LOT of drugs.
Oh, good, Chicago is DOOMED!!
Nah, not til May 21. Rahm ain’t that tough.
can’t stand Paul….but then I can’t stand any of the rest of them either.
As I said, I have Bachmann winning the nomination at this present moment. Of course I expect that prediction to change, but she’s who I have at the front right now. She has proven she can raise money, and with Huckabee out, the Evangelicals need someone. Now, she is a woman, and that might be a slight problem for some of them, but I think it could happen.
Johnathon Chait from TNR just retweeted this:
http://twitter.com/#!/EWErickson/status/70283012272685056
Anyone believe it?
I believe it, but it’s already Obama 1, Comb-overs 0.. so I don’t see the point.
Be careful what you wish for, Booman.
Really.
Paul is a believer.
Obama?
Romney?
Any of the other conceivable mainstream candidates?
So bound up by multiple politically expedient/realpolitik-necessitated lies that it takes various amounts of millisecond delays…always depending on their amount of native hustler talent, of course…for them to answer questions or deal with “sensitive” political questions.
Paul?
Honest as the day is long. (“Right” or “wrong.” Or anything in between.) Thus quicker on the trigger.
And thus more believable.
Be careful what you wish for.
This could get interesting.
AG
At least Ron Paul is consistent in his small governmentalism. In other words, he doesn’t want government regulating sex/sexuality or oppressing women. However, this is also why he wont win the GOP nomination – he wont get the backing of the religious nuts and bigots.
Uh, clearly you don’t know Ron Paul’s constituency. He has more religious nuts and bigots supporting him than any other candidate besides Mike Huckabee. Evangelicals love him.
Furthermore, he has die-hard supporters. In nearly any Republican straw poll he comes in first or second. Likewise in 2008 — until the field was winnowed — he generally scored double-digit support in primaries. He was dismissed as an aberration back then. In 2012, who knows?
The Tea Party’s corporate funders think Ron Paul a loose cannon. Michelle Bachmann knows how to vote; the crazy is all in the talk, just like Newt.
That’s why Ron Paul won’t be able to mount a campaign that uses the Tea Party “base”. The wave of anonymous unlimited giving is going to swamp him if he shows any strength at all.
The Tea Party always was a tactic to prevent Obama from tapping into the populist anger in the country in 2009. Nothing more. No high falutin’ philosophical consistency. No actual philosophy. Just slogans and anger. The slogans are still out there but it’s become more of a team bonding experience than actual policy criticism and the purpose as always: piss off the lib’ruls. Knock the educated off their political philosophy and policy wonk high horses. Perversely do something self-destructive to show you still have agency and freedom not to be persuaded or manipulated. That 1% of true believers in Tea Party symbols are still out there, but they are increasingly muttering about a third party–a “real Tea Party”. They are as much toast as the superannuated Ralph Nader. And they did it in three years, not three decades.
One question about the political environment is very uncertain. Are voters “angered out” and after the death of bin Laden open to worrying about real issues once again and not as easily stampeded by fear and anger? Have we reached emotional exhaustion? If so, Newt Gingrich won’t get off the starting blocks and Ron Paul will be running his typical quixotic campaign, and he like Nader is now past his sell-by date.
Watch for where the younger leadership is emerging (and Paul Ryan just blew his wad too soon and might not even be re-elected). And look for the issues that they are raising. And most importantly, look at which younger leaders are appealing to older voters (Paul-clone doesn’t count).
Democrats are not going to be getting the crazy GOP candidate they are hoping for for Obama to run against. They are going to get another empty suit or an unknown (remember George W. Bush) who comes out of nowhere and steals the Village’s heart. Here’s the problem for them. They need a smooth, reasonable, hardnosed, corporatist, deregulation-oriented, low tax conservative with no political or religious baggage, unassailable (in the short term) character, who appeals to cultural conservatives without scaring independents. Ron Paul certainly does not fill that bill any more than Pawlenty and Romney do. That person does not exist because they would stylistically have to pre-date the Jesse Helms-Newt Gingrich putsch in the Republican Party and at the same time hold the rhetorical aims of the putsch while being subservient to corporations.
What about Scott Walker? I could see him becoming the next darling, if not of 2012 then 2016. I don’t see that he has any major baggage.
He will be recalled. Hardly a recipe for electoral success. Of the Koch-funded governors, Mitch Daniels is the only one who would be a credible candidate and he’s not a new face.
Anybody elected in 2010 will be at a disadvantage because they have not been proven. A potential VP for buzz, but after Sarah Palin, I don’t think there will be a great rush to find a new face who will quit politics and go on wingnut welfare. These folks must wait until 2016.