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Ron Paul, new Republican

An American conservative who loves the Constitution

Christopher Caldwell

Wednesday, 12th December 2007

Christopher Caldwell on the impact of Ron Paul, the anti-war congressman running for the Republican nomination and finding unexpected support on the web

Paul’s association with ‘libertarianism’ has confused American voters, including his own. In theory, libertarians — those who oppose regulation of both the economy and society — should make up a broad swath of the American electorate. In practice, their message doesn’t resonate much beyond dope-smokers and orgiasts who believe they are taxed too much. Paul’s big TV interviews have been alongside flesh-peddlers and reprobates of various descriptions. Last spring he was slotted on the influential Daily Show with the hardcore pornographer Larry Flynt; a month ago he shared a slot on the Tonight Show with Johnny Rotten and the reconstituted Sex Pistols.

Nick Gillespie, a prominent libertarian journalist, sees Paul’s rise as evidence that ‘more than at any other time over the past two decades, Americans are hungering for the politics and free-wheeling fun of libertarianism’. If so, they have made a strange choice in Ron Paul, who may be the least freewheeling presidential candidate since Calvin Coolidge. The son of a hardworking German Lutheran milk-seller in Pennsylvania, he is now a devout Baptist. He doesn’t travel alone with women and upbraids his staff for using expressions like ‘red-light district’ in front of women.

He may not be a teetotaller, but you are unlikely to find photos of him pouring Budweiser down his gullet in some local watering hole, a staple of campaign-season publicity in heavily Irish southern New Hampshire.

Paul’s internet prowess also leads people to mistake him for the candidate of ‘tech-savvy’ innovators and the academic avant-garde. This is an optical illusion. A lot of that internet presence consists of country & western songs burned in the candidate’s honour and replays of his greatest debate hits. Just as the left-leaning National Public Radio gets much of its audience in the conservative hinterland (the residents of New York or San Francisco don’t need NPR), it is probably the least cosmopolitan political junkies who use the internet for their activism. Urban and suburban voters, after all, can go to political rallies. Internet politics probably has a stronger pull on people in places where the main pastimes are dusting your gun collection and watching the grass grow.

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Norm

January 14th, 2008 2:23am

Republicans and democrats are interchangeable. I have never voted in a primary before now. Guaranteed, I will vote this time, however if Dr. Paul does not win the nomination, I will never vote for the lesser of two evils again. It's Ron Paul or it's nothing period.

Bob Pylant

January 14th, 2008 2:54am

Boy, you sure nailed the head on our USA mentality.. i.e. we dont mind the war as long as we are loosing... thanks to the George Bush Lies and Cheney lies fostered off to our people here... i.e. get the duct tape out and tape up your windows and doors against chemical warheads and LOL... the next day no more duct tape is available to purchase... sorry folks, ingnorance is rampant here in good ole US OF A

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High Life

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