Mike Crowley has a fun piece on Ron Paul's quixotic campaign for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. It's a pretty fair article too, even if Mike does, unaccountably, consider the legalisation of drugs and prostitution a "hoary" libertarian "bugaboo" (sure: it's an established part of the libertarian liturgy, but it's not necessarily a trite policy position. You could quite easily, if you wanted to, consider it, "compassionate"). Anyway... That aside, it's a good piece well worth reading.
Most of Ron Paul's beliefs are, well, unpopular. Sometimes this is a good thing: I'm unconvinced we need to return to the gold standard, for instance. But this does make it somewhat ironic that his most popular views in a national sense - ie, on immigration, where Paul is much-less comfortable with immigration than is customary amongst libertarians - is his least popular amongst the people who are in fact most likely to vote for him.
Given libertarianism's history of schisms and habit of turfing people out of the "movement" for failing to pass muster as a "real" or "proper" libertarian, the willingness of libertarian-minded Republicans to forgive Paul his heresies on immigration and, to some extent, trade could be considered cheery evidence of a kinder, more forgiving libertarianism. There's no need for the perfect to be the enemy of the good.
Still, it 's perhaps typical of a fringe movement that its members should find themselves endorsing a candidate who disagrees with them on what is, at least this week, the biggest domestic policy issue. I find this oddly comforting.
Perhaps readers can enlighten me as to whether this has been true of any other candidate in recent presidential history? How many other candidates have had most of their actual supporters disagree with them on their most popular position?
I don't think it's any kindler, gentler libertarianism that's at work here.
It's simply the expression that Paul is the kind of candidate that the LP can't seem to muster and while not perfect, he's as good as we're going to get and will practically move the discussion in that direction.
The LP as an organization is different than the libertriam movement. And, while there is always in-fighting within the movement and the party, backing an outsider who isn't perfect is easier than backing one from within, if that makes any sense.
Paul is a serious and sucessful politician, something the libertarians don't have. To not support his candidacy at this point in time by them is both short-sighted and self-defeating.
Ta,
Posted by: Tom L | May 25, 2007 at 03:34 PM