Rebecca McPheters says online magazines and newspapers need better apps: Of the 5,000 magazine and newspaper iPad apps we’ve evaluated for McPheters & Co.’s iMonitor service since April 2010, far too many simply do not work well. In the summer of 2010, about 45% of the apps we evaluated revealed significant malfunctions. That proportion is […]
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Media tycoon is angry and he’s not afraid to speak his mind. Not to be left in the technological dust, Murdoch took to Twitter to slam Obama and for their position on anti-piracy legislation currently being debated in congress. A fierce SOPA proponent, Murdoch is feeling the pinch as lawmakers begin to retreat from the […]
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Lost in the discussion of internet censorship, anti-piracy measures, and the politics of the internet is a simple question: does piracy actually cause economic harm? Tim O’Reilly read the White House statement on the SOPA / PIPA legislation and came away with mixed feelings. “I found myself profoundly disturbed by something that seems to me […]
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It doesn't matter whether Paul is in it to win – his message is the important thing.
Like Russia, Ron Paul is an enigma wrapped in a mystery that Sarah Palin can see from her front porch, or something. I’m paraphrasing the old quotation.
Pundits everywhere want to know just what it is the Texas congressman really hopes to gain this election. Does he really want to be president? Is this just a forum for his heterodox views on war and monetary policy? Is he out for converts to Austrian economics and a less interventionist foreign policy? Is he laying the groundwork for a Rand Paul presidency? Is he just messing with us? More tot he point, is he just messing with the Republican Party in a grand bid to expose their hypocrisy and lack of true, conservative principles?
All of the above, maybe?
Does it really matter?
In any case, it is very interesting to see how little Romney and Paul are going after one another. Perhaps Paul is content to let Gingrich and Perry pound Romney, and perhaps Romney doesn’t want to seem desperate. Either way, the election so far is still a two-man race with lots of third-tier shock troops doing the dirty work. I suppose the gloves will come off soon.
I asked yesterday if Paul would endorse Romney. I doubt it – I doubt he’ll do something out of loyalty to the Republican party that would be tantamount to betrayal to many of his most loyal supporters.
But then what happens to Paul’s delegates? What happens at the convention? Matt Lewis and Bill Scher have an interesting dialogue on the question (below, via.) There’s some suggestion that Paul could be a kingmaker but not a king. I think it’s more likely he could be a king-breaker. Ask yourself, if Ron Paul actually believes in what he says, is he more likely to back Romney’s neoconservative candidacy or to run on an independent ticket? Is he going to throw his weight behind bailout-supporting, big-government Republicans or is he going to strike out on his own (or, as in 2008, endorse someone else.)
Is there a third choice?
Whatever his aspirations, whatever his hopes or his long-term strategy – whatever his son’s hopes and aspirations – I hope that Ron Paul’s current influence in the 2012 race elevates his ideas and makes those ideas something to be reckoned with, not just in the GOP but across the aisle as well. We may never have a perfect non-interventionist, anti-drug war president in Barack Obama, but if Paul’s message on drugs could convince Obama that marijuana legalization is no laughing matter that alone might be a small, but important, victory.
Furthermore, I agree with Conor Friedersdorf that there is no progressive alternative to Paul when it comes to civil liberties.
If progressives are frustrated that relatively doctrinaire libertarians are attracting the attention and support of people who care deeply about civil liberties, why don’t they work to offer some alternative? Guys like me will probably still prefer Johnson. But is it really the case that the Democratic Party can’t produce a prominent civil-libertarian politician who Glenn Greenwald would prefer to Ron Paul?
That is itself a devastating truth about the post-2009 left.
Lots of liberals have told me to quit placing hopes on the president, especially since a president Paul would disagree with me on many important issues. I agree that focusing on congress is important, too, but I’m not sure the two are mutually exclusive. No other candidate better represents my very liberal views on peace and nonviolence. I would gladly vote for a Democrat who represented those views but hewed closer to my beliefs on universal healthcare, public education, and the welfare state more broadly (not to mention illegal immigration.) No such candidate exists.
I do agree that the hard work of building a political movement happens not with a president but with local politicians, intellectual operations, congressional districts, and so forth. The boots-on-the-ground stuff is unglamorous and not very rewarding. If nothing more, I do think Paul’s focus on an anti-war message has helped lay that groundwork to some degree, not just for conservatives fed up with big government and the big wars it starts, but for liberals like me who care deeply about civil liberties and nonviolence.
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Concerns over anti-piracy bills in congress are finally beginning to influence lawmakers. SOPA architect Lamar Smith is, apparently, listening – especially now that the Obama administration is voicing its own concerns over the legislation. In a statement, Smith said he will remove controversial DNS-blocking rules from the bill, though his counterpart in the Senate, Patrick […]
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The White House has responded to two anti-SOPA petitions at the White House blog today. “While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response,” the post said, “we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative […]
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If you’re one of seven-hundred lucky households in Sebastopol, California your internet is about to become much faster. Telecom start-up Sonic.net is rolling out fiber lines to a small group of California residents in its initial foray into 1Gbps internet. That’s fast. In 2010, the median internet speed in the United States was a paltry 3 […]
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Just to add to our discussion of “owls” in foreign policy:
Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, was the equivalent of the Greek goddess Athena. She was associated with the owl, traditionally regarded as wise, and hence a metaphor for philosophy. Hegel wrote, in the preface to his Philosophy of Right: ‘The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.’ He meant that philosophy understands reality only after the event. It cannot prescribe how the world ought to be.
Bibliography
G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, tr. T. M. Knox (Oxford, 1967).
Huntsman's foreign policy record is too thin to know what he'd do in office.
Daniel Larison takes issue with my description of Huntsman and Obama as “owls” – a term I use to describe a realist foreign policy preference that is neither hawkish in the neoconservative sense or necessarily dovish:
I won’t rehearse the litany of all the interventions Obama has supported over the years, but suffice it to say I don’t think he fits the “owl” definition. Huntsman has less of a public record on these issues, which makes it a little harder to judge, but based on what we do know he has flatly opposed last year’s war of choice in Libya, he wants to wind down the war in Afghanistan, but he favors starting a new war of choice in Iran. This last one is so much more important and so completely wrong that it’s hard not to give it more weight. On Iraq, he took no public position on the war between 2002 and today, but he endorsed the most zealous pro-war candidate in the last cycle and criticized the withdrawal of U.S. troops and called for a residual force to remain there apparently indefinitely. Put another way, on the most important foreign policy issue of the last decade Huntsman professes to be agnostic or at least unwilling to revisit the debate, but based on how he is misjudging Iran it is fair to guess that he would have favored invading Iraq as well.
This is all true enough. I think Obama actually started out as an owl and moved in the hawkish direction over the years, culminating his move toward interventionism in the invasion of Libya and the assassination of Anwar Al-Awlaki. This is also what gives me most pause about Huntsman whose positions on Afghanistan and Libya were pretty good but, as Daniel notes, has made very loud noises about Iran.
Beyond the troubling nature of his Iran comments, Huntsman reminds me a little bit of a rightwing version of Obama. Obama seemed much better on matters of war and peace when he was on the campaign trail. In office he’s never stopped disappointing. Isn’t it just as likely that Huntsman will do the same, sounding a cautious note on various foreign threats and then pounding the war drum as loud as ever when the mullahs taunt him?
In any case, Daniel is correct – Obama is no owl, though I think his hawkishness is much less ingrained than many of his Republican rivals. He is a mildly hawkish technocrat who believes we can do small but important things through intervention. His administration also talks tough on Iran, but I don’t worry nearly so much that he’d actually go through with all-out war as I worry about a Romney or a Gingrich administration. Huntsman has too little a record on these issues to say with certainty.
Ron Paul and Gary Johnson are the only candidates who are firmly and reliably anti-war. But Obama, I’d wager, is still a more sober commander in chief than someone like Romney who, so far as I can tell, wants to revamp neoconservatism in ways that the Obama administration, however bad it’s been on continuing Bush-era policies, hasn’t even dreamed of. When it comes to Iran, Obama makes me nervous. The majority of his GOP rivals have me quite literally terrified.
What do we do when confronted with the threat of an Iranian war and the lesser of two evils? I can’t honestly say.
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Could Ron Paul endorse Mitt Romney?
Anti-tax advocate (fanatic? champion? crusader?) Grover Norquist says that a Ron Paul endorsement of Romney could make or, if he withheld it, break Romney’s presidential chances. ”Ron Paul is the only candidate for the Republican nomination whose endorsement will matter to Mitt Romney,” he writes. “It is the only endorsement that will bring votes and the only endorsement, if withheld, that could cost Romney the general election. If Ron Paul speaks at the GOP convention (as he was not invited to do in 2008), the party will be united and Romney will win in November 2012. If Ron Paul speaks only at his own rally in Tampa, Florida (as happened at the 2008 GOP convention in Minnesota) the party will not be at full strength.”
Conor Friedersdorf runs through three possible scenarios in which Paul endorses Romney: 1) he gets some big concession from Romney; 2) he does it for his son, Rand whose own presidential ambitions may depend on Ron Paul’s allegiance to the party; or 3) beating Obama is just that important.
On point one, Conor points out that nobody can trust Romney so this is a very unlikely reason Paul would have to endorse him. However, this is the only of the scenarios that is at all likely. “If we don’t pull it off, and we’re not in first place, yes, that would be a good goal,” Paul said, before the New Hampshire vote. “I run to win, and I have won a lot, but we also want to help direct the party and the country in a certain way, so that would be a very positive strategy to have an influence in the party.” What will this mean? In what way does Paul plan on brokering out his influence?
On point two, I find it unlikely that Rand Paul’s success in a future election would depend on Ron Paul’s allegiance whatsoever. He’s already supported candidates from other parties, endorsing the Constitution Party candidate, Chuck Baldwin. Paul is so far outside the mainstream of his party, up until now they’ve likely preferred he endorses someone else. And finally, on point three I agree entirely with Conor. On the issues that matter to Paul it’s not at all clear whether Romney would be any better and he could possibly be much worse than the current president.
So no, Ron Paul isn’t going to endorse Romney unless he has some trick up his sleeve that we aren’t privy to. Not only that, but Paul would risk seriously upsetting his own base and support with the endorsement of someone like Romney. Since he’ll have a bunch of delegates by the time the convention roles around, this will make for some really intense politics in the coming months. Only Paul has the national organization and war chest to go toe-to-toe with Romney for the long haul. That he’s the sort of Republican who can at once run a close second, maybe even better, and not be likely to endorse the guy that wins is a pretty big deal. We certainly don’t see elections like this every year (or four, as the case may be.)
Of course, it’s possible he’ll endorse Gary Johnson if Johnson takes the Libertarian party nomination. But the question of how much influence Paul wants over his own party makes me wonder. If Paul really does want to steer the Republican ship, it’s possible Johnson is just very much out of luck.
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