Ronning Into the Ground
It’s old news, but the measure of Ron Paul’s failure as a candidate was that he let John "Hundred Years War" McCain beat him among antiwar voters in the primaries. When you’re the only antiwar candidate in a multi-candidate race, there’s simply no excuse for letting anyone else beat you among antiwar voters, especially your most reflexively hawkish competitor. Cherry-picking numbers and bitching about the Kochtopus aside, in the "Potomac Primary," Paul couldn’t even significantly beat Mitt Romney’s numbers, even though Romney had withdrawn from the race. In this week’s Washington State caucus, Romney beat Paul by 3 to 1. Paul’s positions on the war and civil liberties obviously meant there was only so well he could do in a fundamentally authoritarian political party, but failing to at least win the antiwar vote was a humiliating underperformance.
Comment by William Burns —
February 24, 2008 @ 10:29 pm
It’s also a not very glorious moment in the history of the American electorate. McCain getting the antiwar vote is the kind of thing that makes me think maybe this democracy thing is overrated.
Comment by Neil Eden —
February 24, 2008 @ 10:31 pm
I don’t know how much of this should be laid on Ron Paul’s shoulders or how much should be laid on the shoulders of our generally uninformed elecorate. When McCain, I repeat, MC-FOOKIN-CAIN, is aceing the anti-war vote, it’s pretty clear that most of America hasn’t been paying attention. Paul had maifold faults, but he was plenty up front about his opposition to this war.
Another explanation is that most of America likes the war, disaster though it be…
Comment by Jim Henley —
February 24, 2008 @ 10:37 pm
Hi Neil: It’s clear most of the Republican Party likes the war, but the point is that McCain won the votes of primary voters who specifically declared their dislike of it.
Maybe it is a democracy thing, but when I read about Paul’s ad campaigns I get the strong suspicion he didn’t do enough to get the word out. Yes, he came out strongly against the war in the televised debates, but did most voters see those? I haven’t watched one yet. Whereas probably any New Hampshirite with a television probably saw Paul’s “TERRORIST VISAS WILL KILL US ALL!!!!” ads.
Comment by Thoreau —
February 24, 2008 @ 11:52 pm
Another part of it is probably the fact that McCain is seen as a “maverick.” In 2000 every disenchanted Democrat (me included, as I was in a transitional stage in early 2000 with regard to my politics) was projecting all sorts of things onto him that weren’t actually there. Presumably some people still just see the glow because he’s on bad terms with some other people in his party.
I recovered from it. A lot of people apparently didn’t.
Comment by TGGP —
February 25, 2008 @ 3:06 am
“Every mistake of analysis I have made over the past year has come from believing that policy mattered to voters and that the candidates with the policies most in line with their constituents’ priorities would prevail. That was a pretty stupid assumption. Worse than a pundit’s fallacy, this is the error of the high-information voter, who thinks that because he wastes his time learning about the policy positions of two dozen politicians that everyone else is as, well, brain-damaged and conditioned as he is. Even though the high-information voter is presumably reasonably well-informed, he repeatedly, insistently refuses to acknowledge that the entire exercise is absurd and fairly futile, since he knows better than most that the actual policies enacted by the candidate once he is in power may bear no relationship whatever to his campaign pledges.”
Daniel Larison
Comment by Anonymo —
February 25, 2008 @ 3:37 am
What about the possibility that many of the people who claimed to be “anti-war” were manifesting a cousin of the (debatable, I know) Wilder/Bradley effect?
Comment by Dave W. —
February 25, 2008 @ 6:21 am
I am going to go with: people who live in proximity to Washington DC making their living, directly or indirectly, by dint of federal redistribution of wealth.
Some, like Mr. Henley, rise above it. Most can’t.
Frankly, I don’t think that federal employees or employees of federal contractors should even have a vote. They are too compromised.
Comment by wade —
February 25, 2008 @ 10:06 am
…nor indeed those in receipt of anykind of subsidy, the military or anyone using highways, the internet or benefitting from flood defence works..
Comment by Dave W. —
February 25, 2008 @ 10:10 am
I don’t think the slope is quite that slippery, Wade.
Comment by Dan Miller —
February 25, 2008 @ 10:57 am
I say this as a liberal Dem and by no means a Paul supporter, but I think this is a little unfair. Specifically, the people who identify as antiwar and vote in a GOP primary are more likely to be uninformed–exactly the type of people whom it’s hard for a marginal candidate to reach. If you examined the universe of all voters, GOP and Dem, who are opposed to the Iraq war, I suspect that the most-informed ones would tend to vote in the Dem primary, leaving the anti-war GOP primary voters a diluted field.
Comment by Leonard —
February 25, 2008 @ 12:16 pm
Comment 1: seconding TGGP in quoting Larison.
Comment 2: Paul did not win the antiwar vote according to exit polling. However, what that means is he did not win the vote among people who “disapproved” of the “U.S. War in Iraq”. Well, one may “disapprove” of a war, even “strongly disapprove”, without being antiwar in general, or even antiwar for that particular war.
I would define antiwar to mean, “wants an immediate pullout from the Iraq war, or nearly immediate”. Rather than, say, “I disapprove of losing sacred American soldiers over there when we should just nuke Mecca and Tehran”.
Also, there’s the matter that this is not the only issue. Even Paul voters may be motivated by other issues. Note that only 22% of those surveyed had Iraq as their most imporant issue. It seems to me a fairer way of looking at who got which votes is to look at the percentage who voted on a particular issue vs the overall percentage. So, in Maryland, McCain got 55% of the vote, whereas Paul got 6%. Among those who “strongly disapprove” of the war, the percentage are 43% and 22%.
If we take the 22% with Iraq as their most important issue, and multiply by the 30% who were even vaguely disapproving of the war, you get 6.6% — just about Paul’s share of the vote.
Comment by B —
February 25, 2008 @ 12:51 pm
Jim, I’m not sure that the poll in question accurately captures what GOP primary voters meant when they said that they “disapproved of the war”. Maybe they aren’t strictly “anti-war voters”.
I think a high proportion of them disapprove of the way the war has been executed. This doesn’t mean than they disapprove of the idea of the war in the first place.
In which case McCain would be their candidate, because he has been critical of how the war has been run, at least pre-surge.
At least, this is consistent with the opinion of my only friend (that I know of) that still supports the war. So maybe my sampling isn’t great either.
Comment by Watts —
February 25, 2008 @ 2:01 pm
I wonder if Paul’s loudest supporters weren’t in some ways one of his biggest liabilities. His support has always been most visible on the internet — and those supporters tend to get most of their view of the world filtered through the net. The flip side of that is that, well, the “average Paul supporter” to those who weren’t already committed Lew Rockwell types is the kind of guy who writes comments very much like the ones on the linked Justin Raimondo piece. Anything Ron Paul says is definitionally brave and true, anything any other politician says is definitionally lying and weaselly… even if they are saying the same thing. I have a friend who’s a fierce Paul supporter who was going on the other day about the “Obama cult” and, well, I just couldn’t say a damn thing in response that wouldn’t start an argument.
Obama made a comment about Ralph Nader’s announcement that was along the lines of, “Mr. Nader is somebody who, if you don’t listen and adopt all of his policies, thinks you’re not substantive.” I think this was pretty accurate, but it strikes me as even more true of Paul’s supporters. Obama has been pretty critical of the Iraq war, but because he’s said he wouldn’t rule out military action in all circumstances, he gets dismissed as “Obombya.” The “everyone who isn’t Paul is exactly the same” attitude is eerily similar to Nader’s blithe “everyone else is part of the corporate machine and there’s no real difference” mantra. That’s unfortunate, since both Paul and Nader actually have good things to say. But when you take “there are legitimate criticisms that could be made of both McCain and Obama” to the point where you’re shouting “there’s no real difference between McPain and Obombya,” the majority of people who aren’t true believers are going to stop taking you seriously — and they’re probably going to stop taking your candidate seriously, too.
(Incidentally, that sort of “ha ha I’ve wittily mocked your name!” thing has gone past “pet peeve” for me and is approaching “Hulk smash” level.)
Comment by TGGP —
February 25, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
Dave W, that reminds me of this proposal from John Derbyshire.