One assumes that Ron Paul knows he is not going to be the
next president of the United States - or even the next Republican nominee. Yet
the Texas congressman is campaigning hard, aiming particular ire and fire at
Rudy Giuliani.
Paul is commonly regarded - by those who have heard of him - as more of a
Libertarian than a Republican. That is, he believes in minimal regulation at
home and minimal intervention abroad. Indeed, Paul took a detour out of the
Grand Old Party back in 1988, when he ran on the Libertarian Party ticket for
president; he received less than half of 1 percent of the nationwide vote.
So it's little wonder, then, that Paul is viewed dimly by top Republicans -
the party loyalists, social-issue-regulators and neoconservative militarists
who have come to dominate the GOP.
And while his campaign staff finds imaginative ways to measure his momentum
- one recent release reported that Paul had become "the third most-mentioned
person in the blogosphere, beating out Paris Hilton" - more conventional
measures show him way back in the pack. He stands at 1 percent, or less, in
polls of Republican presidential preference.
But there's something liberating, for Paul, about being at asterisk-levels
of support. There's also something inspiring in Paul's long-shot candidacy - to
Republicans who think their party has lost its way during the White House
tenure of George W. Bush. At a recent press breakfast organized by The American
Spectator, Paul got right to the point: He wants to take the party back from
those who would "spend more money, run bigger deficits and police the world."
Indeed, the Texan is blunt about his own party's electoral prospects: "The
Republicans cannot win next year with a pro-war position." He cites, as
proof-parallels, the 1952 and 1968 presidential elections, in which the voters
tossed out the party presiding over unpopular foreign wars - Korea and Vietnam,
respectively.
But, of course, before the general election comes the nomination. And for
now all the other Republican presidential hopefuls - those who yearn to bask in
honored glory at next year's national convention in Minneapolis - are mostly
keeping faith with the Bush administration's Iraq war policies, still popular
with the nominating cadres inside the party.
And central to the Bush-centric worldview, of course, is the idea that our
enemies in the Middle East are motivated by hatred - hatred of freedom. Paul
has a different view, which he expressed at the May 15 South Carolina
Republican debate: They don't hate us for who we are; they hate us for what we
do, politically and militarily, around the Middle East. "Blowback," as it's
called, is a controversial thesis, but it does explain why Osama bin Laden goes
after America and not, say, Switzerland.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani reacted energetically to Paul in that
South Carolina debate, scoring pro-Bush-brownie points on national TV. But Paul
is unbowed; he cites, as supporting evidence, the 9/11 Commission report, and
calls upon the expertise of friendly foreign policy experts, including former
CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, author of the 2004 book, "Imperial Hubris: Why the
West Is Losing the War on Terror."
Yet, for all his antipathy to Bush and the neoconservatives, Paul is no fan
of the Democrats - regarding them as slaves to the same interventionist
ideology. But he does cite one exception to the rule: Rep. Dennis Kucinich of
Ohio - the hard-core "peace" candidate who opposed not only the Iraq war but
the Clinton administration's military campaigns in the Balkans. Like Paul the
Republican, Kucinich the Democrat is at the bottom of his party's presidential
rankings.
And that's why, Paul says, the wars are likely to continue, no matter who
next wins the White House. But in the meantime Paul campaigns on with his
idiosyncratic message, inspired by motives that look a lot like altruism and
genuine belief.
James P. Pinkerton's e-mail address is pinkerto@ix.netcom.com.
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