The Improbable Ron Paul

The phenomenon of the Republican Party presidential primaries is a 76-year-old OB/GYN with strong libertarian ideas, Ron Paul, who no one took seriously for over a quarter century. However, Ron Paul’s third-place finish in Iowa and second-place finish in New Hampshire only suggest two things: The first is that it is not a total misconception to imagine that he will have the most number of delegates in the Republican convention after winning this summer. This victory would give great support to his ideas on the electoral platform and in the presence of a massive national audience. The second aspect is the possibility of him becoming a third-party candidate, wreaking havoc for the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, as he faces Obama.

The libertarians are not new. The Founding Fathers were, in a sense, the first libertarians of the United States. The modern version had its days of intellectual glory during the early decades of the 20th century, when — thanks to writers like H.L. Mencken, Albert Nock and Garet Garrett — the great ideological critique of the statist Roosevelt, who promoted the New Deal, was made plausible. This movement was subsequently called the New Right. Then, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, new institutes for research and research centers emerged as they spread the same ideas. The political corollary was the Libertarian Party, which was born in 1971 in Colorado.

Since then, the libertarians have had an impact on journalism and some other academic spheres, but little political impact on a national level. Their platform — a return to Republican roots following an unrecognizable foreign policy characterized by interventions in other countries, a radical slimming down of the state, free markets, decriminalization of drugs and the elimination of the central bank — was far from the national consensus and from being a promising inspiration. Ron Paul, who has more than two-and-a-half decades of experience as a representative of Texas, was seen as a harmless but pleasant eccentricity. His name was always mentioned along with a statistic that said it all: He is the congressman who has voted more times alone, without support, than any other in U.S. history. Countless times, he had voted “no” while the other 534 congressmen voted “yes.”

Well, all this changed when, in the Republican Party presidential primaries four years ago, Ron Paul went from being a story to becoming a political force. This reflected the rise of the tea party, which combined, in a complex amalgam, libertarianism with another sentiment: the growing disgust of many citizens with a state blamed for the 2007-2008 crisis and, of course, with the government’s fiscal and monetary catastrophe. Ron Paul went from being a 70-year-old, fragile and cantankerous grandfather to an improbable rock star who garnered support and encouragement from young Americans, as well as those not so young, who donated $20 million online to his campaign. Today, four years later, Paul rewrites his success story with something more than enthusiasm: real, hard votes.

I realized what was happening with Paul when my eldest son, age 15, came home from school a few weeks ago and said with the same tone I use to talk about soccer or music that a good number of students from his class are excited with Paul, and so is he.

However, as Charles Krauthammer, a famous U.S. conservative commentator, recently explained, Paul is not a candidate but a cause. Therefore, Paul’s goal is not to win the nomination but to give his ideas — after a long journey through the desert — a sense of prestige and respectability that would enable a libertarian future. Perhaps his son Rand, a newly elected senator as brilliant as himself, would consider seriously fighting the party leadership.

History has reserved to characters like this, in different parts of the ideological spectrum, a unique and remarkable place. Precursors, they are called. As noted by George Will, another highly respected conservative commentator in the U.S., Eugene Debs was a presidential candidate several times, running as a socialist in the early 20th century, and though he never won, he came to have such an influence in the end that Roosevelt’s New Deal included many of his proposals. Paul knows that he is not a president — he has said it is difficult to picture himself in the White House — but if, if he can achieve it with the money he has raised, the feat of lasting a few more weeks in the campaign and of becoming the second leading Republican in the delegate race would make the convention revolutionary. The convention would be obliged to give him a spot in the political sphere due to his electoral weight and to consider, in one way or another, some of his proposals that are widely characterized as radical, like the elimination of various departments, the abolition of the Federal Reserve, the dissolution of military bases abroad and the decriminalization of drugs.

If these proposals were refuted, nothing would prevent, from the legal standpoint, Paul from becoming a strong candidate to represent a third political party, taking with him a mountain of Republican votes with close ties to the tea party, as well as those young Independents who seem to be the most enthusiastic. It would be the burial of the Republican candidate but also a definitive breakthrough for the libertarian cause in the American “mainstream.”

Who said that these elections will be boring?