2012 is looking up. The first good news in months comes from the last poll before today’s Iowa caucuses. It reflects a tectonic upset of preconceptions in its leaderboard which shows Santorum third with 18%, Romney with 19 and Ron Paul, first among statistical equals, at 20. The best of it? Newt is not only fourth but down far enough (4 points) that he is excluded from the headlines. It seems the rally of those who actually recall Gingrich from his days in office was not in vain. The Newt Boomlet is deflated, for now, and if Iowa can discourage him from continuing she will have done the nation a great service. Sadly, piling on Newt has not become the national fad it deserves to be but there is another, longer suffering target of the dogpile, a man in public office so long he has a grown son who is a Senator. Of course we refer to the Texas Houseman, alleged Republican but frequent Libertarian, Ron Paul.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way and Paul has endeared himself to many of us simply by mussing up Romney’s hair. Regardless of policy differences, no American or Republican should be content to see a coronation where an election should be, even if it is just the primaries. Write-ins and phantom candidacies, even of fictitious characters have performed this function in the past but appearances to the contrary, Ron Paul is no Donald Duck. Get beyond the wardrobe and there are clear, long articulated policy prescriptions and principled analysis of the economic political maelstrom that swirls outside your window. That Paulism has new popular appeal cannot be denied. This is why you suddenly find Romney and the other presumptives giving a Strange New Respect commensurate with his proven effect on record sales.

Miss Clarkson’s experience was double-edged though. In this she proves to be more like an Average Jolene, taking to twitter with an insight that seems pretty pedestrian… supporting a long-time local political figure for higher office, and finding herself twitslapped silly. Anyone expressing the mildest tolerance or adherence to Paulism in a public venue has had a similar experience. Don’t you know he’s a racist? Don’t you know he’s an anti-semite? Don’t you know he hates gays? Don’t you know he is a misogynist? Don’t you know he’s a nut? And as it happens, no, I do not know any of those things and having examined the charges am no closer to doing so.

Our opposite numbers go nuclear right off, playing that old race card and its relatives in the Diversity Deck. Like Social Security, these have long been the heaviest hitting of political weapons. The simple existence of the charges is dispositive, at least for anyone on the Right. Farrakhan, Wright and their numberless admirers are reflexively excused their repeated racist, sexist and gay-hostile pronouncements, not least because of their powerful associations but mostly for purposes of political solidarity. Paul enjoys no such immunity even though he inhabits a policy desert in between Right and Left. Isn’t this the kind of guy the media is always onto us about? Why is Ron Paul not a “centrist” as so many people claim to want? This we will examine but in any event Ron Paul is a man without a country, or at least a party. Those who could be counted on to defend Pat Buchanan on grounds of fairness or consistency will say not a word either in exculpation of Paul or denunciation of the gathered stoning party. The excuse before today was that Paul was irrelevant. He is a pygmy, as the polls reveal, so not a fit topic says the conservative press, such as it is. But like their colleagues, the far more numerous liberal gunslingers, these guys seem not to know what year it is. The internets are awash with original content, dug up newsletters from the ancient days of direct mail as well as video and transcripts. My not too thorough delving here reveals that Paul’s alleged racism, even if he is proven to have written the offensive matter, basically boils down to some straight talk about welfare. Paulism and Cosbyism share many tenets on the subject of entitlements and race. His antipathy to women is construed from a critique of sexual harassment law and culture that Herman Cain and Bill Clinton would boldly support from a cloak of anonymity but no need to inquire of such compromised sources as you will find similar arguments even from “feminist” writers, ie the definition of sexual harassment must be as clear as other legal precepts. Madness! Likewise his hostility to homosexuals is revealed in skepticism of the global AIDS research juggernaut; skepticism that has been born out by events. It seems that these ARE the “smoking gun” in the view of the press, as these were the beanballing questions tossed Paul by Chris Wallace on Sunday. On these matters, as regards the Conventional Wisdom, especially among Republicans, Paul’s crimes seem to be little more than being right too soon.

If the polling is being properly done (always a mystery), it should be little surprise that these mendacious attacks have fallen flat. Indeed he who hit hardest and soonest, Gingrich, has fallen the fastest. Who thought a bitter defense of racial gerrymandering would benefit them in a Republican primary? Team Newt can ill afford such blundering so here’s hoping it continues. The other Paul antagonists continue in a different vein. Until recently it was sufficient for any talking head to denounce Paul as “an extremist”. The issues and the nature of the extremity are never roundly disclosed so we must go a-dousing. The centerpiece of Paulism, as everyone knows, is strict Constitutionalism.

Strict. Constitutionalism.

If there were ever a phrase designed to light up a Republican dial group, this would be it. You will find no poor reception with any other focus group either. So the pros have a real problem on their hands. Their candidates can’t go around denouncing Strict Constitutionalism, much less Constitutionalism. Talk about tanking the meters! Yet a vast fraction if not a near totality of the projects, programs and policies put forward by EITHER party or both, lie clearly outside the Constitution’s enumerated powers. Paul does fall well short here on the matter most pressing on us today; that would be the explosion in entitlements that is happening concurrent with a collapse of their various funding schemes. Paul declares forthrightly what any Republican office holder will only whisper if he says so at all, which is that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the whole family of support payments, subsidies and open graft that pad the silken pockets on Wall Street as much as the threadbare jeans in the ‘hood are starkly Unconstitutional. Locate the article in the Constitution that allows them, if you doubt it. Strain and struggle as you will. At best the Frugal Socialists, Bachmann’s one quotable expression, will trot out a reading of the Commerce Clause that is so expansive as to make all but the structural prescriptions in the Constitution a dead letter. Yes, this is strongly related to Romney’s Fault, in that he denies the propriety of Obamacare on the same grounds that he will admit the virtues of Romneycare. But the principle is the same for all the candidates on nearly all the issues. Even Bachmann, as she den0unces, rightly, the New Deal and Great Society relics as socialism, does not say they must be abolished like segregated schools. Oh no. And neither does Paul. While denouncing the lawlessness and futility of the programs (and there is a good case that anything called a “program” is Unconstitutional) his solution is less sound and less worthy by far than even the marginally useful Ryan Plan. Paul hopes to allow youngsters of around 25 to opt out of the bigs of SS and Medicare but makes no paring of benefits to anyone else. This sets them on an easy glide path, he claims, while the shortfall can only be made up from general revenue or some other dunning that would have the same effect overall as the massive tax hikes everyone is trying to avoid, yet which are scheduled in short order. The only way this makes sense, other than just being daft, is if the plan is to collapse and destroy the entitlement state as quickly as possible. Needless to say, that doesn’t focus group well with anyone except maybe me.

On other fiscal matters the competing Republicans and even prominent Democrats claim to be eagerly on the Paul bandwagon. Spending cuts? Everyone wants spending cuts. Tax increases? No one wants tax increases. Suspicion of the Fed, an end to Venture Cronyism, a sound dollar… everyone claims to want what Paul has been selling for thirty years. So what is the beef? The generic talkers put it well, you have heard them repeat from their scripts; yeah, he’s great on domestic policy but nuts on foreign policy, so no go. And that is ever the end of it. Somehow anyone who might consider a global withdrawal of American forces to inside our own borders or at least to a limited presence is flat out insane or, the allusion goes, an anti-semite, a secret jihadi even. Now, I am among the folks who supported the Global War on Terror in nearly every particular and was neither surprised nor appalled when President Obama proved, against his campaign claims, to do likewise. But even an old warmongerer like me knows that, short of some epic reforms, in short order the entire federal budget will be taken up by debt service and entitlements. There won’t be a thin dime for even a volunteer, unpaid armed forces, much less anything we could fight a real war with. The foreign policy, you see, can only exist if the nation exists and with ANY candidate or indeed the incumbent, the nation is on a collision course with a stern brick wall. Does anyone ever say of Romney, well, I am on board for his defense policies, basically Bushbama, but his Romneycare is going to bust the budget which destroys the foreign policy anyhow? Nope, this sturdy logic is never heard in apposition to clear stupidity. Yet the supposed hazards of “isolationism” trump everything else. Or so the vested interests arrayed against Paul demand you to believe.

It hasn’t worked in Iowa. Hopefully this anticipates a denting of media/political constructs generally, an outcome every person of sound mind and good will should desire. For this we can thank Ron Paul and his supporters, among whom I do not sit, by the way. If I were participating in that barbaric practice of the caucus I would be for Santorum for reasons of comparative, not absolute, virtues. Paul has stood by his convictions and principles to an extent unparalleled in modern history, which is actually no great extent but baby steps are better than no steps at all. At the least he has prevented an early and noxious consensus that would have made our actual preferences moot. Thank you, Doctor Ron. May the best of you prove contagious.

 

 

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