The Ron Paul Beacon

A few months ago I reconnected with an old friend with whom I haven’t spoken in close to 12 years. He happens to be my former boss and a Reagan Republican. In the spring of 1995 he offered me my first sales job while I was abroad, during a year off I took between high school and college. At the time, he was the publisher of several English language business papers in central and eastern Europe.

I was pleased to find out that while we had been out of touch he had become a publisher of a prominent conservative publication in Washington. Since then he has left the publishing business and is once again abroad. He sounded disgusted with the current state of the Republican party.

A few days ago I asked him what his conservative friends in the US think of Ron Paul. His response was “they think he is simply unelectable due to lack of mass name recognition.”

This, of course, did not surprise me.

As a Ron Paul supporter I am used to hearing the “Ron Paul can’t win” objection. Despite the fact that he is finally getting decent coverage in the mainstream press, even positive pieces about him throw in a caveat; they usually say something along the lines of “he is an interesting, nice guy with some great ideas BUT….” Usually this “but” is followed by a phrase along the lines of “he doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.”

This widespread dismissal has been driving many Ron Paul supporters nuts because it creates a self-fulling prophecy. If everyone thinks that everyone else thinks that he can’t win, well then he won’t. And no one wants to throw their vote away, right?

Some of us suspect a conspiracy by the media and the corporatocracy that controls it. I don’t fall into that camp–in my view everyone in the media who dismisses him simply doesn’t believe he can win because nobody else seems to–just like everyone else. This feeds on itself because no one is willing to go out on a limb and possibly risk their career to say “wait a minute, I think that Ron Paul doesn’t just have some good ideas, I think he has a chance.” It always takes a leap of faith to change the status quo.

But there is good news. Lately I’ve come to realize that this objection won’t be valid much longer as more and more people realize that he does in fact have a chance. “Ron Paul is unelectable” was a valid concern several months ago when he was completely on the margins, but since then his campaign has raised a healthy sum of money and is winning more straw polls than any candidate except Romney. Things are changing–perhaps slowly for now, but Ron Paul’s campaign will reach a Tipping Point soon. This “tip” will occur in the next few months and when it does it will catch nearly everyone by surprise.

There are three factors which will enable this to happen:

1. The Gen Y vote

A full half of Generation Y (born 1980-2000) will be of voting age by next year and no one really knows what impact they will have on the 2008 elections. A few months ago, Fortune ran a cover story about how different twentysomethings behave in the workplace, but the political aspect of this story has not been covered to any significant degree. One thing is certain–in 2004 the Gen Yers who were of voting age showed up to the polls in droves. And now that their numbers have doubled and they are a little older and wiser, they are poised to shake things up.

Contrast this with the the fact that my own generation (Gen X) has a well-deserved reputation for being politically apathetic, and this will only make this next generation’s impact even greater and more surprising. They are very different from the rest of us and will wield close 40 million potential votes in 2008. Given how connected they are to each other online (specifically Facebook), they are more than capable of politically mobilizing themselves in unprecedented ways. Combine that with the fact that they don’t like the way we’ve run things and we might be looking at nothing less than a revolution.

2. Campaign Fundraising

Dollars speak louder than words, and the Ron Paul Campaign raised 5 million of them in Q3! He has the cash to be in this for the long haul and is likely to “tip” very soon.

3. Iraq

There is not a single other Republican Presidential candidate, and only two other Democratic ones (Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich), who are talking about an immediate exit strategy from Iraq. Ron Paul is correct about his party; Republicans have lost heir way. These former non-interventionists are ready to return to their roots. If Dr. Paul can leverage this argument to win over enough of them who are tired of where the current administration has led them, he will take the primaries.

As far as the general elections go, nearly half of Americans think we should get out altogether. If Ron Paul is lucky enough to run against Hillary Clinton, it’ll be a landslide.

So why aren’t the other candidates listening to the people? The Iraq “war” was an unconstitutional and illegal invasion and we accomplished our stated objective years ago. Why are we still there? Why have we allowed thousands of our troops to pay for our honor (thanks Mike Huckabee) with their blood? Is that what they mean by supporting the troops? I’d rather support them by getting them home.

It’s hard for me to understand why it isn’t obvious to everyone that Iraq really is the key issue for 2008. Why don’t the other candidates get this yet? Before I get too worked up about this I must remind myself that this is actually good for Ron Paul. Tom Eddlem, a fellow Boston MeetUp member, summed it up to me this way:

The war in Iraq is already unpopular, as evidenced by the mid-term elections last year. It’s going to sink the Republican Party by November of next year, unless the Republicans nominate Ron Paul. Ron Paul is the only Republican who was right on Iraq from the beginning. Recent polling numbers indicate that even a majority of Republicans recognize that the United States needs to leave Iraq within six months, and no other Republican candidate is for a pull-out.

So let’s not worry too much about this “Ron Paul Can’t Win” thing. The question that people will soon be asking is not “why should I vote for Ron Paul if he doesn’t stand a chance of winning?” but rather “why would I want to waste my vote on those other Republicans who are guaranteed to lose in November?”