Michael
Mar 14th 2010, 11:05 AM
Here's two articles about Ron Paul, from the same publication:
First the skeptical position:
The Ron Paul Delusion
Why the Texas congressman does not represent the future of conservatism
What are we to make of the Republican Party's future now that libertarian Rep. Ron Paul won the presidential straw poll at the well-attended Conservative Political Action Conference last week?
Is the GOP about to transform into the party of the gold standard?
Let's, for a moment, forget Paul (and how I wish this could be a permanent condition, considering the congressman is neither a serious politician nor—and I can't stress this enough—a serious thinker).
Libertarianism offers conservatives—many of them new to political activism—an earnest ideological alternative to the process-heavy politics that dominate Washington.
It allows Republicans to cleanse themselves of the GOP's failure to deliver on promises of smaller government and fiscal restraint.
None of which is new. The 1964 Barry Goldwater would be considered a libertarian today by many measures. The National Review constructed a "fusionist" effort to bring the parties together. Ronald Reagan explained to Reason magazine back in 1975 that "the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism."
Two sticking points preventing this fling from turning into something more serious have been social issues and war. Has anything changed to alter the dynamics of the relationship? Probably not.
Article (http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/24/the-ron-paul-delusion)
And then the much more nuanced view...
The Paulpocalypse
A longtime Ron Paul watcher wonders if his CPAC victory is the dawn of a new age, or the beginning of the end
The straw poll victory of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last week, with a plurality of 31 percent, spurred a wide range of reaction and emotions. If you weren’t already a fan of the radically libertarian Republican congressmen, his victory wasn’t the thing to make you start taking him seriously.
Many agreed that Paul’s win, if meaningful, could only bode ill for the Republican Party’s prospects. David A. Harris at TalkingPointsMemo thinks Paul’s ascendance means the GOP is determined to give up on the Jews (since Paul has suggested that certain U.S. foreign policy decisions benefit Israel more than they benefit the U.S.). Earl Ofari Hutchinson at Huffington Post thinks Paul’s win means racism and nativism is on the rise in the GOP, as he fantasizes about non-existent race-based jibes in Paul’s CPAC speech.
In the real world, Paul’s speech was mostly about fiscal probity and saving the U.S. from a debt-driven dollar collapse. Paul applied principles of limited government and restrained spending to a place where most Republicans fear to tread: foreign policy. He stressed the vital importance of the free exchange of ideas, including a long shout-out to Eugene Debs, the socialist leader jailed by Democratic god Woodrow Wilson for saying the wrong things, and freed by Republican President Warren Harding.
Paul talked to the assembled activists of the unity of liberty, including the liberty to eat and smoke what you want. He harkened back to old Republican icons (such as President Dwight D. Eisenhower with his military-industrial complex warnings) to give his constitutionalist libertarian version of conservatism a usable past. His talk was rambly, perhaps not ready for prime time, but united by a bracing vision of a government that did only what its Constitution intended it to do. This makes him radical indeed.
Article (http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/24/the-paulpocalypse)
Taken together, these two articles say as much about the conservative movement and the Republican party as they do about Ron Paul - as all three are intimately bound together, whether they like it or not. The question is, what will come of it?
I personally have given up trying to predict where conservatives, the rightwing and/or the Republican party are going, other than to observe that they really hate the people they like to call liberals. After that, it all becomes an incoherent jumbled mess of projected fears, ideological certainties and lots of cognitive dissonance.
I suppose I do still hold out a tiny shred of hope that there is still an actually rational and viable conservative movement that can meaningfully contribute to the collective governance of the nation with something other than a policy to line the pockets of their corporate backers and free those same corporations from all regulatory restraint.
In this respect, I have a hard time deciding whether or not the Ron Paul phenomenon represents a timely and healthy political challenge to the entrenched orthodoxies of the right, or whether it is yet another sign of the deterioration of the 'respectable' right, or whether it represents a potential splitting up of the 'Republican big-tent' into smaller and more extreme factions? (like the Teaparty set for example).
So what's your take on Ron Paul's politics and what it means for conservatives and/or the Republican party?
First the skeptical position:
The Ron Paul Delusion
Why the Texas congressman does not represent the future of conservatism
What are we to make of the Republican Party's future now that libertarian Rep. Ron Paul won the presidential straw poll at the well-attended Conservative Political Action Conference last week?
Is the GOP about to transform into the party of the gold standard?
Let's, for a moment, forget Paul (and how I wish this could be a permanent condition, considering the congressman is neither a serious politician nor—and I can't stress this enough—a serious thinker).
Libertarianism offers conservatives—many of them new to political activism—an earnest ideological alternative to the process-heavy politics that dominate Washington.
It allows Republicans to cleanse themselves of the GOP's failure to deliver on promises of smaller government and fiscal restraint.
None of which is new. The 1964 Barry Goldwater would be considered a libertarian today by many measures. The National Review constructed a "fusionist" effort to bring the parties together. Ronald Reagan explained to Reason magazine back in 1975 that "the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism."
Two sticking points preventing this fling from turning into something more serious have been social issues and war. Has anything changed to alter the dynamics of the relationship? Probably not.
Article (http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/24/the-ron-paul-delusion)
And then the much more nuanced view...
The Paulpocalypse
A longtime Ron Paul watcher wonders if his CPAC victory is the dawn of a new age, or the beginning of the end
The straw poll victory of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last week, with a plurality of 31 percent, spurred a wide range of reaction and emotions. If you weren’t already a fan of the radically libertarian Republican congressmen, his victory wasn’t the thing to make you start taking him seriously.
Many agreed that Paul’s win, if meaningful, could only bode ill for the Republican Party’s prospects. David A. Harris at TalkingPointsMemo thinks Paul’s ascendance means the GOP is determined to give up on the Jews (since Paul has suggested that certain U.S. foreign policy decisions benefit Israel more than they benefit the U.S.). Earl Ofari Hutchinson at Huffington Post thinks Paul’s win means racism and nativism is on the rise in the GOP, as he fantasizes about non-existent race-based jibes in Paul’s CPAC speech.
In the real world, Paul’s speech was mostly about fiscal probity and saving the U.S. from a debt-driven dollar collapse. Paul applied principles of limited government and restrained spending to a place where most Republicans fear to tread: foreign policy. He stressed the vital importance of the free exchange of ideas, including a long shout-out to Eugene Debs, the socialist leader jailed by Democratic god Woodrow Wilson for saying the wrong things, and freed by Republican President Warren Harding.
Paul talked to the assembled activists of the unity of liberty, including the liberty to eat and smoke what you want. He harkened back to old Republican icons (such as President Dwight D. Eisenhower with his military-industrial complex warnings) to give his constitutionalist libertarian version of conservatism a usable past. His talk was rambly, perhaps not ready for prime time, but united by a bracing vision of a government that did only what its Constitution intended it to do. This makes him radical indeed.
Article (http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/24/the-paulpocalypse)
Taken together, these two articles say as much about the conservative movement and the Republican party as they do about Ron Paul - as all three are intimately bound together, whether they like it or not. The question is, what will come of it?
I personally have given up trying to predict where conservatives, the rightwing and/or the Republican party are going, other than to observe that they really hate the people they like to call liberals. After that, it all becomes an incoherent jumbled mess of projected fears, ideological certainties and lots of cognitive dissonance.
I suppose I do still hold out a tiny shred of hope that there is still an actually rational and viable conservative movement that can meaningfully contribute to the collective governance of the nation with something other than a policy to line the pockets of their corporate backers and free those same corporations from all regulatory restraint.
In this respect, I have a hard time deciding whether or not the Ron Paul phenomenon represents a timely and healthy political challenge to the entrenched orthodoxies of the right, or whether it is yet another sign of the deterioration of the 'respectable' right, or whether it represents a potential splitting up of the 'Republican big-tent' into smaller and more extreme factions? (like the Teaparty set for example).
So what's your take on Ron Paul's politics and what it means for conservatives and/or the Republican party?