The day before the official debut of Brian Doherty’s Ron Paul’s Revolution — the new book on the man, his crusade and his many enthusiastic supporters — Ron Paul slipped his 2012 presidential campaign into neutral:
Our campaign will continue to work in the state convention process. We will continue to take leadership positions, win delegates, and carry a strong message to the Republican National Convention that Liberty is the way of the future.
Moving forward, however, we will no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted.
The BBC puts Ron Paul’s delegate count at 104, with frontrunner Mitt Romney 178 short of a lock on the nomination — but that’s at present, before the upcoming primaries. As the BBC concisely summarized Dr. Paul’s campaign, he had some successes in “several contests, in states such as Maine and Nevada,” gaining “some delegates and sometimes a significant portion of the popular vote. But he was viewed by the Republican establishment as a candidate outside party orthodoxy, and he did not manage to win a single primary election.”
Talk to a Ron Paul organizer, and you can hear harrowing tales of how the Republican establishment treated Paul’s supporters as outsiders. Despite such ill treatment, chronicler Brian Doherty compares Ron Paul’s future influence on the party to that of the past influence of Barry Goldwater. “His fans understand that Ron Paul is not just out to win an election.”
Dr. Paul’s near-term influence, though, is less obvious. In his 2008 outing he was shut out, and held his own very successful parallel rally. What he hopes to accomplish at the upcoming nominating convention remains to be seen. He concludes his letter with promise of further elaboration of his campaign’s delegate strategy. But his main thrust, in this letter and elsewhere, has been to build a long-lasting movement.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
2 replies on “Ron Paul Switches Gears”
Mr. Jacob:
Dr. Ron Paul’s contribution to American and world history shall be the general re-exposition of libertarian thought, as a practical political alternative, to the general public.
Before him and his efforts only a very few persons were introduced to the concepts, and any discussion of them was immediately marginalized by the popular press and/or major parties. Before Dr. Paul, for more than a century, no one reached the national platform proposing true liberty and individual responsibility as a viable alternative.
As Mr. Doherty’s book will show, while Dr. Paul was intentionally marginalized in the 2012 presidential primary cycle as well. Regardless he convinced and activated many, hopefully enough to become a critical mass, by convincing them that principled policies of true liberty and free markets are not just preferred, but necessary for continued progress of the species.
Now that the seeds have been sown so much more widely than ever before, the idea there IS an alternative is germinating in an active and youthful portion of the electorate.
It no longer takes above average intelligence to realize the United States is declining and the Euro zone is desperate. It is now apparent alternatives to the economic policies of the past 100 years, and the foreign policy of the last 60,are necessary.
The ideas and concepts, seeded by Dr. Paul will result in a bumper crop of clearer thinkers in the near future. Those seeds, sadly, will be well fertilized by what will shortly be hitting the fan as a result of the well intentioned, but foolish and short sighted, actions of the past.
While the seeding alone was a great accomplishment, if Dr. Paul and his delegates can influence the Republican party to abandon Keynesian economics and to Austrian economics at the Republican convention, that will be the greatest political and economic contribution to this point of the 21st century.
It is not necessary to win an election to be victorious, the victor is the person who modifies the thought process, and wins the mind.
My kudos and greatest admiration to the good doctor for his lifetime of effort and devotion. He is in the most classical sense a true American patriot, and proponent for the greatest benefit to all of humanity.
Now that this is settled, let’s look at Gary Johnson, who is more libertarian than Ron. For example, Gary supports marriage equality; Ron does not.