Comments Elsewhere

Tracy,

Well, then it definitely sounds like electoral mission creep to me. “Well, we got in here to do A, but that failed, so let’s stay in here and do B instead.” Again, perhaps it’s time to cut your losses and find a better strategy, rather than just keeping in electoral politics because that’s where you started out?

Anthony,

I’m glad that Ron Paul and his boosters have gotten people excited about libertarian ideas. I wish that there had been more thought (especially by the boosters, since I take it that Ron Paul was busy doing other things) put into what to do with all these excited, activated people after the close of the campaign. I don’t think there has been much thought about that, and to the extent that there hasn’t been, that means that a lot of time and energy and tens of millions of dollars are going to go straight down the toilet, as the Paulitarians either burn out and wander away, what with the end of their groups’ raison d’etre, or else pitch themselves into the next “educational” failing electoral campaign, either as marginalized Republicans or as members of the LP. A project like “transforming the Republican Party” is more or less guaranteed to be a tar-baby for this putative “Revolution.”

I predict that, unless something quite unusual happens over the next couple of months, in the direction of redirecting former Paulitarians toward some other concrete project outside of electoral politics, then, four years from today, Ron Paul’s campaign will have made no more difference to the political consensus than Howard Dean’s in 2004, or Pat Buchanan’s in 1992.