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The Spectacle Blog
TAMPA — The Paulistas were at the Republican National Convention last week, and they were cranky. They held up cranky signs and wore T-shirts with cranky messages. They scowled. They pouted. They sometimes shouted when others were speaking. They were clearly cheesed off that their man, who won several states during the primaries, did not get to write the platform and otherwise dominate the convention.
Oh, wait. Oops. No, Dr. Paul, the gold-medal winner this year in the Olympic Pat Paulsen look-alike competition, didn’t win several states. In fact, he did not win a single state. He ran early and late. He ran in the south and the north and the west. He lost early and often. He lost late. He lost everywhere. The entire primary season was an oh-fer for Dr. Paul, who, as he was not named Republican quarterback, holds out the prospect that he may take his football and go home for this fall, taking much of his small but intense following with him.
At the convention, Dr. Paul himself was coy, declining to say that he would endorse Republican nominee Mitt Romney, leaving open the possibility that he thinks his principles could as well be implemented by our rookie president as by Romney. It also makes one wonder what those people wearing T-shirts that say “I’m a Ron Paul Republican” could possibly mean by it.
Every indication is this presidential race will be a close one, including in vital Florida with its 29 electoral votes. Republicans are justified in wondering if Ron Paul could be their Ralph Nader. Nader, every bit as politically evangelical as Dr. Paul, nearly siphoned enough voters away from George W. Bush in Florida in 2000 to throw that state, and the presidency, to Al Gore.
Republican Party of Florida Chairman Lenny Curry told me this morning that during the RNC and in his travels since, he is seeing more “tea-party energy” behind Romney’s candidacy, including many Ron Paul supporters who are now on board. “Ron Paul’s supporters are divided into two groups,” he said. “There’s the activist branch, like in any movement. But this is the smaller group.” Members of the larger group, Curry says, are telling him they “like some of the messaging” from the Romney campaign and he is confident these folks will turn out for Romney on election day.
It’s not easy to accept, especially for people who are as intense about their political principles as Ron Paul’s supporters are. But America’s democracy doesn’t work unless all participants understand a vital part of the competitive political process, the part that says, “You lost — get over it.
Larry Thornberry
ltberrywriter@earthlink.net
View all comments (20) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Larry Thornberry
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/09/06/paulistas-coming-around
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Occam's Tool| 9.6.12 @ 3:52PM
The choice is between a traitor and a Patriotic American. Simple, really.
C Bowen | 9.6.12 @ 3:55PM
You were the one who called for turning the Middle East into a sea of glass and enslaving the remaining population to build a wall on the Mexican border?
Jack in Wi| 9.6.12 @ 3:59PM
Occam is a psychiatist who belives in mass murder and genocide of Muslims and Middle East Christians.. He is nuttier then most of his so called patients.
Grzmlyk| 9.7.12 @ 12:38AM
The sad reality is that Occam is the sanest man on the planet when compared to Paulites.
I like a LOT of what Paul has to say - not sure I buy entirely into the "warfare" part of the welfare/warfare model; to some extent I do (but foreign policy is not a clean, binary proposition, as the Austrians claim), and I'm right there with the Austrians on domestic economics.
The problem is that the critical mass of Paul's supporters are like Clint, who is no doubt confined to a mental institution today, filling the days in his padded cell by stomping on imaginary people's faces.
Although decidedly eccentric, Paul himself isn't a whack job. But too many of his supporters are cuckoo for coco-puffs, and that's one reason he didn't gain more traction.
Ronda| 9.7.12 @ 2:13PM
Cuckoo for coco puffs, eh?
Thank you, kind sir.
How am I cuckoo for coco puffs?
Jack in Wi| 9.6.12 @ 3:56PM
Romney has given us nothing to base our votes on. I have seen plenty of dissatisfaction coming from not just Paul supporters but paleo conservatives, independents, the young, and Palin supporters. In fact Palin is talking about forming a 3rd party. If Romney wins it will only be because the economy is so bad, not because most of the base likes him. His whole program is I am a better manager then Obama and we must be prepared to fight endless chickenhwak wars for nonsense. If he had a good opponent he would be buried. The fact that he is close is only a sign how bad Obama is.
Crassus| 9.6.12 @ 8:34PM
CHICKENHAWK!!! CHICKENHAWK!!!
C Bowen | 9.6.12 @ 3:58PM
Romney said in his convention speech that he is a Keynesian who believes cuts in government spending hurt the subsidized industries.
No serious conservative supports him; some will hold their nose. That is about all one can say.
Martin| 9.6.12 @ 4:00PM
Was this comment supposed to be helpful in any way to Republican unity? I'm a Paulista (more Rand than Ron) and my immediate reaction after reading it was to have nothing more to do with the sleazy big government neocons who dominate the GOP.
On further reflection, Romney's grown on me and I like Ryan -- but I hope to hell they've got more sense than waste taxpayer money fooling around in the Middle East.
As President Coolidge believed, foreign policy should be cheap.
mjs_pa| 9.6.12 @ 4:44PM
"You lost -- get over it."
Boy, so called conservatives are sounding more and more like obama everday: "I won. So I think on that one, I trump you."
shawnkhall| 9.8.12 @ 3:52AM
Exactly. The RNC silences the RP supporters thru deception and fraud, script a rule change without actually allowing a vote - and they think we'll support Romney? As far as I'm concerned the GOP died the moment the teleprompter scrolled "the ayes have it."
Jack in Wi| 9.6.12 @ 5:10PM
That's true we lost and you got Romney. You can keep him. Now you need our votes in a close election. You may get enough to win a close one, but it will be close.
Marco2| 9.6.12 @ 6:19PM
Hey, Ronbots, you didn't just lose. Your cranky old daddy was blown out big time across the breadth of this nation. So you packed a few caucuses and state conventions and hijacked 150 or so delegate slots, big whoop! You needed 1144 to win, don'tcha know? Romney was truly a gentleman to give your old fart the time of day in Tampa.
C Bowen | 9.6.12 @ 7:42PM
We all agree, the liberal establishment Republicans won. Who are you yelling at?
The question is what are conservatives to do; hold their nose, or stay at home/leave blank et al.
Mr. Thornberry can keep trying to put lipstick on a pig to please the handful of people who consider him a "deep, witty thinker" but that doesn't change anything.
aware| 9.6.12 @ 8:17PM
What the "Paulistas" got was standard treatment from the minions of Shadow Government to anything and anybody that is considered a real threat. Buchanan got the same thing back when it may just well have made a difference. Goldwater got the Treatment, too.
Now it won't make a difference.
Even if a difference could be made, the GOP doesn't have a candidate that could. Snarky neo con statists like Thornberry are the mirror image of the "evil" they claim to oppose.
I wasn't voting for either wing of the Uniparty but I bet the neo cons end up running off all the help they will need before November. I hope it ends up with nobody but neo cons in the Republican wing. Then we can quit pretending the GOP is "opposition" to the Leviathan.
Crassus| 9.6.12 @ 8:36PM
NEOCON!! NEOCON!!!
ayrnieu| 9.7.12 @ 1:30AM
Who's the audience of this post? What's the point of it? If you want Paul supporters to vote with you, you sure advance that cause negatively, if at all. I reckon that what you're really doing is expressing some irritation, that this is a disguised "waaaaah, there were a whole lot of disagreeable people at the convention."
Anyway, the only Paul supporters who will read this are the kind who will give irritated comments like mine and then still vote for Romney. So no harm done. Directly, anyway.
If you ever want to advance that cause for real, a critical error held by Paul supporters is that Democrats and Republicans are basically the same. They're very serious about this; Paul himself but especially people associated with the Mises Institute make the accusation that D vs. R is a meaningless choice. If you can cure Paul supporter of this one error, he'll still be just as disagreeable I'll bet, but he'll vote with you. And if you're at a loss at how to start, pretty much any book by Ann Coulter will provide you with arguments.
aware| 9.7.12 @ 5:19AM
Yeah, convince me there is a difference between Lindsay Graham and Harry Reid. Or Medicare part D and Obamacare. Or the Patriot Act and NDAA. Or the Dept. of Education and No Child.
"Critical error" indeed.
Ronda| 9.7.12 @ 2:09PM
Nah. I'm a Paul supporter, I'm reading this, I'm giving an irritated comment to you (and to the blogger who can think of nothing deep or witty to say except "neener neener neener!), and I definitely will NOT vote for Romney. He's a wolf in sheep's clothing -- a milquetoast version of Obama. I'd rather fight an open foe than a false friend.
chuck| 9.7.12 @ 2:47PM
The winner of the next election will be either Romney or Obama. If you don't vote for Romney, you are supporting Obama, and the destruction of America, by default.