Ron Paul takes the money and doesn't run, leaving unrequited love behind

Justin Raimondo and other folks at the Antiwar.com Web site have been big fans of Ron Paul in this Presidential election cycle.

But for Raimondo at least, he has reached the point of wondering what Ron Paul, also the darling of white surpremacist groups, was really up to. He writes about it in A Revolution Betrayed? Taki's Top Drawer 02/13/08. (He says that the title wasn't his.)

Paul made big headlines for his prodigious online fundraising. But he actually spent very little money in key primary and caucus states on ad buys. If he was really interested in winning the Republican nomination, laying the groundwork for a third party run, or trying to build opposition to the Iraq War, it doesn't make much sense to not make big media buys in the early contests.

It seems to be dawning on Raimondo that hardline rightwinger Ron Paul may have been playing "libertarians" and other war critics for suckers. He writes of Paul's statement effectively pulling out of the Republican Presidential race and also announcing he will not make a third party run:

To summarize: the presidential campaign is in limbo, there will be no third party run, and we'll get back to you later about what we're going to do with all that money we raised ($6 million still unspent).

As Representative Paul put it: Whoa!

But isn't that how "libertarian" capitalism is supposed to work? Everyone is in it for a buck and acting on perfectly selfish impulses. If you can gull the rubes into giving you their cash, you win. If they're dumb enough to get scammed by you, too bad for them. It just illustrates that the guy who winds up with the money is a winner in the Social Darwinist selection process.

Raimondo accurately points out that Paul was never likely to be the Republican candidate, and that his Presidential candidacy really only made sense as laying the groundwork for a third-party run. If Raimondo takes Paul's opposition to the war as seriously as he claims, one would think he would include building the antiwar movement as a possible rationale. But since I see the core of Paul's Old Right isolationist outlook as being extreme nationalism, I never took Paul's support for anti-militarist that seriously.

Raimondo points out that Paul's claim that he has to worry about preserving his House seat against a well-funded primary opponent is bogus. But his article also conveys the sadness of true faith that has been let down:

Paul’s presidential campaign galvanized so much energy and enthusiasm that, at times, it mimiced the dimensions and depth of a real mass movement, that is, of a serious effort to recapture the GOP from the neoconservatives and inaugurate a new era on the Right. The Paul campaign ignited interest at both ends of the political spectrum, and drew in a broad array of activists and more passive supporters (contributors and voters) that, despite their ideological diversity, showed remarkable cohesion and an amazing degree of self-organization. As a grassroots phenomenon, it has outpaced anything seen in the libertarian movement or, indeed, on the far right side of the political spectrum; since the storied days of Barry Goldwater. (my emphasis)

That would be the "storied days" of Barry Goldwater's Presidential campaign in 1964, when his two main issues were promoting an immediate drastic escalation of the war in Vietnam and opposing integration in the South. It's such things that fire the hearts of Old Right libertarian idealists. He continues:

Furthermore, all this activity generated more publicity in the mainstream media than any comparable candidate: national newspapers, magazines, television, and the Internet have all featured interviews, profiles, stories, and editorials that have focused attention on Paul, and made him the subject of discussion from sea to shining sea. Two appearances on Jay Leno: more publicity than this no libertarian standard-bearer ever dreamed of. ...

Paul set out, I think consciously, to recreate the Old Right coalition on contemporary terrain. Was he so astonished by his own success that he pulled back at the last moment? We can’t know that, but what we can ask is why he failed to give us the leadership implicit in his presidential bid. After all, when you run for president, and put yourself at the head of a movement, you have a responsibility to follow through: you’re asking your supporters to make a commitment, and, implicit in that, is an unwritten agreement on the candidate’s part to follow through. (my emphasis)

Ah, it's so poignant to discover that the idol of white-supremacist and militia types could also be a cheap scamster, just like many of his most passionate followers. So sad.

But, then, there's also the reliable fallback of blaming the Jews neoconservatives:

What really scared the substantial anti-Paul contingent among the conservative GOP establishment is that they looked at the youth movement he had generated and saw that this was the future of their movement and their party--if it was to have a future. The venomous smear campaign organized by the Orange Line Mafia, and the hooligan-style assault launched by Bill Kristol and the worst of the neocons, such as David Frum, was simply a defensive war, at least on their part. After all, Paul has continually gone after the neoconservatives, explicitly pointing to them as the real source of the GOP’s problems. His campaign was and is a dagger pointed at the heart of the neocon network in the Republican party, and they responded in kind – that is, in the only way they could, not with a refutation of Paul’s ideas but with smears and a campaign based entirely on the "principle" of guilt-by-association. I’ve covered that campaign [elsewhere], and won’t get into specifics, except to say that, in assessing the effect of the Paul campaign, this chapter takes on special significance.

Yes, there's special significance, here, know what I mean? (Nudge-nudge, wink-wink)

Never heard the term "Orange Line Mafia"? Me either. And, no, even after I followed the link in Raimondo's post I was still pretty much clueless. Finally I realized they were referring to the "orange line" on the Washington D.C. subway system. And lots of Jews seem to be involved.

But whatever the religious inclinations of these Paul opponents, Raimondo thinks they're down on him because they are, you know, urban elites and stuff who hate good, down-home, all-American white folks:

Of course, when anyone looked at the alleged “hate” in his [Paul's] infamous newsletters, and at the accusations leveled in The New Republic and by Marty Peretz’s "libertarian" cohorts, as I did, it became all to clear that the big objection had nothing to do with what was actually written. Paul’s real crime, in the view of his critics, was the very idea of appealing to what is, after all, Ron Paul’s mass base: rural, white, home-schooling, primarily Midwestern farmers and lower-middle class small business owners and blue-collar workers. For the Beltway “libertarians,” this simply will not do. As Radley Balko, of the Cato Institute, lamented: "The Ann Althouses of the world, for example, are now only more certain that opponents of federal anti-discrimination laws should have to prove that they aren’t racist before being taken seriously." (my emphasis)

Speaking of those dang, mannish-type wimmin:

The Ann Althouses of this world amount to a very small percentage of the general population: after all, what if we got together all the cranky, neoconnish know-it-all female lawyers--;would we even have enough to fill a small room?

Yet it is unfair to apply this argument to the Beltway types, who couldn’t care less about building a real political movement outside the confines of the Georgetown cocktail party circuit. That’s why they care more about the Ann Althouses of this world than they do about that North Dakota farmer who spray-painted “RON PAUL” on hay bales. Heck, they’re embarrassed that Paul won his highest vote totals in rural districts like North Dakota and Montana. Why, those places are nowhere, they don’t matter: only the Washington-New York-Hollywood axis matters: the rest is fly-over country, which, if it isn’t exactly uninhabited, is certainly empty intellectually, as least as far as the Orange Line Mafia is concerned. (my emphasis)

And, hey, we know what kind of people run "New York" and "Hollywood" and of course Washington, too, don't we? (Nudge-nudge, wink-wink)

So, if Paul's true believers can't believe their man bamboozled them as bad as Cheney and Bush and Maverick McCain suckered people about Iraq's WMDs, well, they can always take comfort in thinking that the Jews done him in.

It's a strange, strange world those Old Right isolationist "libertarians" live in.

Raimondo follows up that article with more anguish of unrequited political love in A March to Nowhere, also in Taki's Top Drawer 02/13/08. It includes a video clip of the "antiwar" Ron Paul telling his followers, among other things, grumbling that Republicans are joining with Al Gore on global warming.

Tags: isolationism, justin raimondo, old right, ron paul