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.

Share on Social Networks

Have you ever wondered how the social media world works for so-called “influencers”? I find it comical, so I thought I’d share with you. I frequently get offers such as what I’m about to describe. And if I’m getting such offers — as a relative nobody in the online world — you can only imagine what people with huge audiences are offered. It starts with an email appealing to my ego: “We came across your online presence and we LOVE your style. We’d love to have you as one of our Brand Ambassadors. To celebrate our new [Brand Name] collection, we want to give you a FREE Watch so you can post a picture of you wearing it and drive more exposure to our brand.” Did you hear that? They love me. They want me to be seen wearing their cheap $59 watch so other people will think, “If this amazing influencer wears that, surely I should buy one.” They even offer me commissions on the watches sold from people clicking from my site. So the next time you see some alleged “influencer” touting something online or on social media, remember that this is what it’s probably all about. It’s laughable.

Modern culture is going insane. The latest evidence comes from the effort to redefine children’s author Dr. Seuss as a racist whose books should be banned. Why? Because a few images in those books don’t meet modern political standards. The drawing you see here is one of those “dangerously racist images,” and it comes from the Dr. Seuss classic, “And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street.” The book catalogs all the wild diversity seen by a child on one street, including the offending drawing of a Chinese boy. What’s racist about it? Apparently, it was racist to show the boy eating rice, wearing a funny hat, using chopsticks and (worst of all) having eyes represented by a slit. (The bearded man near him has dots for eyes, but that’s apparently OK.) In other words, the stereotypes are considered racist today. (Oddly, the culture warriors who fret over such things are never concerned if a white southerner is depicted as ignorant trash living in a trailer. Some stereotypes are great, especially if the left hates those people anyway.) Theodore Geisel — the name of the real-life Dr. Seuss — was a product of his time and nobody at that time would have seen any of this as racist. Using stereotypes and exaggerations is how artists depict differences in simple ways. You can argue that it’s better to achieve the end result in a different way, but it’s insane to pretend that everybody from the past should have his work erased because it doesn’t match the preferences of modern leftists. Unfortunately, the company that publishes Dr. Seuss books has caved to the insane people — and six of his popular works will no longer be published. The world has simply gone insane.

Tyler Barnes will never be a basketball star. He probably peaked as a star high school player in Louisville, Ky. But for the last four years, he’s been a walk-on player for the University of Alabama. He’s a chemical engineering major with lots of academic honors who rides the bench because he loves being part of a team. He sometimes gets into games with a minute or two to go, but only if Alabama has a big lead. This Saturday, it was senior day for Alabama basketball, so it was his last chance to play in Coleman Coliseum. Alabama Coach Nate Oats says that one of the team starter’s came to him an hour before the game started — and fellow senior Alex Reese asked Oats if Barnes could start in his place for this one game. Even though the game was huge for Alabama, which is ranked No. 6 in the country and trying to wrap up an SEC title, Oats agreed. Barnes started and played the first three minutes, grabbing what was only the fourth rebound of his career and missing his only shot. Barnes has a great future as an engineer, but you’ll never again hear from him as a basketball player. For three shining minutes Saturday, though, he was a starter for a top-10 college basketball team — and his parents were in the stands from Kentucky to see it. There’s a lot of ugliness in college basketball right now, but this story makes me happy.

It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me that night, but she didn’t know it, so she was terrified. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s journey from scared dog to brave queen of the household, here’s something I wrote after her first year with me. I’m hoping this girl will have many more happy years with me.

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

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