On the same day Ron Paul won the presidential straw poll of the
nation’s largest gathering of conservative activists, one of the
nation’s oldest conservative-libertarian activist groups kicked him
off their national advisory board. Young Americans for Freedom
(YAF) announced it had severed ties with the twelve-term Texas
congressman, who had been on the advisory board for over two
decades, over what it described as his “delusional and disturbing
alliance with the fringe Anti-War movement.”
Later, Paul triumphed at the at Conservative Political Action
Conference (CPAC) straw poll for the second year in a row. He beat
Mitt Romney, the only other candidate with an experienced campaign
organization, 30 percent to 23 percent. Paul left the other
possible Republican presidential contenders who are favored by
either the mainstream media or the conservative movement — most of
whom got fewer votes than libertarian fellow-traveler and former
Paul endorser Gary Johnson — in the dust.
While some individual participants may have been out of the
mainstream, CPAC as a whole was hardly fringe. It attracted over
11,000 people, mostly mainline conservative activists. Romney, Tim
Pawlenty, Haley Barbour, Newt Gingrich, Mitch Daniels, and Rick
Santorum were among the other possible Republican candidates on
hand. This wasn’t, as some of the conference’s conservative
detractors imply, a joint meeting of the Log Cabin Club and the
Libertarian National Committee.
Straw polls aren’t scientific surveys and thus can’t be used to
refute Donald Trump’s CPAC prediction that Paul has “zero chance”
of winning the presidency. But it is a good barometer that at this
very early stage the other 2012 aspirants lack either grassroots
support or organizational strength — and in some cases, probably
both — at least in sufficient amounts to overcome Paul’s zealous
backers.
The straw poll win coupled with the YAF flap shows the dilemma
for the movement Paul is trying to lead. On the one hand, it was
once unusual to hear Republican leaders not named Ron Paul talking
regularly about the Constitution. Now it is commonplace, and not a
single Republican contemplating the presidency defends the
constitutionality of Obamacare. There is much more mainstream
conservative interest in auditing the Federal Reserve, the doctrine
of enumerated powers, nullification, and Austrian economics. But
deep divisions still remain.
Even at CPAC, there was little obvious comity between Paul’s
supporters and those who preferred other candidates. About half the
crowd booed when the straw poll results were announced. All hell
broke loose when Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld appeared with the
audience still full of Paulites who had been there to hear the
congressman’s son Rand, now a freshman Republican senator from
Kentucky, speak. They heckled the former vice president and defense
secretary. The more traditional Republicans and movement
conservatives on hand responded by shouting, “USA, USA!”
One side believed Cheney should present and Rumsfeld should
receive an award for defending the Constitution, while the other
thought they had a record of undermining it. The Paul supporters at
CPAC branded these men “war criminals” while YAF declared that
opposing their preferred foreign policy “border[s] on treason.”
What common ground can there be between these two extremes?
“Paul’s supporters have all the lungs and confidence of
fourth-century Christians overwhelming the pagans,” writes
professional Paul-watcher Dave Weigel. But this can sometimes
backfire. When they attempted to shout down Orrin Hatch as he
explained his support for the bailout, they won him sympathy from
the rest of the crowd — even though most rank-and-file
conservatives agree with Paul and disagree with Hatch on the
issue.
Yet Rand Paul struck a much different tone. He unapologetically
made common cause with the Tea Party: “Is there anybody here from
the Tea Party? Are we going to let Washington co-opt the Tea Party?
Will you help me fight for and defend the Constitution?”
The younger Paul also invoked Barry Goldwater in reminding the
audience that strict constitutionalism was part of the conservative
movement’s heritage. He cited the following from Goldwater’s
Conscience of a Conservative: “I will not attempt to
discover whether legislation is ‘needed’ before I have first
determined whether it is constitutionally permissible.”
Of course, Rand Paul’s father also favorably quotes conservative
and Republican leaders of days gone by in his speeches, from Robert
Taft to Ronald Reagan. But the son made common cause with his GOP
contemporaries as well. Just as he has cosponsored legislation with
Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, David Vitter of Louisiana, and Jim DeMint
of South Carolina, the younger Paul enlisted Oklahoma conservative
Tom Coburn in his speech. He even gave a shout out to Maine’s
moderate Susan Collins. Nancy Pelosi and other leading
Democrats were cast as villains.
While Ron Paul challenged the CPAC crowd by saying that he bet
half of them wouldn’t support cuts in the defense budget, Rand Paul
led with entitlement reform, asking to applause, “Is there anybody
here who would like to opt out of Social Security?” Then he
emphasized the significance of national defense, calling it “the
one primary and most important constitutional thing our government
does.” But he also referred to Pentagon cuts as the “one compromise
we will have to make as conservatives.”
Rand also put himself convincingly to the right of the
Republican leadership. “They’re talking about cutting $35 billion,”
he said. “We spend $35 billion in five days. We add $35 billion to
the debt in nine days. It’s not enough, and we will not stop the
ruin in our country unless we think more boldly.” Just as Reagan
once called for a platform painted in “bold colors, not pale
pastels.”
When it comes to the substance of his positions on the Patriot
Act, the Iraq war, and foreign aid to Israel, Rand Paul is still
his father’s son. But just as in his CPAC speech, he is trying to
speak in tones less jarring to Republican ears, bringing his
father’s supporters and more traditional conservatives
together.
Both the conservative movement and Republican Party have seen
this before, as conservative Christians sat uneasily alongside
Republican regulars in GOP precincts. Despite an early ruffling of
feathers, the party eventually integrated the religious right.
While white evangelicals constitute a larger social base than
libertarian-oriented right-wingers — the former accounted for a
third of George W. Bush’s popular vote in 2004 — Ron Paul’s
popular vote total in 2008 wasn’t much different from Pat
Robertson’s in 1988.
A prominent conservative activist once told me that the Paulites
would succeed only once someone was able to play Ralph Reed to Ron
Paul’s Pat Robertson. Reed’s problems aside, it is obvious why some
would be skeptical: despite their gain in power, social
conservatives know the average Republican politician’s commitment
to their issues is so tenuous that they must worry about groups as
marginal as GOProud overtaking them in the movement.
But if the Pauls’ supporters have greater ambitions than winning
a convention straw poll — like gaining influence in a party or
movement and governing the country — they might want to consider
Rand’s rebranding of his father’s message.
