Ron Paul tells the Washington Times that the GOP is ignoring the large new Republican voting block he brought into the party during his bid for the nomination:
The Texas congressman says neither he nor his supporters have heard from Mr. McCain or Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan since March 4, when the Arizona senator accumulated enough delegates to clinch the party’s presidential nomination.
“I don’t think they want them,” Mr. Paul told The Washington Times, adding that indifference doesn’t surprise him because the party’s establishment has deserted traditional conservative principles for big government and foreign intervention.
“We don’t agree with them,” he says. “We agree with the Old Right, and they’re the New Right, which is ‘The Wrong,’ [because] the New Right has morphed into neoconservative.”
Many of his 800,000 presidential nomination votes were from newcomers to the Republican Party — the kind of dedicated small-donor volunteers the party needs, he says.
McCain’s campaign has claimed that they haven’t reached out because Paul’s run for the White House hasn’t officially ended. Paul has reasons of his own for that:
Mr. Paul says that neoconservatives who hijacked the Republicans extol what he most abhors: the belief that government is part of the solution, not the problem, and that America’s inherent beneficence entitles it to force selected other nations to make themselves over in America’s image.
That’s partly the reason why, even though Mr. McCain has crossed the finish line of this marathon, Mr. Paul will keep running in states with upcoming primaries.
He wants to see whether the surprisingly successful appeal of his limited-government message represents the beginning of a “revolution” within the Republican Party similar to the one that began swelling the party’s ranks with church-going newcomers 30 years ago.
“I am doing a few more things, in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, maybe Idaho,” he says. “I’m curious right now to see how the rallies go. Whether they fade off now — just see what happens.”
Seeing what happens will be an important step in determining the future of the party. As a friend of mine who is immersed in the Catholic political culture of Washington told me recently, “I think the Catholic Republican moment is over; the Catholic libertarian moment is now to begin.”
There is evidence of this in the large Catholic support base for Ron Paul. Paul is, in reality, more of a Constitutional Libertarian than a modern Republican, but the nature of our party system makes running within the party essential to attract attention, and classical Republican values are not incompatible with Paul’s message. Running as a member of the GOP, Paul garnered far more support and media coverage (not to mention substantial cash donations) than he ever did as a Libertarian candidate in 1988.
Paul himself may very well not be the answer. As I’ve said before, I find Ron Paul’s ideas far more appealing than Ron Paul the man. He seems decent, sober, and knowledgeable, but he lacks a certain something that he needs to bring real credibility to revolutionary ideas born from reactionary politics. People think Ron Paul is crazy (I’m not one of them) in part because of how he presents himself. Moreso, however, they think his political philosophies are crazy, despite their rootedness in the history of our country.
As crazy as people want to believe him to be, they can no longer take for granted that he has serious grassroots support, much of it from young Americans who will be energized to make change. The Times reports that Ron Paul:
•Has drawn 803,217 votes, or 4.55 percent of ballots cast in this year’s primaries and caucuses, putting him fourth among Republicans, with more than Rudolph W. Giuliani or Fred Thompson.
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•Raised $32.6 million for his campaign through the end of January, including a one-day online record for either party of $6 million on Dec. 16.
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•Had his best show of support in Washington’s caucuses, where his 20.8 percent was good for third place.
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•Had his best showing with a second-place finish in Nevada’s caucuses, with 13.7 percent of the vote.
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•Claims to have secured 42 delegates to September’s nominating convention, although other estimates show him with less than half that number.
Even if Ron Paul goes away, I think that the coalition he has built is here to stay, and will shape the future of the Republican party.
Dr. Paul has built a strong coalition. As for myself, I never really cared much about politics. But after hearing Paul speak about Constitutional principles (and just plain common sense), I am much more discerning about our elected officials.
In fact, I was an Alternate Delegate for our County Assembly. I spoke with the local candidates. Many of the candidates provided personal contact information for later contact should I have any other issues.
I predict that within the next 16 years, the Grand Old Party will have a constituency that is more active, more educated, and less tolerant of GOP compromise.
He has interesting domestic ideas, but his view of our enemies and what to do about them is downright scary!!
Jeff,
I’m glad you find Ron Paul’s domestic proposals intriguing, but I am confused by your statement and the statements of many others on various blogs, to the effect that Congressman Paul’s ‘walk softly and carry a big stick’ policies are scary.
Nobody ever seems to offer any argument for why that is so, just as Mayor Giuliani contented himself with sharp rhetoric that had no specifics in it when he attacked Paul during an early GOP debate.
One can make a good case, as does the Bush administration’s own CIA, that the reason ‘they’ hate us is because we persist in military interventions in their part of the world.
Rather than being a fair broker for peace among contending factions, e.g., in the Middle East, we put our thumb on the scale and take sides.
While Great Britain of 1860 was more culturally akin and sympathetic in many ways to the Confederacy than the Union — although slavery was outlawed throughout the British Empire in 1838 and that issue wasn’t controlling for the British sympathy — Britain formally stayed out of the American Civil War.
How would the Union have felt had Great Britain entered the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy? With the blockade thus broken and the superior military leadership of the South, very possibly that war would have ended with Confederate independence.
While one might argue that the USA and CSA would at some point have reunited, mistrust and hostility between the Union-US and the UK would have persisted for generations, and the hundred -someyears of mutual sympathy and friendship we have experienced with Britain since then would not have taken place, to the detriment of both the US and the UK.
Britain wisely stayed out, whatever her cultural sympathies.
“Mind your own business” was a motto of the American War of Independence and is far more interwoven into the fabric of America than the bully-boy tactics we’ve increasingly engaged in since.
There is a reason that more contributions have been made by active duty US military personnel to COngressman Paul’s campaign than to all the other GOP campaigns combined. If Paul were naive or simplistic, do you think that the mmembers of our armed forces would be so supportive of him?
The strength of one’s military power and one’s defense capabilities consists in the deterrent of what it is capable of doing, not in constantly making war. The US has a military presence on some level in hundreds of places around the globe and most of it is not only unecessary for our security but it is counterproductive. That it is bankrupting the country should not be forgotten, either. Finally, and most importantly, the loss of American lives in counterproductive military conflicts that only breed anti-American sentiment is in nobody’s interest.
What exactly is it about walking softly and carrying a big stick that worked so well for the US historically that now, according to Congressman Paul’s critics, is scary? Is it the sense that we’ve created so many enemies from past interference that if we don’t continue to intervene they will all band together and deswtroy us for our past sins? An integrated world economy directed toward commercial and constructive pursuits is the greatest force for peace imaginable; chaos and conflict are bad business for all but munitions makers. People who are mutually suspicious but trade together for their mutual economic benefit are far more likely to remain at peace than those who hole up. The policies of sanctions and boycotts and blockades so beloved by the hawk, so-called neocon, factions of the GOP are the true isolationism and they breed war. Non-intervention with open economic trade is a very different thing entirely; arguably the very opposite of isolationism.
What is so scary about well-armed peace compared to the hatred-breeding policies of military coercion and intervention that we have now? The US is in my opinion living in a much less safe and secure world after seven years of Bush military intervention than before. What’s more, the constitutional guarantees of personal freedom and liberty have been tossed aside in the process.
Steve R,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. On the whole, I agree with just about every point you’ve made.
On a similar note, I think the blowback effect (why they hate us) that you’re talking about puts some of the Rev. Wright’s comments into a different perspective for those who have been following Ron Paul.
Steve S, thank you for your kind words.
I particularly like your observation about Rev. Wright’s anger, which although it smacks of hate and smoldering resentment, is understandably a product of anhorrent treatment in a world where he and many others once lived. Just because the realities change does not mean that the consequences of the past are simply forgotten. Only rare individuals can separate out past wrongs and choose to set them aside in the newer context.
One consideration that we will have to confront is that even with an about-face in American foreign policy, there will be a generation or more of individuals who cannot be expected to be the equivalent of saints and whose lives were shaped, damaged or twisted by events to which American interventions contributed.
This is equally true for every other nation or agency that has relied upon force to achieve some goal. The principle of non-intervention is universally applicable and there are many states around the globe whose actions have produced resentments that go far beyond those the US has generated.
Sadly, good intentions play a small role in repairing the damage from interventions. While I believe that in the main the intentions of most American interventions have been good, that’s small consolation to those chewed up by them. And, of course, throughout history those who intervened have been motivated by considerations that are even by the most charitable assessment, not benign.
Although by all accounts Japan and free Germany (whose former governments in the mid 20th century wrought horrendous havoc and damage) have been exemplary world citizens since 1945, generations yet live who can neither forget nor forgive the sins of their past. While we might wish it were not so, it’s difficult to blame them.
So unfortunately the legacies of anger, just resentment, outrage and personal destruction will remain echoing through generations, as a price the future must, and unjustly, pay for the errors of the past.
More’s the reason to stop contributing afresh to the deep wells of hatred.