Why the libertarians must draft Ron Paul

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Written By Kevin Tuma

It’s prognostication time: I will now indulge in egotistical predictions. I predicted, in one of my first online columns, that if the GOP did not turn back to the old Right and stop abrogating the Constitution, the party would “reap the whirlwind”. It took a little longer than I thought, but it happened…and indeed, it is still happening. If the tea leaves did not reveal a furious conservative electorate, GOP senators would not currently be scrambling to pass silly immigration reforms, or to undercut the Bush war in Iraq. They smell blood…and it’s their own.

However, the neo-con dominated GOP is not going to remake itself, cast away all its corruption, and start practicing Jeffersonianism just because of some little thing like staring into the dark, gaping maw of a political abyss.

You see, sometimes people “stay the course” because they are bought and paid for. If they can’t afford to have principles, they also can’t afford to act in their own best interests. So they clumsily make themselves targets for reformers, like Congressman Ron Paul.

Yet despite their ongoing political collapse, Republicans in Washington are not going to allow a man who is antithetical to their entire post-911 playbook to seize the reins of the process, and march to victory in their own party. The ability to manipulate hundreds of millions in cash flow can easily insure an ability to fend off candidates who aren’t “team players”.

Hence, I will predict the following:

(1) Ron Paul will not win the GOP nomination, no matter how great his grassroots popularity;

(2) The GOP presidential nominee will be an insider, a past or present member of the Council on Foreign Relations, who is most likely also a Big Oil “company man”, a photo-op Christian, and somebody who is about as genuinely conservative as Che Guevara.

And (3), no matter what sophistry the Karl Rove types pull off, said nominee will lose to Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, or whomever the Dems choose as their socialist du jour. It could be virtually any candidate—it could be Michael Moore in a pink tutu riding a unicycle with a pet monkey as his Veep. All the Democratic nominee will have to do next time is show up. The Republican Party will lose the White House. They have brought it on themselves. And it is pretty irrevocable at this point.

Ron Paul knows all this–and he is one sharp cookie. If he knows enough to understand that the other candidates are doomed to lose, I’d think he also knows enough to guess that the party elites will never choose him as a standard-bearer. His supporters seem utterly oblivious to this.

Ron Paul’s GOP candidacy is doomed to fail because of hidden agendas in The Party Formerly Known As Conservative. Yes, Paul is the most exciting individual to appear in presidential politics since early Ronald Reagan. The whole point being lost by those who wish upon Paul’s star is that the GOP does not want such men in power! If Ronald Reagan were reborn somehow into a new presidential candidate in 2007, FOX News and Sean Hannity would almost certainly be throwing rocks at him. Barry Goldwater would similarly be written off as a “weirdo”.

The party did not originally coronate Bush and Cheney because they thought Bush and Cheney would be popular with the public. They put Bush-Cheney in power because of an agenda. And it isn’t conspiracy theory..I am referring specifically to the neo-cons, the globalists, Big Oil, and the military-industrial complex. These elite policy groups, wholly in charge of the Republican Party, would rather lose the election to Hillary Clinton than put someone in office who believes in civil liberties, laissez-faire capitalism, abolishing Income Taxes, cutting federal spending, closing military bases abroad, and restoration of the US Constitution.

Hence, Ron Paul has no more chance to be the Republican presidential nominee than Eliot P. Ness would have had to replace Al Capone as capo of the Chicago mob.

Libertarians are dreamers. This is both a blessing and a curse. But I’m frankly surprised at the number of libertarians who actually believe Ron Paul will be our next president with an “R” after his name. I would have thought that as cynical as libertarians seem to be, and as intelligent as most libertarians are, they would, collectively, be incapable of such Jiminy Cricket naivete.

The reason Ron Paul must be invited to run on the Libertarian party ticket is because it is now time for the libertarian movement to grow up. Infantilism has marked the libertarian movement for over 30 years, and the party in question truly seems to be no closer to buying a clue than it was back in the salad days of the War On Drugs.

The mature Ron Paul is a natural leader. Libertarians have never had one of those, and will never succeed until they do have one. It is therefore imperative that they avoid letting him slip through their fingers.

In truth, the Libertarian Party needs him a lot more than he needs the party. If he runs as an “independent” with no named party, he can still do well on the campaign trail. His fame and effectiveness have already transcended anything the Libertarian Party might have ever done.

Don’t get me wrong. Libertarianism is gaining philosophical force every day, regardless of how trivial and inconsequential its political party may be. But we are now reaching an important conjunction of history. The US public has never been more disenchanted with the two-party system. Pax Americana is a humiliating failure. The United States has thrown away its image in the world as a symbol of freedom and justice. And last but not least, gasoline is consistently over $2.75 a gallon–which is absolutely breaking the backs of our suburbanite, credit card-addicted masses. Add very high taxes to that mix, and you have an extremely disgruntled angry middle-class workforce that will vote its pocketbook in 2008. At least the extant members of said workforce who are, in fact, legal US citizens. (Illegal aliens generally do not vote…yet.)

Big Oil is in check. Our military empire is a laughingstock–the US has tried and failed to control a pee-diddly tinpot Middle-eastern country that has been bombed and starved into submission since 1991. People all over the world who do not loathe us, fear us—but the majority loathe us. Co-dependent as most Americans are, this grinds at national self-esteem. Both the Democrats and Republicans look like a pack of loons where the sagging economy is concerned—both have immense, ambitious schemes for wasting trillions of tax dollars, while most voters squeak paycheck to paycheck. People are fed up. Worst of all for the elites, the Internet is now replacing the old establishment media as the New Press with the general public, which means, as Douglas Adams might say, “their brains may start working”.

The time is pretty ripe. Libertarianism has its historic leader in Mr. Paul. The GOP establishment will cast him out or cheat him of the nomination as surely as the sun sets in the West.

Everyone in Libertarian circles should get ready to take it to the next logical step.

Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”

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