A very interesting night, and a fairly inconclusive one unless you were in the bottom tier. There is no clear front runner in the Republican camp and one can essentially look at it as three candidates with roughly a quarter of the votes each… and all the rest divvying up the few leftover scraps in the remaining quarter. The fact that we have two top tier candidates in the race who are not that progressive guy from Massachusetts is perhaps the most important outcome of the night.
The outcome is good in another way: with any kind of luck we could end up with a libertarian sitting in the catbird seat in a brokered convention, assuming of course that he does not surprise us all and win it. I do not think many libertarians are expecting that. The concept of winning is a thing to be slowly approached and gotten used to for most of us. So I will not make any assumptions of grandeur. I will only say we have a good shot at a situation where we have a libertarian in the GOP with substantial power at the convention. He will be able to push them our way and at the same time we have an excellent candidate in the LP itself pushing them from the outside. This should have the GOP strategists wondering how to attract voters from our ranks.
The answer to that question is really simple: drop the Big Statism. Make the repeal of the entirety of Obamacare a priority; and for damn sure stop this mandate talk. If you want even a sidewise glance from us, just drop it and pretend you never even thought about it. Individual Mandate is a poison pill for the GOP and the sooner they realise it, the better off we all will be.
PS: You may have noticed that I have gone MSM journalists one better: I wrote this entire Iowa article without mentioning ANY of the candidate names. Those pikers can only manage to ignore one.
Pretty sure you mentioned Romney near the end there..
Refresh again. I was still editing when my laptop got tied in knots so you may have read the article before I finished.
I think the result was pretty clearly Romney 25%, not-Romney 75%. The suddenness of Santorum’s surge marks him as the latest manifestation of not-Romney, not as a candidate valued for himself.
If the GOP runs Romney, which they probably will, look for the Tea Party presidential vote to migrate to the Libertarian as an organized protest while they vote in a Tea Party House and Senate. Don’t expect them to sit this election out just because the GOP candidate is unsatisfactory to them.
If Obama wins it will be a hollow victory, leaving him isolated in the White House.
Tea Party presidential vote to migrate to the Libertarian
My impression of Ron Paul supporters from the last presidential cycle was that they were more Left/pacifist/truther than Tea Party/Libertarian. I myself have supported the Tea Party, although *the* is probably not appropriate for such a decentralized movement, but I wouldn’t touch Paul with a stick. Santorum picked up much of the socially conservative part of Iowa, we’ll see how well that translates.
It’s a long ways to the convention.
“This should have the GOP strategists wondering how to attract voters from our ranks.”
This is easy to answer. They will do it the way they always do. Lie.
Agreed, the Tea Party is a pretty diverse movement. But I think it’s primarily about getting rid of a corrupt political establishment and I don’t think TPers are going to be happy with having the Republican part of the establishment jam Romney down their throats.
So it’s entirely possible that they might, as a movement, vote for the Libertarian candidate while also voting for TP-blessed (mostly Republican) congressional candidates. Having the LP presidential candidate get 10% of the vote instead of the usual 1% while Romney falls short by 9% would send an unmistakable message to the GOP. And as I said, enough TP congresscritters and Obama is neutered, so no harm done.
Since the LP candidate isn’t going to win, voting even for Ron Paul shouldn’t bother anyone; and besides, Gary Johnson is in there too. The absolutely worst thing the TP could do if Romney is the GOP candidate is sulk in their tents and boycott the election.
If Ron Paul has some sort of senior(ish) role in a future US administration, that might not be a bad thing since I am not sure he has the qualities (given some of his more out-there pronouncements on foreign affairs) to be an effective POTUS. He is also too old.
Like a lot of libertarians and free marketeers, I am a bit torn about Paul: he’s obviously got good qualities and has done a lot to spread our ideas (on hard money, etc), but on the other hand, he seems at times more concerned about states’ rights than individual rights, and his record on some issues (he voted against NAFTA) shows him as not quite the hardline free marketeer that I would like.
My gut tells me that Romney will get the nomination and beat Obama. The key is arguably to get as many good people elected into Congress so that a Romney-run administration has to take note of the shift towards smaller-govt thinking, while grooming a new generation of GoP folk, like Paul Ryan and Rubio. That is probably not a bad outcome.
What chuck said bears repeating:
“My impression of Ron Paul supporters from the last presidential cycle was that they were more Left/pacifist/truther than Tea Party/Libertarian. … I wouldn’t touch Paul with a stick. ”
A pity that good libertarian ideas get to be mixed with crazy ideas by Paul, and be identified with him.
It is not a pity that more people are supporting a candidate who is for solid money, a $1trillion budget cut, and a return to constitutionalism. I think what the lefties and pacifists and truthers who have latched on to Paul are getting is an education in the ideas of economic and personal liberty – also not a bad thing. The rest of us are getting more attention. It’s a win for everyone … bucept the establishment.
My gut tells me that Romney will get the nomination and NOT beat Obama. As long as Congress gets more hostile to Obama in the process, I’m OK with that outcome.
I think it would be better to have Omaba in tne WH than Romney.
A GOP congress would be much more willing to block Obama’s programs than Romney’s.
In the event that anybody should consider supporting Santorum, I recommend the following damning piece on his record.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13978
I don’t see any problem with a Paul presidency. Its not like he would become dictator, and he would still have to deal with congress. I doubt he would find it very easy abolishing the Fed for example.
I think the best part about a Paul presidency would be that he’d use the veto much more often. It wouldn’t bring government to a grinding halt, but it would certainly gum up the works!
I guess that would be somewhat like the situation you get with a minority government in the Parliamentary system. Having lived under minority Parliaments, I think it’s actually a pretty good situation. The stalemate tends to limit the amount of damage any one party can do. (Except for statutes that pass with multi-party support, which are often the worst of all.)
While I’m no fan of Obama, an Obama victory with a Congress that swings strongly Republican could be the best of the realistically-possible outcomes.
As I’m fond of saying, Gridlock Is Good!
Sorry, but no gridlock for you. Obama in the WH second term will do whatever he damn pleases – Congress, the Constitution – hell, the laws of physics, for all I know – be damned. He already does that (see the very informative comments by Subotai Batadur [sp?] on various threads) – imagine the kind of arrogance he will display having won a second term.
That said, Romney in the WH will be equally bad, for obvious and often-mentioned reasons. We are so screwed.
If Obama can make “recess appointments” when Congress is still in session he isn’t above anything.
We are indeed screwed.
Santorum, Iowa? Really? Hopefully NH will impose some sanity on the race…
I’m a Paul man, but if it’s between Santorum and Mitt, I’m Mitt all the way. Santorum is pretty much the opposite of everything a libertarian would support. He’s openly in favour of big government as long as it imposes his agenda. I’m surprised that Paul Marks, someone whose opinion I respect, is supporting Santorum. If it’s between Santorum and Obama come November, then I’m with Barry…
…well actually with Gary Johnson but you know what I mean.
At the risk of sounding like I’m speaking for Paul, I think there’s a question of economics. A social-conservative dipshit won’t utterly destroy the US by 2016. Another four years of Obamuli might.
We can do worse than Santorum. Not easily, but we can do worse. And if one accepts the premise that economics is more-urgent than resisting a Federal marriage takeover (like DoMA?) then IMHO both Reversible Mittens and the current thug-in-chief are indeed doing worse.
(I’m very much not a Santorum fan at all. I’m still trying to convince myself that I can drink enough on Erection Day to vote for any of the Iowa Top Three at all, with very little luck so far. By “doing worse,” imagine comparing falling while skiing and having sharp 9/10 pain and deformity in your ankle, with crushing 10/10 chest pain.)
I’m so stealing ‘erection day’!
It’s a hard job, but someone has to do it 😉
I do agree with the comments above though. Santorum is merely distasteful to me, but I am not sure he would do all that much undo-able damage to Liberty if he won. Romney on the other hand, could do serious damage with his ‘Individual Mandate’. One also wonders exactly what sort of judges he would propose for the Supreme court. A true constitutionalist will strike down IM; I can’t see a Romney presidency proposing people who are against him. Which makes me wonder what we *would* get from him since we all know what school of thought the pro Obamacare people come from…
On judges Romney never really had a choice in Mass – all judicial appointees have to be approved (by Dems), so an effort to appoint a conservative to the Mass courts is hopeless.
On the individual mandate – he says he is against it at Federal level (“he has said so many things Paul” – I know, I know).
However, are people who say they are against the mandate (to buy health insurance) prepared to CAMPAIGN THE 1980S STATUTE THAT FORCES ANY HOSPITAL WITH AN ER TO TREAT ANYONE WHO TURNS UP?
If people are not prepared to campaign against the “right” to health treatment, then saying one is against a mandate to buy health insurance is just empty words.
Dale would be prepared to so campaign – and Ron Paul might be prepared to do so.
But the other candidates would not.
As for liberty generally…..
The United States economy is going to collapse in 2013 (if it does not collapse this year).
The totalitarians (Obama yes – but lots of other people also) are planning to use this collapse as a excuse for “emergency” rule.
This is the real threat to liberty – or, rather, to what liberty still remains.