Now We’re Just Negotiating the Price

We’ve heard for a while that Ron Paul is in cahoots with Mitt Romney, but now Time‘s Alex Altman claims to have an idea of what’s about to transpire:

…Paul’s campaign has sent discreet signals to Camp Romney that the keys to Paul’s shop can be had for the right price.

… four legislative priorities would top the Texas Representative’s wish list: deep spending cuts that lead to a balanced budget; the restoration of civil liberties; a commitment to reclaim the legislative branch’s right to declare war, which it abdicated to the executive branch in recent decades; and reforms that shore up the U.S. monetary system, such an audit of the Federal Reserve or competing-currency legislation. The Texas Representative might also be enticed, says campaign chairman Jesse Benton, by the prospect of serving as a presidential adviser, a Cabinet position for someone in his orbit or “perhaps a vice presidency.”

Not for himself, but rather his son. Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky and a Tea Party icon, is expected to launch his own White House bid in 2016. Being on the ticket now — or even being mentioned for it — would be a helpful step. Says one Paul adviser: “If you’re talking about putting Rand on the ticket, of course that would be worth delivering our people to Romney.” …

The reason I’m having trouble imagining this happening, or at least imagining it working if it does happen, is that, yes, Romney wants Paul’s voters, but the aspects of Paul’s platform that most appeal to the Paulbots are precisely the ones Romney either won’t accept or can’t endorse with any credibility.

Oh, sure, Romney can promise to cut gazillions of dollars from the budget — he’s going to say that anyway. He can promise to audit the Fed — he might promise that no matter what. But the Paulbots care mostly about anti-interventionism and legal dope — and there’s no way in hell I can imagine Romney signing on to either of those. In which case Paul can talk Romney up all he wants, but the Paulbots won’t follow. In fact, Paul himself will lose credibility with them.

And, um, is the younger Paul really “a Tea Party icon”? He ran as a teabagger in 2010, but he’s not a pulse-quickening guy in that movement the way, say, Sarah Palin is, or even Scott Walker. (Maybe that’s because we liberals don’t hate him enough — that always helps if you want to be a teabagger hero.)

But everything gets murky here. The article suggests that the voting bloc Ron Paul can deliver is the tea party, but Ron Paul’s fans aren’t teabaggers at all — they want war against Muslims and social conservatism on the domestic front. So either Time‘s reporter is confused or Romney’s people are — or maybe the Paul people, who are clearly the major sources for this story, are claiming a level of clout they don’t have. In any case, don’t expect this to be Romney’s magic bullet, if it happens at all.

(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)

20 thoughts on “Now We’re Just Negotiating the Price”

    1. Possibly.  He has 35 confirmed delegates, and many more will come through the state convention process.  The New York Times estimates that he currently has 48 delegates.  He will continue to add a couple here and a couple there, so he might end up with 60 or 70.  That could be all Romney needs.  

      1. I was at the GOP convention in Clark county Nevada this past Saturday. We out numbered the Romney delegates by a fair margin and that will likely be the case in the rest of Nevada. I don’t know what kind of trick the GOP will pull at the state convention on May 5, but if it’s a fair vote, Paul will have most of Nevada’s delegates. Note that he only got 19% of the popular vote vs Mitt’s 50%.

        And while technically Nevada apportions delegates proportionally, that’s only on the first ballot at the national convention. And I’m not sure how they would enforce that.

        Because I can assure you I’m not wasting valuable time listening to GOP horse manure all day so that I can vote for Mittens.

    2. Released delegates are not the only thing Paul can offer Romney.  He could endorse him, he could train his fire on Romney’s opponents, he could target his campaign efforts away from states where a lot of the Paul supporters like Romney second-best.

      1. He could endorse him, he could train his fire on Romney’s opponents, he could target his campaign efforts away from states where a lot of the Paul supporters like Romney second-best.

        Wouldn’t that just further show what a fraud Ron Paul really is?  Is he really willing to sell out all he claims to believe just to give a leg-up to his son?  And a son that some in the establishment probably wish they could take revenge on?

  3. It will never happen. There is nothing Romney can promise that wont cost him more than he gains. The bankers behind him will never accept a credible audit of the FED. The MIC will never accept a reduction in profitable wars. So he can’t make a deal with Paul. All he can do is say nice things about him and hope enough of his supporters will be fooled.

    If you go on any Pro-Paul websites, the vast majority of posters say they will never vote for Romney even in the impossible scenario of offering Rand the VP.

    Paul is being nice to Romney for two reasons;

    1. His earlier strategy envisioned knocking out everyone else early and facing Romney alone in the south, and
    2. In the likely event that Romney looses to Obama, he doesn’t want to be blamed for it.

    Rand may endorse Romney. Ron never will.

    1. If Ron Paul expected to beat anyone, even a Marshmallow Man, in the South, then he’s been smoking too much of his supporters’ dope.  

      Ron Paul had a chance to win in places like Vermont and Hawaii and perhaps in caucus states in the Mountain West.  His problem was that his opponent was a Mormon from New England who was perfectly positioned to beat him in both of his strongholds.  

      Ron Paul’s positions are massively unpopular in the South, especially among the Republican electorate.  He got 6% in Georgia, 5% in Alabama, and 4% in Mississippi.  

      WTFU.  

      2. Booman, you can back to your own posts and comments in December. While in retrospect it seems obvious, at the time it was Paul’s most credible plan and you thought so yourself. Yes he would be a long shot even then, but he would have no shot at all vs Newt or Santy alone in the south. Neither would Romney.

        Coming 3rd in Iowa after there was some talk of actually winning set a bad tone for the rest of the campaign. Not saying it would be totally different if Paul had won Iowa, but certainly it would have been better.

        1. I don’t remember Booman ever saying that. I remember him saying that Paul might have a chance if the others got out and allowed a 1-on-1, as Paul got 2nd place in a lot of contests in 2008. I then had to remind him that while Paul did win a lot of second place finishes, he also has a ceiling of around 20% in almost every state other than perhaps Alaska, Maine, New Hampshire/Vermont, Montana, and Idaho. And we thought his best chances would be the caucus states. It seems his supporters are the same as they are online, just as I knew they would be: lots in bluster, nothing in results.

          Of course, neither of us saw Paul as a possibility to win, but as someone who might get enough traction to be a power broker at the convention (I never thought that). But Booman’s been pretty consistent on this — except the one time when he for some reason thought Paul would do fantastically better this time than last (which I guess you could argue that he did…but his performance is about what I expected).

    2. If you go on any Pro-Paul websites

      In my opinion, Ron Paul’s support is bifurcated between younger, tech-savvy “cosmotarians” and older paleolibertarians, and the position of Paul’s internet supporters isn’t necessarily that of his other supporters.

  4. “… Ron Paul’s fans aren’t teabaggers at all …”
       I would agree with you on this, but it needs some explanation. Most Paulbots consider themselves “Tea Party”, and I have seen polls suggesting that perhaps 10% of those who identify as Tea Party are anti-bank, which suggests they may be Paulbots. Paul supporters often refer to what most of us call the Tea Party as the “False-Flag Tea Party”.
       What actually happened is that the Tea Party movement was lauched by Ron Paul and supporters with a rally on December 16, 2007, but it was massively co-opted by the RNC and Koch Brothers, beginning with the infamous Rick Santelli (not Santorum) rant on CNBC (February 19, 2008), calling for a “Chicago Tea Party”. The most paranoid Paulbots believe that Obama and George Soros were behind this cooptive takeover (“to split the GOP vote”), but actual evidence points to the Koch Brothers and the RNC.

  6. But the Paulbots care mostly about anti-interventionism and legal dope

    Maybe, maybe not…but does Ron Paul himself care mostly about those issues?

    I don’t think he does.  He certainly believes in them, but it seems that lower taxes and the gutting of the modern welfare/regulatory state are the issues that matter the most to him.

  7. a poster on another blog nailed this a couple of months ago. when Paul would attack errrrrbody BUT Willard, she said the fix was in.

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