There might be a large bunch who would be all about going back on the gold standard and destroying the economy, or who would be ok with slashing the federal government to a fraction of what it is now (and thus create chaos and confusion on levels not seen since the founding of this country), but they are still a minority, and thankfully the adults in the republican party tend to drown them out.
If he ever starts getting serious numbers, the same focus that has broken Perry, and Bachman, and is currently gutting Cain will break Paul.
I would like to see libertarians gain traction, but as long as they are following the same old program, it won’t work.
I think more than a “fringe” amount of people, which has yet to be defined, agree with him on the role of government. Or at least are closer to his views on federal power than say Mitt Romney.
I guess we’ll see though. I’m just wondering how much of a following he needs before he is considered beyond “fringe”. Is someone like Huntsman fringe? Is fringe just a euphemism for radical?
How many people do you think support a gold standard at all? How many people do you think support abolishing the federal reserve, eliminating most of the government, a near-isolationist foreign policy, or the idea that a significant faction of people are pushing for a unified North American government? I’ll grant you it isn’t zero, but it’s not enough people to win an election either.
I think fringe connotes a relatively small number of enthusiastic supporters. Paul has that; I don’t think Huntsman does.
Ok so fringe, in this case, is better than being a “viable” candidate. It just seems like the term “fringe” is used consistently to describe Paul in an attempt to discredit him.
It’s more an attempt to bring Paul supporters back to earth. While fervor for a political candidate isn’t necessarily a bad thing, there seems to be this sad delusion amongst them that more people would support Paul if only people wouldn’t ignore/discredit/misunderstand him.
The simple reality is that not everyone likes Ron Paul nor his policies - not a majority of Americans, not even a majority of Republicans. Paul’s supporters refuse to accept this and just assume that non-supporters are unenlightened somehow, and do their best to game every non-scientific poll (e.g. straw polls, online polls) they can. Unfortunately for them, doing so doesn’t alter reality in a way that will win Paul any primaries or elections, and just annoys the hell out of the organizers or content providers. Thus the self-perpetuated cycle of delusion continues - Paul supporters force people to ignore their input by ruining polls, then complain when the very people they forced to ignore them do so.
I agree. A marginal candidate can do okay on the fringe but he’s never going to take the center stage. The majority of people are pretty apathetic about politics. They ignore it most of the time. That creates an opportunity for a relatively small group of dedicated people to have a disproportionate influence in some political arenas.
But this dedicated small group is already working at 100% to achieve this marginal success - it doesn’t have any potential to scale up. If you have a district with 50,000 potential voters but only 1,000 of them actually bother to vote, then 600 dedicated people can turn an election. But if 20,000 of those people decide to vote, then those 600 are no longer a major factor.
That’s where Ron Paul is. He ran as a Libertarian candidate for President in 1988 and got 432,179 votes in an election in which George Bush got 48,886,597 votes and Michael Dukakis got 41,809,476 votes. In a Presidential campaign, you need tens of millions of supporters and there aren’t that many proto-Libertarians out there.
Admittedly this is merely anecdotal and unscientific … But I have encountered countless Republicans who have said that they support Ron Paul’s message and politics, but would never vote for him because they don’t see him as a viable candidate and don’t think he has a shot at the presidency. (I have not met a single Democrat with this viewpoint.)
Also, I’d like to take this opportunity to toot my own horn. Two months ago I predicted that Gingrich would be the next not-Romney (post #738), and today he has officially overtaken Cain in the polls (link).
Does anybody have any predictions about what will happen next? Personally, I can’t see Republicans getting behind Santorum, and the only other candidates that haven’t already been a not-Romney are either moderate or Libertarian, neither of which is the sort of candidate that the religious right is likely to rally around. I think one of two things will happen: Gingrich may be able to potentially ride this out, simply because he has far more experience with being in the spotlight than the previous not-Romneys, and is much less likely to crumble under pressure. His skeletons seem to already be out of the closet, so unless new ones are found, many Republicans seem ready to forgive him for his previous marital indiscretions.
My other prediction is that all the Republicans who don’t like Romney are eventually just going to choose whichever candidate they like best, splitting up all the votes and giving Romney a clean win.
Either way, I will be shocked if Romney does not get the nomination.
There are few who don’t think Romney is in charge unless he fucks up. But whether he can get the various groups of the Republican party to vote for him is the question. How can he get the right riled up about Obamacare when it is Romneycare? Will the religious right swallow their values and vote for politics over religion. If they stay home, the Repubs are in trouble.
Personally, I think that the only reason that Gingrich became the next Anyone But Romney was that so many pundits predicted that he would be. The cause-and-effect narrative is twisted around.
Yep, I’ve been saying the same for quite some time as well. However, it has been, and continues to be awfully entertaining to see the parade of Not-Romneys.
After everything that has happened last week I am much less certain that Romney will win the nomination. His biggest and best hope right now is for another candidate to have a simultaneous resurgence as Gingrich and - this is the important part - without collapsing Gingrich’s numbers too much, hence splitting the vote. If Gingrich fades he’ll probably just be replaced by someone else.
The interesting thing about Gingrich’s rise is that… actually, it’s completely baffling to me. Almost everything sensible people articulate about not liking Romney applies to Gingrich, too. If not more so. The pandering? That’s there. Cozying up to Big Finance? That’s there. The warmed-over Washington insider? That’s there. Gingrich’s rise makes me think that there’s something personally about Romney that people don’t like. And if that’s the case Gingrich deflating isn’t going to help him unless it’s particularly well-timed; all that’s going to do is just let someone else become the front-runner. So that said, Romney’s best hopes IMO is that either Gingrich collapses during some crucial vote periods (like in the NH - SC - FL trifecta) or Gingrich stays in, some other candidate picks up support, and Ron Paul holds steady.
That kind of sucks. I actually liked Gingrich once upon a time in a ‘you slick bastard’ kind of way. I like a politician with vision and one that likes to, you know, talk about things instead of just spewing vapid slogans. What the hell ever happened to futurist history professor Newt? He and Al Gore were my favorite American politicians once upon a time.
