Wishful thinking: Why Ron Paul can’t (and won’t) be elected president

By David McElroy · August 12, 2011

I don’t watch presidential candidate “debates” anymore, and last night was no exception. You can usually predict the winner by figuring out which candidate has the lowest IQ and is willing to pander the most. That’s a good fit for the average voter. I don’t have a strong enough stomach to watch that.

I have a lot of friends, though, who are getting excited about Ron Paul‘s chances of winning the Republican nomination. His fundraising is kicking into high gear and his message is starting to catch on with younger people. The momentum is building for a grassroots campaign. Oh, wait. That was 2008, wasn’t it?

I’m having deja vu as I observe my excited libertarian (and some conservative) friends throw their efforts into a new Ron Paul campaign, because it really does feel a lot like 2008. I’m hearing the same things from his supporters. I’m hearing the same vague sense of irrational optimism. I’m having trouble figuring out why such bright people — many of whom I love and respect — are being sucked into a campaign that has no chance of winning. I frequently tell people that it would be easier for me to get my dog, Lucy, elected president than Paul — partly because Lucy never ran for president on a party platform that supported illegal drugs. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let me remind you of my biases. I’ve written before about the fact that I like and respect Paul tremendously, but I won’t be voting for him. I won’t be voting for another candidate, though. If you’ve read much of what I’ve written here, you’ll understand why. I’ve given up on the coercive state and I’m looking for what comes next. Not only do I believe the state has no moral legitimacy, I also think it’s pragmatically impossible to save the American empire at this point, so I’m not trying. (Please read my previous article on the subject before continuing. I’ll wait here for you.)

I’m trying to make sure you understand up-front that I’m not trying to dissuade anyone from supporting Paul because I want you to support another candidate instead. I’m in the “Nobody for president” camp. In this article, though, we’re strictly going to look at the political realities. I’m basing this on my 20 years of experience working in politics on a state and local level. I haven’t worked for presidential campaigns, but the same reasoning applies.

Paul is going to lose for three simple reasons. First, his policies and priorities — as much sense as they make to me (and probably you) — aren’t shared by most other people. His economic policies resonate with Republican voters. If we were just electing a president based on economics, I’d give him a slight chance. But we’re not. A presidential campaign is about emotions concerning a lot of different things. If Paul ends up being seen as a serious candidate (which I don’t believe will happen anyway), he will be pummeled with his previous stances on military policy, foreign policy and social issues. His views are far out of step with Republican primary voters. That in itself will be enough to kill his chances of winning. Please just face it. You can’t talk people into agreeing with your logic. It’s not going to happen.

Second, the media don’t believe that Paul has a chance, so he’s not going to get especially favorable coverage. Nothing about him plays into any of the sort of story lines that media like to tell. For instance, after last night’s debate, the focus was on Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney. The media need to reduce things to two candidates in order to tell a story. With eight candidates in the debate, there will probably be three tiers in the media coverage: 1) The top two, in their judgement, 2) the ones who have a shot at moving up, in their judgement, and 3) the “also rans” who complete the field. Paul is in the third category.

They’ll be nice about the third group, but with the way televisions works, it’s impossible to give reasonable “mindshare” to all eight candidates. This isn’t a matter of the media trying to choose a candidate — as some of my conspiratorial friends always allege. It’s just a matter of the TV people having to concentrate on the few people they think have a shot, because that’s the way TV works. (I’ve recommended it over and over, but please real Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death” if you want to understand why TV dumbs down public discourse. It’s not the media people. It’s the medium itself.)

Third, even if we could get past the fact that Paul’s positions radically diverging from those of Republican primary voters and even if we could convince the media to treat him as one of the top candidates, there’s one issue that will destroy him. Paul will not be willing to enlist in the “War on (Some) Drugs.” This is honest and principled — and he’s 100 percent right — but it’s political suicide. No matter how stupid it is to keep throwing money after fighting a “war” that can’t be won (and that’s destroying our civil liberties), Republican primary voters want someone who will promise to do it anyway. If Paul were a serious candidate at some point, all it would take to destroy him is to show his previous views about drug legalization (and decriminalization) and show quotes from the 1988 Libertarian Party platform, when Paul was its nominee. The sinister-sounding TV spots about “our children” being in danger with a Ron Paul presidency virtually write themselves.

I read a lot of people trying to convince folks that Paul has a chance. I like and respect many of these people, but they’re just plain wrong on this one. I would love to be wrong about this, but I’m not.

Ron Paul has no chance of being elected president. You’re much better off focusing on what you’re going to do under another four years of the Big Government Demopublican who really is going to be elected. Figure out whether it’s worth staying here or you want to go somewhere else or head for a remote mountain or an island. Whatever your plan might be. Working for Paul might make you feel good for a little while, but you won’t achieve your goal, despite the fact that some very sincere people are sure it’s finally going to be different this time. It’s not.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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