The Tory Anarchist

Earlier this week, Ron Paul endorsed Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin for president. Great news for Baldwin, of course, and terrible news for Bob Barr. But there are several implications that might not be immediately obvious; to wit:

1.) The “paleo” coalition lives. From the late ’80s until the mid-’90s, there was a great deal of crossover between Paul’s supporters and those of Pat Buchanan. There was also a short-lived attempt at a meeting of minds between the Mises and Rockford Institutes. The coalition never fully gelled at the theoretical level,which is not surprising given the philosophical differences at stake, but on the more practical plane it never really went away — the debacle of Buchanan’s 2000 Reform Party run notwithstanding. In the 1990s, Paul-style paleolibertarians often supported Buchanan. And now Paul himself is supporting the candidate of a party that was founded, in part, to give Buchanan a vehicle with which to make a third-party run in 1992. (Which he chose not to do.)

2.) There are hazards for Paul in endorsing Baldwin. I’ve been surprised at the amount of pushback from Paul supporters who disapprove of the endorsement — they’ve been quite vocal in the comments sections of all libertarian blogs that have noted the endorsement. Paul’s multi-party, unity platform press conference of a few weeks ago had the advantage of appealing to all segments of Paul’s base: antiwar conservatives, libertarians, and decentralist liberals. The rightist elements of the Paul coalition are very happy, in general, with the Baldwin endorsement, but many libertarians and Paul supporters on the Left have reservations about the Constitution Party’s hardline religious tendencies. Thus, reinforcing the old paleo coalition (or its 21st-century analog) may come at the expense of the broader coalition that rallied to Paul during his Republican run. I don’t think that broader coalition will simply evaporate, but the Baldwin endorsement evidently has alienated at least a few RP supporters.

3.) Both the unity press conference and the Baldwin endorsement have repercussions for the Campaign for Liberty, even though CFL is not directly involved in either. (The press conference was put on by the Liberty PAC, Paul’s announcement of support for Baldwin is a personal endorsement. CFL legally cannot endorse candidates.) The hardest task facing CFL as it is currently organized is to get grassroots Ron Paul activists to concentrate their efforts on the major parties rather than splintering off into the third parties. There’s nothing necessarily contradictory about supporting a third-party candidate in the general election but working within the major-party system during primaries and on issue campaigns. But the message is mixed, and there are many people in the grassroots who would already rather focus on third parties.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Politics, Ron Paul. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.