Why Paul May Compete Well Against 44

Now that Rep. Paul is threatening to win in Iowa, the establishment conservative commentariat has been going out of their minds. They appear to not consider him electable, think he's too old, too eccentric looking, a tinfoil hat crank, an isolationist, a barely-concealed racist, among other things. Perhaps it is because Rep Paul actively dislikes Republicans...and they don't like him either, because, well, he's not one of them. He's a paleocon in the style of Taft, Howard Buffett (Warren Buffet's father), or "Pitchfork Pat" Buchanan, and most certainly not cut from the same cloth as those who call themselves conservatives today. And this distinction isn't some inside-baseball trivia...members of the right and even left-liberals have noticed that Rep Paul is the only Republican presidential candidate that doesn't "want to start another war". And we thought Sen McCain's "bomb bomb bomb Iran" riff four years ago was just a one-off. Silly us.

There are a ton of articles making the case, from left [1] [2] and right [1],[2] just to cite a few, that Rep Paul is unfit for the presidency.

One of the articles I read, making the case that Rep Paul can never be president, in many ways does the opposite. This is especially so when one considers Kimberly Strassel's recent warning that Republicans had better field a candidate substantively different from Mr. Obama if they hope to win in 2012...for Rep Paul is nothing if not the antithesis of Mr. Obama, far more so than either Mr. Gingrich or Mr. Romney.

The subject article cites quotes from his past in an attempt to show that he's too fringe or too extreme, but what it really does is promote a Paul candidacy as a candidate of freedom and liberty and against big government. The article implies that views described below are too extreme for a president; this is particularly dismaying is when one considers that his views at one time were mainstream in American politics, going back as far as the founders:

On Leaving the Republican Party in Reagan's Last Year of Office, 1988: "The Republican Party has not reduced the size of government. It has become government's best friend...[t]here is no credibility left for the Republican Party as a force to reduce the size of government"

On Abe Lincoln: "I don't think he was one of our greatest presidents. I mean, he was determined to fight a bloody civil war, which many have argued could have been avoided...the Civil War was to prove that we had a very, very strong centralized federal government and that's what it did. It rejected the notion that states were a sovereign nation."

On the Civil Rights Act of 1964: "The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society. the only way the federal government could ensure an employer was not violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to ensure that the racial composition of a business's workforce matched the racial composition of a bureaucrat or judge's defined body of potential employees. Thus, bureaucrats began forcing employers to hire by racial quota"

On the CIA/FBI: "Interviewer:...[i]n the last interview we did with a Libertarian candidate for President, he said you that would abolish the CIA, the FBI, and the IRS. Do you hold those same positions? Ron Paul: Yes, I do -- because you know, most of our history, we didn't have those institutions"

On Social Security and Medicare: "There's no authority [in the Constitution]. Article I, Section 8 doesn't say I can set up an insurance program for people. What part of the Constitution are you getting it from?"

On Legalizing Heroin and Cocaine: "It's an issue of protecting liberty across the board. If you have the inconsistency, then you're really not defending liberty. We want freedom [including] when it comes to our personal habits...[f]or over 100 years, they WERE legal. You're implying if we legalize heroin tomorrow, everyone's gonna use heroin. How many people here are going to use heroin if it were legal? I bet nobody! "Oh yeah, I need the government to take care of me. I don't want to use heroin, so I need these laws!"

If these quotes in support of limited government, of the individual's right to free association, in support of property rights--the bedrock natural right of Western Civilization, of not trading one set of state-sponsored race-based discrimination for another, of disposing of government bureaus whose jobs can be accomplished by other means or done away with entirely, of abolishing unconstitutional government redistribution programs, and ending the drug war, are today prima facie evidence of disqualification for the presidency, are "outside the mainstream", and aren't even topics of legitimate debate, then I think we're pretty much finished as a free republic. May as well sit back, nuke some popcorn, and enjoy the decline into mediocrity and tyranny.  Freedom, we barely knew ye.

But then there were some quotes that need some extra explaining, for while factually accurate, can be interpreted to make Rep Paul look like he's doing the national security equivalent of "blaming the victim":

On Who's at Fault for 9/11: "They (Al-Qaeda) attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years"

On the Taliban, Who Were in Control of Afghanistan and Allied with Al-Qaeda on 9/11: Taliban doesn't mean they want to come here and kill us. The Taliban means they want to kill us over there because all they want to do is get people who occupy their country out of their country just like we would if anybody tried to Occupy us.

Both these quotes open up Rep Paul for attacks from hawks who want to bluff-charge the American people into reflexive support for a bellicose foreign policy and overseas adventurism. Yes, al Qaeda's stated reason for coming after us was for our support for Israel and for our presence in Saudi Arabia. Yes, the Taliban really didn't care about us and had no desire to come over here and kill us prior to our invasion in 2001. But while both statements are technically accurate, both make Rep Paul vulnerable to the victim-blaming charge, for I think most Americans, myself included, sense that even if were weren't in Saudi Arabia and didn't support Israel, that we'd still be a target of Islamist aggression on some other occasion and some other location. For that is the nature of militant Islam, and has been so since its inception over 13 centuries ago. Commentator Dorothy Rabinowitz made this exact point in the WSJ on Dec 23d (while criticizing Paul for being, in not so many words, an America-hater who sides with America's Islamist enemies), and illustrated her point by quoting the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad: "the US a Satanic power that will, with God's will, be annihilated". Thus those who say that Islamists hate us "for our freedoms" are wrong in my book...Islamists hate us because we are kafirs, infidels, and they are on a mission from god to put us all under submission. They need no other reasons to come after us, our support for Israel and presence in Saudi Arabia are convenient pretexts for their fevered calls to jihad, and this is a fact I think the American people instinctively understand. Which then becomes a potential issue for Rep Paul, for his rhetoric on this issue goes against the grain of the American peoples' common sense.

Furthermore, Rep Paul regularly, and unjustly so in my opinion, takes spears for being a so-called "isolationist". This gross distortion of his position would be laughable were it not so widely repeated. Rep Paul is non-interventionist, not isolationist, the latter being the standard ad hominem employed against those who dare to speak out in opposition to America's aggressive and interventionist foreign policy over the last three generations. I am convinced that Rep Paul would steadfastly defend the homeland if attacked...he just isn't keen on going abroad looking for monsters to slay, or democracies to install by force.

Based on these positions alone, I argue that Rep Paul could compete favorably against Mr. Obama in next years' presidential election. For he has a three-part winning message here: one, Rep Paul is consistently about freedom and liberty and of keeping government within Constitutionally prescribed boundaries.  Properly articulated, is quite well positioned to capture the "Not Mitt" Republican vote, particularly those of a Tea Party bent.

Two, I sense that a large portion of the population is quite tired of ten going on eleven years of warfare, the tossing around of "Afghanistan Cost Metrics" ($10B/mo) as if it were mere chump change, and in this instance, Mr. Paul would probably siphon off some of Mr. Obama's white working-class and youth support, leaving Mr. Obama with his (powerful) core Democrat constituencies of well-off white liberals, single women, and racial/ethnic minorities.

Third, for all those Republicans fighting so hard against him now, were Mr. Paul to be the nominee, they would have little choice but to support him or stay home and pout. Given how distasteful another term of 44 would be for most of them, they would be well counseled to throw their support behind a Paul candidacy and work to moderate his less mainstream views from the inside.* Paul energizes a portion of the base that neither Gingrich nor Romney electrifies--how many conservatives will stay home next year if presented with the Hobson's Choice of Mitt v Obama? Which has the déjà vu feel of McCain v Obama, ca 2008, two candidates so close together in basic governing philosophy that one can barely discern any light between them?

* Much in the same way that former President George W. "I-don't-do-nation-building" Bush and President Barack H. "I'll-close-Gitmo" Obama had body-snatching episodes the moment they took office, I strongly suspect a President Paul would be more moderate and circumspect than Candidate Paul or Congressman Paul or Private Citizen Paul.

One serious aspect of the article I cite highlights some newsletters and other publications, if not written by Rep Paul himself, bore his name, and therefore he is ultimately responsible for their content. The content of these newsletters and publications will be quite troubling for a Paul candidacy, and I will delve into that situation in Part 2 of this post. For it is in this area where Mr. Paul will experience some serious difficulty from here forward through the primary and (if nominated), the general election against Mr. Obama.