By Jonah Goldberg
So now its Ron Pauls turn. The diminutive Texas libertarian is poised in the latest polls to win the Iowa caucuses.
Obviously this would be rough news for Newt Gingrich -- whos in 3rd place and falling -- and very good news for Mitt Romney who has used Michele Bachmann Rick Perry Herman Cain and now Paul as blockers to fend off challenges from the various not-Mitt candidates of the moment.
(Perry must feel particularly disoriented because hes been both blocker and blockee.)
And give this to Paul: He most certainly is not Mitt.
Many of Pauls defenders insist he is a champion -- a lone voice even -- of the true Constitution and the real principles of the conservative movement. Moreover they are determined to tell you that often in emails written in ALL CAPS.
For the record I like many of Pauls positions on the role of the federal government. I find it charming that hes making a big issue about the freedom to drink raw milk. I dont believe his positions on states rights are racist. I think he goes way too far on the Federal Reserve. He sometimes sounds like he thinks Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is sapping our precious bodily fluids. But hes also been prescient about the Feds unchecked power.
Or maybe it wasnt prescience. Maybe it was paranoia. After all if you worry about enough things some of them are going to turn out to be accurate. When a hypochondriac is finally diagnosed with a disease after years of pointless worrying it kind of takes the
bite out of his I-told-you-sos.
This is the point in the standard anti-Ron Paul column where I am supposed to denounce his many bad associations his racist newsletters -- which he didnt write he just let them go out with his name on them for years -- his barmy national security ideas and his potted history of American foreign policy. And should Paul go on to be a serious contender for the Republican nomination I reserve my right to revisit all of that because -- contrary to the claims of many of his supporters -- Pauls background hasnt been scrutinized nearly enough.
But rather than get into all that lets take the idea of a President Paul as seriously as his supporters say we should -- though the idea he could beat Obama in the general election strikes me as crazier than Joe Biden on angel dust.
Paul routinely says that hes the only candidate who promises real change. For instance he proposes cutting $1 trillion from the budget in the first year of his presidency. Now show of hands: Who thinks Ron Paul could get those kinds of cuts through Congress? Anyone? OK anyone who also believes the Council on Foreign Relations is a secret cabal determined to create a North American super-state?
I thought so.
I like even love many of Pauls proposals: turning Medicaid into block grants getting rid of the Department of Education etc. But hes not the man to get them accomplished largely because the president doesnt have unilateral authority.
Presidential power is the power to persuade -- Congress the media and ultimately and most important the American people. The power of the purse meanwhile resides on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Paul has been in Congress off and on for nearly 30 years. In that time he will rightly tell you Congress has spent money with reckless abandon expanded the states police
powers launched numerous wars without a declaration of war and further embraced fiat money (he got into politics when Richard Nixon took us fully off the gold standard). During all of that he took to the floor and delivered passionate speeches in protest convincing ... nobody. He authored precious little legislation of any consequence.
Pauls supporters love to talk about how he was a lone voice of dissent. They never explain why he was alone in his dissent. Why couldnt he convince even his ideologically sympathetic colleagues? Why is there no Ron Paul caucus?
Now he insists that everyone in Washington will suddenly do what he wants once hes in the White House. Thats almost painfully naive.
And its ironic that the only way the libertarian-pure-constitutionalist in the race could do the things hes promising is by using powers not in the Constitution.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online.
