Rats!
There are four possible ways of reacting to Ron Paul’s fifth place, 7.68 % showing in New Hampshire:
#1: congRATulations! We’ve done it! We’ve gone from 0.00%, to 7.68% (by way of Iowa’s 10.00%, but let’s not scrutinize the details…). Why, even Newton’s infinitesimals can’t do justice to that rate of acceleration!
I’m afraid this is just the kind of delusional thinking that became institutionalized in the Libertarian Party. We don’t expect to win, we just enjoy the process…after all, who wants to be a Major Party when you can party, party, party! Let’s unbend and lower those expectations.
#2: the election fraud rat: Paul was projected to win 14% in the last poll prior to the primary. He came out with half of that…and people in townships where he registered zero votes are claiming to have voted for him. Is this following up in the grand Republican tradition of Katherine Harris in 2000 and Ohio in 2004? My guess is as good as yours. The problem is that computer voting on machines with software written in proprietary computer code is about as non-transparent as it gets. It might be a good investment in what is still called “democracy” to invest in a recount (one estimate I have heard is that this would cost between sixty and seventy thousand dollars, described as “chump change” in relation of Ron Paul’s campaign chest. However it would be best to keep one’s expectations down about recouping Paul votes…nobody knows anything for sure, but it would be good for the process to have a check just on principle.
#3 the mouse that should have roared but didn’t: According to this thesis, it was all the fault of the campaign staff…they were holding back when they should have gone all out. Of course this is the word from the kibitzers on the ground…to which the staff will no doubt take exception. I wasn’t there, but common sense dictates that a grass roots movement such as the Paul Revolution runs on momentum and psychology. If these are sustained, then the money can be replenished…but it doesn’t necessarily work the other way around. I would have gone all out in New Hampshire, knowing that it was an essential stepping stone towards a potential climax in South Carolina, Florida, and Super Tuesday.
However there is plenty of blame to go around, and I think the rank and file as well as the campaign staff got caught up in an oddly monetarist kind of illusion. Ron was supposed to be winning because he had the most contributions. Any Austrian economist could point out the fallacy here: seeing a unit of account as an objective measure of anything is totally delusive. For example, if the good doctor had all the money in the world but never spent it on campaign advertising etc., it would be as good as naught. Quite apart from allegations of penny pinching or misallocation on the part of the staff, Paulists in general have succumbed to a kind of feel-good, self congratulatory faith that bursting the contribution thermometer would ensure Dr. Paul’s nomination. It doesn’t work that way. The money is necessary but not sufficient.
#4, The New Hamsters: This thesis maintains that the people who voted in the New Hampshire primaries were so stupid that they can no longer discharge the basic functions of citizenship, that is, staying on top of issues and sifting truth from error, decency from deceit. I would like to say that this is implausible, but unfortunately I can’t. This is rather scary when one proceeds to the conclusion that New Hampshire, the erstwhile “live free or die” state, might be a fair (or even flattering) sample of the general American electorate.
It would be bad enough if the leading candidates were not a woman dedicated to maintaining the status quo and a man dedicated to making it even worse. When one compares surveys of voter attitudes on issues with with candidate preference the conclusions are totally bizarre. McCain is preferred by Republicans against the war, presumably on the strength of his stand against torture…which he subsequently abandoned. But in fact McCain is the most hawkish of all the Republican candidates, including Guillani. What are these people thinking about?
A cynic would say they aren’t thinking at all…but of course any psychologist, or for that matter someone who has tried Zen meditation, would know that was impossible. They are thinking endlessly about the kind of facts which fill the tabloids on sale at grocery check out counters…the success of which has now been imitated by main stream media. They want drama, they want emotion, even to the point of emotional break down. They don’t want intellectual consistency in their elected leaders, rather intellectual inconsistency is better because there is always the entertaining factor of surprise involved. Since we are dealing with primates rather than rodents, the spinning tread-wheel is intangible, but no less real for that. Our New Hamsters are on that wheel of fire described anciently by the apostle James and more recently by the late Johnny Cash. This frenzy feeding off emotion is what, according to utterly respectable reports, catapulted Hillary over Obama.
But in the specter of McCain the New Hamsters may have gotten more than they bargained for. It is one thing to vicariously enjoy the momentary madness of Beach Boy tune burlesqued to advocate a nuclear attack on another nation, it is another thing to stare into the abyss for real. The New Hamsters feeding off of the emotions of sick personalities is merely disgusting when directed at such unfortunates as Brittany Spheres, when it toys with the idea of putting the nuclear arsenal in the hands of a real-life Manchurian candidate, the wheel of fire is burning dangerously hot indeed!
If the whole world had gone mad, we could relax and enjoy it with the aplomb of Nero’s courtiers during the fire of 68BC. But the lucid argumentation of Dr. Paul is there to remind us that there is such a thing as reason and one’s words and actions may be held accountable against its standard. It should hardly be surprising that this sanity finds itself in the minority at the present time. Researchers in higher mathematics don’t deduce their proofs in the expectation that the generality of humankind will follow along any time soon. Although it shouldn’t be quite that difficult with noninterventionism, sound money, and property rights…we are clearly in a long slog to turn the New Hamsters back into responsible citizens.
Libertarians and paleoconservatives are beset by their own illusions, not the least of which is the hope that (against their own principles) their programs will receive spontaneous democratic acclaim. I remember that in the 1980s many libertarians expected Alaska to turn into some sort of free republic…only to find out that the state was dominated by the complex and often incestuous politics of trade unions, public lands, and native claims. As Bob Dylan sang in his ugliest voice:
You have many contacts, among the lumber jacks…
That is, wish-fulfilling dreams of some land where a rugged individualism prevails against improbable odds. Just how improbable was demonstrated again this week when we had to say good-by to “live free or die” and hello to the New Hamsters. For as Dylan continued in dolorous tones:
Something is going on here, but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?
So which lesson shall we draw from this post-New Hampshire rats’ gallery? As Dylan so conveniently neglected to point out, our task is to find out…then pick up the pieces and keep fighting.
