Filibuster CartoonsTitle: Ron Paul takes responsibility (click to view)
Date: November 29, 2011
As we all are well aware by now, this year's Republican presidential primarily has had all the frantic excitement of a game of politicized whack-a-mole. BASH! Down goes Bachmann! Up goes Perry! BASH! Down goes Perry! Up goes Cain! The campaign clatters along like a piece of wel;-oiled carny machinery, with every candidate getting to enjoy a couple fleeting weeks as the pop-up of the moment. Everyone, that is, except Ron Paul.
The Texas' congressman's ongoing failure to earn his turn in his party's ever-changing second place slot (slot one, of course, being perennially hogged by Mitt Romney) has generated no shortage of gnashing frustration among his famously loyal followers, as anyone who has listened to talk radio recently can attest. There is simply no sensible explanation, they say, why fringe loonies like Herman Cain — who is grossly unqualified for the presidency by almost every measurable standard — or Michelle Bachmann, whose stance on most social issues is to the right of Pat Robertson, deserve to be treated as more plausible, electable candidates than their man. Paul may be squeaky-voiced and decidedly unphotogenic, but at least he's been consistent and uncompromising in his support of small government, low spending, and states' rights. He was, as his backers never tire of pointing out, Tea Party before Tea Party was cool, with many of his once-radical positions — even on far-out issues like the gold standard and abolishing the 17th amendment — now enjoying comfortably mainstream status within large chunks of the Republican electorate.
So why no Paul surge? Not ones to shy away from conspiracy theories at the best of times, the majority of Paulites have taken to blaming the press. And indeed, as videos like
this one and
this one show, there
is evidence to suggest leading media figures have been more openly dismissive of the Paul candidacy than is probably justified — and certainly to a more brazen degree than they'd ever be willing to unleash against someone else in the race.
Since Ron Paul's support base has a lot of overlap with the sort of people who enjoy the collected works of Noam Chomsky, there have been a lot of predictably Chomskyian readings of this situation. Paul's pacifist views on foreign policy are "too dangerous" for the MSN to legitimize, since the American press is but the propaganda wing of the military-industrial complex; Paul is being undermined because he lacks enough corporate money to buy his way into favourable coverage; Paul's disregard for the standard right/left ideological duopoly threatens the interests of those who make their money pushing this false dichotomy on the American people; Etc.
But then again, as the saying goes, when you think like a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Since libertarians already view almost everything in the world through a prism of deep ideological skepticism and fear, it's understandable that Paul's marginalization in the mainstream press would be seen as
but one more example of the powerful forces conspiring against the political success of their philosophy.
Someday I want to write an article about my "Occam's Razor" theory of media bias, in which the strongest biases shaping media coverage can usually be proven to be quite boring and uninteresting, as opposed to the elaborate and sinister allegations we're more used to. In the case of Dr. Paul, I think most evidence suggests that the press bias against him mainly stems from the quite reasonable observation that his support base within the Republican Party base is very rigid, steady, and eccentric — much like the candidate himself. Ron Paul's views have currency among a certain 20-odd percent of the GOP electorate (many of whom are political novices and Paulites long before they are Republicans), but his blame-America-first views on terrorism, indifference to Israel, vigorous hostility to the War on Drugs, and near-hysteric fear of a Mexican border fence, to cite but a few of his proudest positions, simply conflict, at an existential level, with what the Republican Party has very deliberately set itself up to be. The argument that awkward, slouching, rambling, 76-year-old year old Ron Paul is going to single-handedly undo five decades of GOP orthodoxy is not terribly convincing to any reporter whose knowledge of the American political system stems from somewhere deeper than a few undergrad Poli Sci courses and a dog-eared copy of
Atlas Shrugged.
Paul's own son, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, demonstrated last year that it is possible for a fairly unorthodox libertarian to get elected to high office under the Republican label — so long as a few concessions are made. A far savvier politician than his father, Rand thus surrendered a bit of the isolationism and anything-goes social attitudes of the traditional Paulite base in order to shore up support among the much larger GOP constituency of national security conservatives and Evangelicals. A sell-out in the eyes of some, perhaps, but an electable candidate in the eyes of many more.
For a movement that claims success should only come as a reward for proven skill and achievement, it amazes me that so many libertarians are inclined to uncritically view all their politicians as flawless vessels. The idea that someone can be a libertarian politician, but also a terrible campaigner, incompetent strategist, lousy speaker, or otherwise ill-suited to the practice of democratic politics is almost never seriously considered. Instead, blame is directed outward, at the press, at the party bosses, at the gullible public... always further and further removed from the individual itself, who is always taken to be an innocent victim.
It's not hard to respect Ron Paul on at least some level. I personally find a lot of his views odious, but his unyielding commitment to principle is certainly laudable, and does, in fact, set him aside from many of his Congressional contemporaries who will say and do just about anything to get elected. But they do get elected just the same. Paul's alternative strategy — saying unpopular and offensive things to a hostile audience — may certainly be bold, but a viable path to power it is clearly not.
And for that, only one person is responsible.
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