Apr 26, 2011

Ron Paul makes it official

No one is surprised. The good doctor is to announce something in Des Moines this afternoon, and if it isn't formation of a White House exploratory committee I'll kiss your arse on the steps of the Cato Institute and give you time to get Chris Mathews and his camera crew  to the ceremony.

Ron Paul's 2008 caucus vote  was  9+ per cent. Without Gary Johnson and a couple of even more minor candidates making libertarian noises, Paul would do better this time for three reasons:  (1) He's learned from his 2008 organizational mistakes, mainly frittering away money. (2) He is actively courting the evangelical right with a harder pro-life position. (3)  Libertarian thinking has become less outre after two Obama years which gave even the unwashed a glimpse of what a statist future really holds.

If Johnson perseveres, he'll get a good  measure of the Paul vote. Cain and Trump will also get pieces of it. If we use the caucus vote to measure the advance of  liberty thinking, adding the Paul and Moore tallies will probably be the best we can do.

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I'll jump the gun a little and make the day's second edit of your vital list of  Air Force 1 aspirants.   (Link fixed.)

Rand is out.  He  was never much more than a velleity among the small set which prefers younger libertarian heads,  balmed with Brylcreem.



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UPDATE:  Ron Paul did the expected.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you used your private edit-a-post URL for that link to the Iowa caucus contestants (and one in a previous post). It doesn't work for the rest of us. You should probably use this URL instead, assuming I've got the right one:

http://love-a-luddite.blogspot.com/2011/04/herding-elephants-iowa-caucus-clipn.html

Nice blog! I'll watch for a while.

Jim said...

Thanks. I appreciate your catching that and taking time to let me know.

Jim