MINNEAPOLIS — As the Republican National Convention was getting
back on track from its hurricane delay, supporters of former GOP
presidential candidate Ron Paul came together for a different
kind of event — part shadow convention, part rock concert, part
alternate reality where the libertarian Texas congressman won the
Republican nomination, and entirely aimed at keeping over a
million Paul voters mobilized.
The only question is: mobilized to do what exactly? More or less
shut out of the main event, organizers of the Rally for the Republic
sold over 10,000 tickets at $17.76 apiece. With Tucker Carlson
serving as emcee, the speakers ranged from presidential historian
Doug Wead to the president of the John Birch Society. “We have
brought everyone together from the hardcore Christian right to
the hardcore libertarians and beyond,” John Tate of Paul’s
Campaign for Liberty told me.
If there was any division in the ranks of the Paulistas, it was
over one key tactical question: to work within the Republican
Party or outside of it. Rally-goers booed and hissed almost any
mention of the proceedings across the river in St. Paul, though
their catcalls were louder whenever Sean Hannity’s face appeared
on the big screen. But many of those present, some of them
convention delegates, were also wearing t-shirts that said,
“Calling the GOP back to its roots.”
This division played out on the dais as well in the hall. Lew
Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and editor
of the eponymous libertarian
website, railed against the Bush administration. “Bush was
going to create ‘an ownership society,’” said Rockwell. “Some
commentators were stupid enough to believe that this meant that
he would privatize things and give back control to the people. To
those who bought this line, I have only this to say: You got
owned.”
Many Republicans in good standing are willing to criticize the
compassionate conservatism and big-government Republicanism of
George W. Bush, but Rockwell didn’t stop there. “I for one no
longer believe that Bush has betrayed conservatives, he said. “In
fact, he has fulfilled conservatism, by completing the
redefinition of the term that began many decades ago with Bill
Buckley and National Review.” Conservatism, Rockwell
elaborated, “stands for spying, jailing without trial, torture,
counterfeiting without limit, and lying from morning to night.”
Bill Kauffman, author of a recent history of the antiwar
right, was less down on conservatism proper (though he did
warn that the “old labels” could become “prison cells”) but had
few kind words for living Republicans not named Ron Paul. “Should
a revivified Robert Taft appear tonight to speak at the Excel
Center,” Kauffman said, “he would be booed as fervently as the
sanctimonious warmonger Joe Lieberman is cheered.”
Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura told a cheering crowd to
forget about the two major parties. “Voting isn’t a horse race
where you go in and pick a winner,” he said. “Voting is when you
listen to your heart and your conscience.” When you do that,
Ventura argued, “don’t let any Democrat or Republican tell you
that you’ve wasted your vote.”
Ventura heaped praise on two Texans who have run third-party
presidential campaigns — the 1988 Libertarian Party nominee who
was his host and Ross Perot, his onetime rival within the Reform
Party. He also inveighed against the Commission on Presidential
Debates, which he said was created to ensure that nothing like
Perot’s 1992 debate performances ever happen again.
Then Ventura tiptoed up to 9/11 trutherism by asking why the
federal government has never formally charged Osama bin Laden for
the terrorist attacks on American soil. The truthers in the
audience picked up the signal. “Because there’s no evidence!” a
young woman shouted. A small but vocal contingent started
chanting, “Inside job! Inside job!” A middle-aged man in
a Paul for president t-shirt muttered, “Oh s—t, not these
a—holes.”
While the potential 2012
presidential candidate descended into the fever swamps,
others tried to sell a political strategy for shrinking the
federal government. Grover Norquist received a warm reception as
he made the case for his Leave Us
Alone coalition. Norquist praised the Republicans for keeping
their commitment not to raise taxes “on the national level” for
the past 15 years, but criticized them on spending.
Doug Wead, a veteran of the first Bush administration, was also
applauded when he appealed to the party of Taft: “I say to the
Republicans across the river, come home, come back. This is where
you started, these are your roots. Join the campaign for
liberty.” Another former governor, Republican Gary Johnson of New
Mexico, talked about his record of wielding the veto pen, cutting
taxes and spending, and promoting school choice.
Barry Goldwater Jr., the former Republican congressman from
California and son of Mr. Conservative (to whom he bears a
striking resemblance), criticized the Republicans’ abandonment of
first principles but suggested in his introduction of Paul that
the movement for small government had a home within the GOP.
Goldwater cited his father’s 1960 admonition to the right: “Grow
up conservatives. We can take this party back.”
Although Paul’s pitch for ending the war in Iraq, repealing the
Patriot Act, and legalizing drugs would have been out of place at
the convention in St. Paul, much of his speech seemed like the
GOP platform on steroids. He criticized the teaching of Keynesian
economics, complained that tax cuts shouldn’t be counted as a
cost to the government, called for abolishing the Department of
Education, and argued that needs aren’t the same as rights.
Free-market types wearing shirts that said, “Gold is money,”
began chanting, “End the Fed! End the Fed!”
On the question of parties, however, Paul was agnostic. “I work
within the Republican Party,” he said matter-of-factly, but his
supporters should let a thousand flowers bloom. The “revolution,”
he argued, must be bigger than any political party. Fair enough.
It also might need a more detailed plan to make it into a
coherent movement bigger than one man.
