The Crossed Pond

It’s the one possibility none of us have seriously considered. We’ve been operating under the assumption that Paul’s views are so alien to the rest of the Republican field that none of them would even think about making him the #2 on their ticket.

That’s the conventional wisdom. And yet…there is an interesting case to be made that a truly forward-looking Republican candidate would think of Paul as the ideal VP nominee. Consider…

-1. A covert deal could help secure the nomination. Ron Paul’s money makes it more or less certain that he’ll be in the race until the finish, pulling down five percent of the electorate that no other candidate has a shot at. No other candidate, that is, except possibly one endorsed by Ron Paul himself. We’re already seeing the first stirrings of repositioning of the Republican field to lay claim to the Paul vote–Huckabee is beginning to move away from the Iraq War, and Thompson is getting louder and louder about small-government conservatism. After the first four primaries, a large portion of Paul’s war chest will have been spent. If he’s not in double figures at that point, a candidate within striking distance of the frontrunners might have every reason to approach Paul behind the scenes and offer a straight-up deal: the VP slot in exchange for Paul’s dropping out of the race and immediate endorsement, while urging his supporters to redirect their energy to the candidate for some specific reason. In a tight race, which this will be, Paul’s voters could be a critical swing bloc–and as the only man they’ll listen to, the Doctor himself could be positioned as a kingmaker.

-2. A third-party candidacy by Paul would doom the Republican nominee. In the Michigan debate, Paul very specifically and very directly declined to promise that he’d support the Republican nominee. It’s not hard to envision this as the first step towards a third-party Presidential run. He will certainly have the money with which to do so–he’s raised another $1 million in the last 20 days without even trying. He’d old enough that he doesn’t have to worry about burning bridges. He’s been treated badly enough by the Republican establishment that he can’t be said to owe the party anything.

And if Paul does run as an independent or Libertarian, the Democrats WILL win the White House. True, he’d draw votes away from the Democratic candidate (particularly Clinton) on the war, but he’ll draw far more votes away from the Republican nominee on limited government grounds. In particular, a Paul campaign will be a catastrophe for the Republican candidate in blue-trending states in the mountain west–in states like Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico, the Paul vote could very well spell the difference between a Republican and a Democratic victory. The most dramatic scenario is one in which Giuliani is the nominee; under those circumstances, a number of evangelicals might throw their support to the only pro-life candidate in the race. The only sure way for the Republican nominee to prevent Paul from running on his own ticket would be to make him part of the Republican one.

-3. Nominating Ron Paul would both balance the ticket and win critical new voters over to the Republican side. What else is the VP slot for? Setting aside the pro-liberty voters who might otherwise be lost to the Democrats–again, many of them in critical swing states–there’s a huge element of Ron Paul’s supporters who wouldn’t otherwise vote AT ALL. In an election that otherwise promises to be very close, what candidate wouldn’t want a couple hundred thousand new supporters? Especially when many of those supporters are also potential donors.

It’s easy for me to imagine people who wouldn’t otherwise vote for a Fred Thompson or Mike Huckabee suddenly deciding to do so because Ron Paul is on the ticket. It is, conversely, very difficult for me to imagine people who would otherwise support a Thompson or Huckabee choosing NOT to support the candidate because Ron Paul’s around. Yes, many Republicans dislike Ron Paul intensely, but I don’t know that any of them dislike him more intensely than they dislike Hillary Clinton. Independents might conceivably be scared by the prospect of a drug legalizing gold-standard advocate a heartbeat away from the Presidency, but it’s hard to see them voting on that with a relatively healthy and vigorous Presidential contender at the top of the ticket.

-4. Nominating Ron Paul rebuilds the Reagan coalition, and repositions the Republican party for a new generation of voters. It’s no secret that the libertarian element, which has historically considered the GOP their default choice, is trending radically away from the Republicans at present. Indeed, this may be the last election cycle in which the Republicans have a chance to reverse that trend. There could be no more certain way of locking up the libertarian element for the next twenty years than by putting Ron Paul on the ticket. It would be as dramatic and definitive a bridge-building maneuver as could be imagined. It would say to every big-L or small-L libertarian out there that their home is still in the Republican party. This is particularly important for the future in that the new voters they’d be picking up would be disproportionately young, whereas every other solidy Republican block skews older. Best of all, this groundwork can be laid without alienating the existing Republican base.

-5. The cost to the existing power structure of the Republican party would be very slight. It’s not like the Haley Barbours of the world would have to worry about some new hurricane force within the party obliterating the existing order. Ron Paul’s not going to run for President in 2016. He’ll simply be too old. Nor is Ron Paul likely to tear a Republican administration apart from within by bitching continually about anti-Constitutional actions. On the contrary; a Presidency that lends a respectful ear to Dr. Paul’s concerns will be ideally poised to govern effectively, in that it will be seen to have an in-house advocate for civil liberties and foreign policy restraint that will render Democratic congressional opposition largely superfluous.

This doesn’t mean that Ron Paul is going to be a mealy-mouthed syncophant of any kind, of course; he’s too independent-minded to play that role under any circumstances. But let’s face it, the cat is pretty much out of the bag where Paul is concerned. He’s not going to disappear over the next four years REGARDLESS of who’s running the show. It seems to me that it’d be a lot smarter for an administration to have Ron Paul in-house than to have him outside the circle of power. He’d be the anti-Cheney: a visible and beloved national grandfather, constantly keeping an eye out for his grandkids’ liberty; and if he went further at times than the administration would like, it’d be easy for them to chuckle and say, “Well, that’s Ron.” Easier, certainly, than it would be if the administration were constantly having to fend off his arguments as a threat from outside.

This strikes me as a very bad year for any Republican nominee to play it safe. Every trend points towards a Democratic victory. It will take bold, imaginative moves to win the race. The nomination of Ron Paul as VP on a Republican ticket strikes me as just such a move.