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19 December 2011

Why Ron Paul Can't Win


The candidate's problem isn't better-funded opponents or media bias — it's his own views on foreign policy. 

 

By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL


Ron Paul is, in many ways, the ideal candidate for a conservative electorate hungry for a principled GOP nominee. Ron Paul will never be the GOP nominee. For this, Mr. Paul has himself to blame.

In his third run for president, and only a few weeks out from the 2012 Iowa caucuses, the Texas congressman has become the sleeper news of this nomination fight. Polls show him with real strength in Iowa, and stories are brimming with speculation about how the ardent libertarian might pull off a victory there, or how he might command crucial support in Western states, or how all this might upend the Romney-Gingrich narrative.

It's fun as far as it goes, but it misses the world. Or, rather, it misses Mr. Paul's unpopular foreign-policy views, which make him the ultimate self-limiting candidate. And what makes those views more notable is the candidate's stubborn refusal to modulate them—an obstinacy at odds with the rest of his 2012 campaign.

Mr. Paul was largely written off in the past as an ideological crank, a man who ran primarily to have his views heard, and many political watchers have made the same mistake this time. 

But if there has been an overlooked theme in this race, it has been Mr. Paul's new seriousness about winning the nomination. The Ron Paul of 2012 is a different candidate from the Ron Paul of the past. Aware that his absolutist positions worry voters, the libertarian has been conducting a far more mainstream campaign.

Not that he's flipped on any major positions. The Paul campaign knows that its greatest opportunity is attracting voters who are dissatisfied with the other front-runners' policy timidity or lack of consistency. Mr. Paul is neither timid nor inconsistent, and it ought to make him a star.

Nicknamed the "intellectual godfather" of the tea party movement, he's held the same views about limited government since before his first election in 1976. Those views are behind his platform today to slash $1 trillion from the federal government, to eliminate five federal cabinet agencies, to cut the corporate tax rate and get rid of taxes on capital gains and dividends, and to repeal everything from ObamaCare to Sarbanes-Oxley.

The difference in the 2012 Paul campaign is instead one of a maturing tone and emphasis. Consider: The Ron Paul who in 1988 ran for president as a Libertarian spoke pugnaciously of abolishing "unconstitutional" entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare. The Ron Paul of 2008 acknowledged these entitlements could not go away overnight and argued for an opt-out. The Ron Paul of today still holds those positions but is now at great pains to stress that his budget plan is in fact the only one that would "save" entitlements like Social Security and Medicare for current retirees.

He's toned down his calls to legalize drugs. He wrote an October USA Today op-ed reassuring parents they'd retain (in the near term) student loans. Whereas Mr. Paul still despises income taxes and wants to kill off the IRS, he now concedes this might require reform of the existing system, and he promises to extend the Bush tax cuts.

Organizationally, the 2012 Paul campaign has also sloughed off its 2008 disdain of the establishment, and in Iowa at least Mr. Paul is engaging in retail politics, sitting down with party elders and activists. These are the efforts of a candidate newly willing to work within a certain framework, if it means a shot at the White House.

Except on foreign policy, where Mr. Paul does himself in. In discrete areas, Mr. Paul's "noninterventionist" approach resonates with those weary of war, or with the populist sentiment that we spend too much on foreign aid. And note that Mr. Paul has made small stabs at reassuring voters of his patriotism, as with a big national TV ad that highlighted his own military service and commitment to veterans.

But none of this has addressed voters' big concern over a Paul philosophy that fundamentally denies American exceptionalism and refuses to allow for decisive action to protect the U.S. homeland. Perhaps nothing hurt the candidate more in 2008 than his declaration that one reason terrorists attacked us on 9/11 is because "we've been in the Middle East."

Far from toning down such views, Mr. Paul has amped up the wattage, claiming this year that 9/11 prompted "glee" in a Bush administration looking for a pretext to "invade Iraq." He's condemned the Obama administration's killings of terrorists Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, and he insists the U.S. is "provoking" Iran.

For foreign-policy hawks, this is a disqualifier. It explains why a Washington Post-ABC poll in late September showed that Mr. Paul drew some of his weakest numbers from his own base. Of the 25% of voters who viewed him favorably, nearly two-thirds did not identify themselves as Republicans. Among self-identified "conservative Republicans," only 8% gave him a "strongly favorable" rating. You don't win a GOP nomination with figures like this. 

Even mainstream Democrats and independents have no time for Mr. Paul's brand of isolationism, which is why his national numbers remain stuck around 10%. 

Mr. Paul's new strategy has been to assail opponents like Mr. Gingrich, hoping to remind voters of his rivals' flaws. But the bar to Mr. Paul's campaign is not his opponents, or their money, or (a frequent Paul complaint) media bias. Because he can't, or won't, accommodate his own foreign policy views to those of the nation, there is only one bar to a Ron Paul victory: Mr. Paul.

Write to kim@wsj.com





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