Ron Paul to Hold Mini-Convention

While the media are focused on whether the Democrats can find some unity after their divisive primary campaign, the Republicans have a much worse problem. Ron Paul, the libertarian Texan, has said that he will have a mini-convention of his supporters in Minneapolis in September, probably on the second day of the Republican national convention. This is going to be a 15-minutes-of-fame event in all likelihood, but they are 15 exceedingly ill-timed minutes from the John McCain for President point of view.

Dr. Paul didn’t win a primary or caucus against the other Republicans, and he garnered only 35 delegates. On the other hand, his followers are the most committed of the GOP factions, and his money raising efforts on the internet were pretty solid. Dr. Paul hasn’t been offered a speaking role at the convention this year because he hasn’t backed Senator McCain. So, he’s having his own party elsewhere.

Part of the problem is the hostility there seems to be for his libertarian crew among the other campaigns. He told the Washington Times recently that his people felt they were not really welcome in the GOP tent, “I don't think they [the establishment] want them [Paulists]. We don’t agree with them. We agree with the Old Right, and they're the New Right, which is ‘The Wrong,’ [because] the New Right has morphed into neoconservative.” There appears to be some truth to that. Senator McCain's Deputy Communications Director Michael Goldfarb blogged in the Weekly Standard not to long ago, “let me just say to Ron Paul supporters everywhere, and on behalf of the New Right (by which I assume Paul means the Jew Right), get lost.”

While there is an ugly streak of anti-Semitism among some of Dr. Paul’s fans, there is no mistaking the fact that his faction of the GOP is the only anti-war grouping. As the Old Right, they claim a more isolationist foreign policy, certainly don’t want to throw away billions on fixing Iraq-Nam, and that annoys the rest of the GOP that has tied its future to that of the al-Maliki government.

Will the Paulists back Bob Barr, the newly minted Libertarian Party candidate? Some will, but not all of them. There is the Constitution Party, an ultra-religious group with Chuck Baldwin as their candidate (he’ll join Dr. Paul on stage in Minnesota in September). Socially regressive (unlike the Libertarians) this could be a place for the angry right. By the same token, the Paulists may just sit this one out and let the “New Right” take its lumps.

As one observer has noted, Dr. Paul doesn’t really try to damage or beat the Republicans. He tries to make them more of what they once were, a party of small government, fiscally responsible Rotarians. If watching Senator McCain crash and burn is what it takes, Dr. Paul is more than happy to let it happen.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

Kensington Review Home