The Ron Paul Postmortem Part II - Autopsy of a Revolution
Sean Scallon
March 19, 2008
Many Ron Paul supporters are amazed if not mystified that Rep. Paul could have won 70 percent of the vote in his own Congressional District in Texas against a reasonably serious opponent, yet have his best performance in his campaign for President come in the Montana GOP caucuses. There he won 24% or 400 votes out of 1,628 votes cast on that Super Tuesday contest.
Given the hap-hazard, ad-hoc and sometimes chaotic nature of the campaign´s main headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, Rep. Paul should consider himself lucky he did that well at all in Montana along with other caucus states like Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Nevada, North Dakota, Minnesota, Maine and Washington thanks to the efforts of his grassroots supporters.
Many of those supporters wondered if a political consultant on a white horse rode into campaign headquarters, Paul would have done better in his second presidential campaign. Certainly such a person, if he or she existed, could have run a smoother and tighter operation, just as Mark Elam and Rep. Paul´s campaign team in Texas had done. But there were a lot of forces standing in Paul´s way that were going to deny him the GOP nomination regardless who was running the show. Part II of The Ron Paul Postmortem looks at these forces and why they were too powerful to overcome.
Part II
Speaking of consultants, it would have taken an awful lot of money to lure the GOP´s best and brightest to work for Ron Paul. Even an organization as ramshackle as Mike Huckabee´s campaign at least attracted two veteran GOP politicos like Ed Rollins and James Pinkerton. No one of any prominence within the GOP political consultant or campaign world, with the exception of Drew Ivers in Iowa, worked for Ron Paul.
Being one´s own man, as Rep. Paul is in Congress, does have one important drawback: you truly are alone. Rep. Paul has put together his own political team in Texas loyal to him. He has his own fundraisings lists and team of supporters. He´s never had to rely on outside consultants to do his work and in the one campaign that he did so, his third return to Congress back in 1996, the experience was not pleasant (it´s one of the reasons why the infamous newsletters became an issue, because the consultant gave Paul the wrong advice on them) and Paul has eschewed help from the main party campaign apparatus ever since then. He´s loath to trust his political fortunes to outsiders or anyone else he doesn´t know. That meant no one was out there to help Rep. Paul, even when the campaign was amassing a huge pile of money by December (assuming no one had their phone calls returned like Bill Hillsman for example). In a way this is not bad thing, because the worst campaigns are those where the campaign consultant and the candidate do not know or trust each other. But it also means a lack of experience and professionalism when it comes to such campaigns, at least until Elam took over the national campaign in mid-February.
Given Ron Paul´s views on the issues, and how they clash dramatically with the current view of the Republican Party, it would have taken a very brave GOP consultant to work with the Paul campaign. It´s been a long time since an official party has been so openly hostile to one of its own elected officials. And yet we had the party chairman in Michigan publicly calling for Paul´s exclusion from GOP debates. We had the party chairman in South Carolina warning Paul not to even campaign in the state. A two-bit party leader in Iowa kept Paul out of a Des Moines campaign forum. Crooked bastard party leaders in Louisiana engaged in any number of dirty tricks and electoral shenanigans to prevent Rep. Paul from obtaining any convention delegates even though the Paul campaign was the only GOP candidate to field full delegate slates for the state´s caucuses back in January. We had party leaders in Nevada trying to change both caucus locations and rules at the last minute.
"Even insurgencies need friends," author Bruce Miroff wrote in his book The Liberals´ Moment on the McGovern campaign. Although McGovern was opposed by many party leaders, had did have the support of some and they gave his campaign credibility and help he would not have otherwise had. The same was true for Goldwater and Reagan. Ron Paul had no friends with the GOP establishment and the only support he received were from obscure state legislators, retired politicians like Barry Goldwater Jr. and Gary Johnson, or people on the outs with the establishment like Doug Bandow or Michael Scheuer. Not every party person was opposed was strenuously opposed to Paul. Some were fair and even open to having his supporters join a party in desperate need of new blood. But most have not been friendly. But that shouldn´t be surprising given the reaction many registered Republican voters had towards Paul in the polls: strongly unfavorable.
Where did that strongly unfavorable viewpoint of Paul come from? Certainly it comes from his views on foreign policy and the war. Indeed many Republicans stated Paul´s views on the economy, health care or spending or the size of government, abortion, immigration were perfectly acceptable, except for the war. Daniel Larison explained why in his blog Eunomia:
"The GOP has reached a consensus on national security and foreign policy, which is now taken as something of a given. Obviously, I think the consensus they have reached is terrible, but it is there. It is excellent that Ron Paul struggles against that consensus, which is horrible and needs to be overturned, but one reason I think he has such high unfavourables among Republicans in poll after poll is that he is repudiating something that the majority of the party now regards as fundamental."
When Paul began his campaign in February of 2007, I had though that if nothing changed in Iraq throughout the year, support for the war among Republicans would collapse and that would give Paul the opening to make his pitch. That never happened. The "surge" reduced violence in Iraq and that helped to freeze Republican support for the war. As a military strategy the "surge" was fairly dubious. As a political strategy, it worked brilliantly. And who was the candidate who gave his whole-hearted support to the "surge" while also being acceptable to most of the other factions within the party? The party´s nominee for president John McCain. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingram have no one to blame but themselves for McCain´s nomination, since they were the one´s who made the war a litmus test for so-called conservatives and Republicans.
What this goes to show among Republicans is that faction that has the most sway is not the so-called "religious right" or "Christian conservatives", or "economic conservatives", it´s the military-industrial complex. And when I say this, I´m not talking about defense contractor lobbyists. I´m talking about all those who have family members or relatives serving in Iraq, veterans or those use veteran services, military members and their dependents and those communities that are dependent upon the military for their economic well being whether through employment at military facilities or working with companies who do business with the Pentagon. That´s a lot of people around this country and it´s no secret McCain did well in states with high numbers of veterans or states with strong connections to the military in terms of bases or number of persons serving or on active duty like New Hampshire or South Carolina or California and did not do as well in those states that have few ties to the military. This faction of the party has been growing since the 1970s and will continue to play a strong role for the foreseeable future. McCain played to the strength of this faction by repeating calling for "victory" in Iraq, a slogan these voters identify with.
And while Rep. Paul did well among young and secular voters, they were dwarfed by the biggest demographic that voted in GOP primaries and caucuses: voters over 45 and up. Such persons rarely take part in Revolutions nor do they use the internet all that much.
But even if Paul did do well in New Hampshire and Iowa to be taken seriously as a candidate, the whole newsletter issue would have gotten more attention than just the internet or the cable news networks. The major networks and newspapers would have gotten in on the act as well and it´s doubtful they would have bought Paul´s story of being unaware about the content of the newsletters. They would have probed the issue deeper than it had been before, perhaps unearthed some more embarrassing information or perhaps would have found out who the author(s) were. Having such an issue explode on such a decentralized, and in many cases disorganized, campaign would have been a nightmare to deal with and would have ultimately derailed Paul as much as the war issue did. Luckily the newsletter issue became nothing more than an opportunity for cosmopolitan libertarians to become the equivalent of holier-than-thou Pharisees trying to settle old scores with paleolibertarians.
On top of all of this, also lined-up against Ron Paul were the forces of history, namely that only one sitting member of the House of Representatives has ever been both nominated by their party and elected president: James Garfield. He was the compromise choice at a deadlocked 1880 GOP convention and once nominated he used the formidable power of the then nation´s majority party to win the White House. Not even powerful Speakers of the House like Champ Clark or John Nance Garner were ever nominated nor were powerful committee chairmen like Wilbur Mills. One can argue, even as a backbencher, Paul had just as many resources as say Clark or Garner or Mills did with the internet raising money and building campaign infrastructure for him in various states. But the fact remains, unless you´re a C-SPAN junkie, the name Ron Paul simply doesn´t ring a bell for most people.
Given all that was against his campaign, Paul probably did as well as could be reasonably expected. Paul won some counties in various states, has a dedicated band of supporters and will have delegates at the Republican National Convention. That´s far better than James Gilmore or Sam Brownback and lot better than John Connally, John Glenn, Wilbur Mills or any other candidates over the years have done. Rarely does a losing candidate generate a movement around himself but he has managed to do so. What direction this movement decides to take will be in Part III of the Ron Paul Postmortem.
Sean Scallon is a freelance writer and newspaper reporter who lives in Arkansaw, Wisconsin. His work has appeared in Chronicles: A magazine of American Culture. His first-ever book: Beating the Powers that Be: Independent Political Movements and Parties of the Upper Midwest and their Relevance in Third-party Politics of Today is now out on sale from Publish America. Go to the their website at www.publishamerica.com to order a copy.
Given the hap-hazard, ad-hoc and sometimes chaotic nature of the campaign´s main headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, Rep. Paul should consider himself lucky he did that well at all in Montana along with other caucus states like Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Nevada, North Dakota, Minnesota, Maine and Washington thanks to the efforts of his grassroots supporters.
Many of those supporters wondered if a political consultant on a white horse rode into campaign headquarters, Paul would have done better in his second presidential campaign. Certainly such a person, if he or she existed, could have run a smoother and tighter operation, just as Mark Elam and Rep. Paul´s campaign team in Texas had done. But there were a lot of forces standing in Paul´s way that were going to deny him the GOP nomination regardless who was running the show. Part II of The Ron Paul Postmortem looks at these forces and why they were too powerful to overcome.
Part II
Speaking of consultants, it would have taken an awful lot of money to lure the GOP´s best and brightest to work for Ron Paul. Even an organization as ramshackle as Mike Huckabee´s campaign at least attracted two veteran GOP politicos like Ed Rollins and James Pinkerton. No one of any prominence within the GOP political consultant or campaign world, with the exception of Drew Ivers in Iowa, worked for Ron Paul.
Being one´s own man, as Rep. Paul is in Congress, does have one important drawback: you truly are alone. Rep. Paul has put together his own political team in Texas loyal to him. He has his own fundraisings lists and team of supporters. He´s never had to rely on outside consultants to do his work and in the one campaign that he did so, his third return to Congress back in 1996, the experience was not pleasant (it´s one of the reasons why the infamous newsletters became an issue, because the consultant gave Paul the wrong advice on them) and Paul has eschewed help from the main party campaign apparatus ever since then. He´s loath to trust his political fortunes to outsiders or anyone else he doesn´t know. That meant no one was out there to help Rep. Paul, even when the campaign was amassing a huge pile of money by December (assuming no one had their phone calls returned like Bill Hillsman for example). In a way this is not bad thing, because the worst campaigns are those where the campaign consultant and the candidate do not know or trust each other. But it also means a lack of experience and professionalism when it comes to such campaigns, at least until Elam took over the national campaign in mid-February.
Given Ron Paul´s views on the issues, and how they clash dramatically with the current view of the Republican Party, it would have taken a very brave GOP consultant to work with the Paul campaign. It´s been a long time since an official party has been so openly hostile to one of its own elected officials. And yet we had the party chairman in Michigan publicly calling for Paul´s exclusion from GOP debates. We had the party chairman in South Carolina warning Paul not to even campaign in the state. A two-bit party leader in Iowa kept Paul out of a Des Moines campaign forum. Crooked bastard party leaders in Louisiana engaged in any number of dirty tricks and electoral shenanigans to prevent Rep. Paul from obtaining any convention delegates even though the Paul campaign was the only GOP candidate to field full delegate slates for the state´s caucuses back in January. We had party leaders in Nevada trying to change both caucus locations and rules at the last minute.
"Even insurgencies need friends," author Bruce Miroff wrote in his book The Liberals´ Moment on the McGovern campaign. Although McGovern was opposed by many party leaders, had did have the support of some and they gave his campaign credibility and help he would not have otherwise had. The same was true for Goldwater and Reagan. Ron Paul had no friends with the GOP establishment and the only support he received were from obscure state legislators, retired politicians like Barry Goldwater Jr. and Gary Johnson, or people on the outs with the establishment like Doug Bandow or Michael Scheuer. Not every party person was opposed was strenuously opposed to Paul. Some were fair and even open to having his supporters join a party in desperate need of new blood. But most have not been friendly. But that shouldn´t be surprising given the reaction many registered Republican voters had towards Paul in the polls: strongly unfavorable.
Where did that strongly unfavorable viewpoint of Paul come from? Certainly it comes from his views on foreign policy and the war. Indeed many Republicans stated Paul´s views on the economy, health care or spending or the size of government, abortion, immigration were perfectly acceptable, except for the war. Daniel Larison explained why in his blog Eunomia:
"The GOP has reached a consensus on national security and foreign policy, which is now taken as something of a given. Obviously, I think the consensus they have reached is terrible, but it is there. It is excellent that Ron Paul struggles against that consensus, which is horrible and needs to be overturned, but one reason I think he has such high unfavourables among Republicans in poll after poll is that he is repudiating something that the majority of the party now regards as fundamental."
When Paul began his campaign in February of 2007, I had though that if nothing changed in Iraq throughout the year, support for the war among Republicans would collapse and that would give Paul the opening to make his pitch. That never happened. The "surge" reduced violence in Iraq and that helped to freeze Republican support for the war. As a military strategy the "surge" was fairly dubious. As a political strategy, it worked brilliantly. And who was the candidate who gave his whole-hearted support to the "surge" while also being acceptable to most of the other factions within the party? The party´s nominee for president John McCain. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingram have no one to blame but themselves for McCain´s nomination, since they were the one´s who made the war a litmus test for so-called conservatives and Republicans.
What this goes to show among Republicans is that faction that has the most sway is not the so-called "religious right" or "Christian conservatives", or "economic conservatives", it´s the military-industrial complex. And when I say this, I´m not talking about defense contractor lobbyists. I´m talking about all those who have family members or relatives serving in Iraq, veterans or those use veteran services, military members and their dependents and those communities that are dependent upon the military for their economic well being whether through employment at military facilities or working with companies who do business with the Pentagon. That´s a lot of people around this country and it´s no secret McCain did well in states with high numbers of veterans or states with strong connections to the military in terms of bases or number of persons serving or on active duty like New Hampshire or South Carolina or California and did not do as well in those states that have few ties to the military. This faction of the party has been growing since the 1970s and will continue to play a strong role for the foreseeable future. McCain played to the strength of this faction by repeating calling for "victory" in Iraq, a slogan these voters identify with.
And while Rep. Paul did well among young and secular voters, they were dwarfed by the biggest demographic that voted in GOP primaries and caucuses: voters over 45 and up. Such persons rarely take part in Revolutions nor do they use the internet all that much.
But even if Paul did do well in New Hampshire and Iowa to be taken seriously as a candidate, the whole newsletter issue would have gotten more attention than just the internet or the cable news networks. The major networks and newspapers would have gotten in on the act as well and it´s doubtful they would have bought Paul´s story of being unaware about the content of the newsletters. They would have probed the issue deeper than it had been before, perhaps unearthed some more embarrassing information or perhaps would have found out who the author(s) were. Having such an issue explode on such a decentralized, and in many cases disorganized, campaign would have been a nightmare to deal with and would have ultimately derailed Paul as much as the war issue did. Luckily the newsletter issue became nothing more than an opportunity for cosmopolitan libertarians to become the equivalent of holier-than-thou Pharisees trying to settle old scores with paleolibertarians.
On top of all of this, also lined-up against Ron Paul were the forces of history, namely that only one sitting member of the House of Representatives has ever been both nominated by their party and elected president: James Garfield. He was the compromise choice at a deadlocked 1880 GOP convention and once nominated he used the formidable power of the then nation´s majority party to win the White House. Not even powerful Speakers of the House like Champ Clark or John Nance Garner were ever nominated nor were powerful committee chairmen like Wilbur Mills. One can argue, even as a backbencher, Paul had just as many resources as say Clark or Garner or Mills did with the internet raising money and building campaign infrastructure for him in various states. But the fact remains, unless you´re a C-SPAN junkie, the name Ron Paul simply doesn´t ring a bell for most people.
Given all that was against his campaign, Paul probably did as well as could be reasonably expected. Paul won some counties in various states, has a dedicated band of supporters and will have delegates at the Republican National Convention. That´s far better than James Gilmore or Sam Brownback and lot better than John Connally, John Glenn, Wilbur Mills or any other candidates over the years have done. Rarely does a losing candidate generate a movement around himself but he has managed to do so. What direction this movement decides to take will be in Part III of the Ron Paul Postmortem.
Sean Scallon is a freelance writer and newspaper reporter who lives in Arkansaw, Wisconsin. His work has appeared in Chronicles: A magazine of American Culture. His first-ever book: Beating the Powers that Be: Independent Political Movements and Parties of the Upper Midwest and their Relevance in Third-party Politics of Today is now out on sale from Publish America. Go to the their website at www.publishamerica.com to order a copy.
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