The candidate's problem isn't better-funded opponents or media bias — it's his own views on foreign policy.
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Ron
Paul is, in many ways, the ideal candidate for a conservative
electorate hungry for a principled GOP nominee. Ron Paul will never be
the GOP nominee. For this, Mr. Paul has himself to blame.
In his third run for president, and
only a few weeks out from the 2012 Iowa caucuses, the Texas congressman
has become the sleeper news of this nomination fight. Polls show him
with real strength in Iowa, and stories are brimming with speculation
about how the ardent libertarian might pull off a victory there, or how
he might command crucial support in Western states, or how all this
might upend the Romney-Gingrich narrative.
It's fun as far as it goes, but it misses the world. Or, rather, it
misses Mr. Paul's unpopular foreign-policy views, which make him the
ultimate self-limiting candidate. And what makes those views more
notable is the candidate's stubborn refusal to modulate them—an
obstinacy at odds with the rest of his 2012 campaign.
Mr. Paul was largely written off in the past as an ideological crank,
a man who ran primarily to have his views heard, and many political
watchers have made the same mistake this time.
But if there has been an
overlooked theme in this race, it has been Mr. Paul's new seriousness
about winning the nomination. The Ron Paul of 2012 is a different
candidate from the Ron Paul of the past. Aware that his absolutist
positions worry voters, the libertarian has been conducting a far more
mainstream campaign.
Not that he's flipped on any major positions. The Paul campaign knows
that its greatest opportunity is attracting voters who are dissatisfied
with the other front-runners' policy timidity or lack of consistency.
Mr. Paul is neither timid nor inconsistent, and it ought to make him a
star.
Nicknamed the "intellectual godfather"
of the tea party movement, he's held the same views about limited
government since before his first election in 1976. Those views are
behind his platform today to slash $1 trillion from the federal
government, to eliminate five federal cabinet agencies, to cut the
corporate tax rate and get rid of taxes on capital gains and dividends,
and to repeal everything from ObamaCare to Sarbanes-Oxley.
The difference in the 2012 Paul
campaign is instead one of a maturing tone and emphasis. Consider: The
Ron Paul who in 1988 ran for president as a Libertarian spoke
pugnaciously of abolishing "unconstitutional" entitlements such as
Social Security and Medicare. The Ron Paul of 2008 acknowledged these
entitlements could not go away overnight and argued for an opt-out. The
Ron Paul of today still holds those positions but is now at great pains
to stress that his budget plan is in fact the only one that would "save"
entitlements like Social Security and Medicare for current retirees.
He's toned down his calls to legalize drugs. He wrote an October USA
Today op-ed reassuring parents they'd retain (in the near term) student
loans. Whereas Mr. Paul still despises income taxes and wants to kill
off the IRS, he now concedes this might require reform of the existing
system, and he promises to extend the Bush tax cuts.
Organizationally, the 2012 Paul
campaign has also sloughed off its 2008 disdain of the establishment,
and in Iowa at least Mr. Paul is engaging in retail politics, sitting
down with party elders and activists. These are the efforts of a
candidate newly willing to work within a certain framework, if it means a
shot at the White House.
Except on foreign policy, where Mr. Paul does himself in. In discrete
areas, Mr. Paul's "noninterventionist" approach resonates with those
weary of war, or with the populist sentiment that we spend too much on
foreign aid. And note that Mr. Paul has made small stabs at reassuring
voters of his patriotism, as with a big national TV ad that highlighted
his own military service and commitment to veterans.
But none of this has addressed voters' big concern over a Paul
philosophy that fundamentally denies American exceptionalism and refuses
to allow for decisive action to protect the U.S. homeland. Perhaps
nothing hurt the candidate more in 2008 than his declaration that one
reason terrorists attacked us on 9/11 is because "we've been in the
Middle East."
Far from toning down such views, Mr.
Paul has amped up the wattage, claiming this year that 9/11 prompted
"glee" in a Bush administration looking for a pretext to "invade Iraq."
He's condemned the Obama administration's killings of terrorists Osama
bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, and he insists the U.S. is "provoking"
Iran.
For foreign-policy hawks, this is a disqualifier. It explains why a
Washington Post-ABC poll in late September showed that Mr. Paul drew
some of his weakest numbers from his own base. Of the 25% of voters who
viewed him favorably, nearly two-thirds did not identify themselves as
Republicans. Among self-identified "conservative Republicans," only 8%
gave him a "strongly favorable" rating. You don't win a GOP nomination
with figures like this.
Even mainstream Democrats and independents have
no time for Mr. Paul's brand of isolationism, which is why his national
numbers remain stuck around 10%.
Mr. Paul's new strategy has been to assail opponents like Mr.
Gingrich, hoping to remind voters of his rivals' flaws. But the bar to
Mr. Paul's campaign is not his opponents, or their money, or (a frequent
Paul complaint) media bias. Because he can't, or won't, accommodate his
own foreign policy views to those of the nation, there is only one bar
to a Ron Paul victory: Mr. Paul.
Write to kim@wsj.com
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