So, what you are saying is that the GOP would rather nominate a candidate that will alienate the middle and potential cross-over pro-life democrats?
There are technically potential crossover pro-life Democrats. In the same sense, there is a potential that Jesse “the Mind” Ventura will win the White House in November 2012. Anyone left in the Democratic party is not possessed of an anti-abortion conscience deserving of the name.
For myself, I noticed at some point that primary voters spend way too much time obsessing how “viable” their preferred candidates are – i.e., how many
other primary voters are going to vote for various candidates. Since everyone is predicting what everyone else is going to do, we end up with millions and millions of people abandoning candidates they like and who otherwise would win outright because they’ve psyched each other out of voting for said candidates. Then we get John McCain. Yippity-skip.
So, this year, I decided that everyone at the primary should just plop their butts down and vote for the candidate they think would make the best president of the United States. In November, I’ll vote for the electable pro-life, defined as “the guy at the top of the GOP ticket.” But, for now, I am just a citizen of the United States, one of three hundred million persons entrusted with the sacred duty of upholding the Constitution, ensuring the execution of all the laws, and building the best possible government, filled with men and women of wisdom and reverence who will safeguard the Republic throughout my generation. My job, in that role, is to work to put the best possible person at the top of that ticket, and trust my fellow Americans to come to agree with me this fall.
I’m not super-thrilled with any of the candidates right now, on account of none of them being me, but for the moment Paul has my vote. Perry would be a reasonably close second. Perry will probably win. But in this historically anti-establishment year, I don’t think it’s time to count Paul out.
One more thing: the thing to know about American independents is that, unlike those of us in the parties, independents don’t respond strongly to particular policy positions. In fact, although a few of them have idiosyncratic special interests, independents as a whole are largely indifferent to a candidate’s ideology. That’s why they’re not in a party. That’s also why they can swing from George W. Bush to Barack Obama in the space of four years. Independents are instead looking for a loose collection of intangibles: stature, vision, voice, courage, intelligence, leadership, virtue, and – above all – consistent, measured conviction. You don’t cater to independents by handing them a muddled “moderate” like Romney or Kerry; you cater to independents by giving them a man of great ideas, a man swing voters can believe in – an Obama, a Bush, or even a Clinton (or a Perot!).
That’s why, although I don’t know whether Obama or his challenger will ultimately take the White House this fall, I am already certain that Mr. Paul would outperform Mr. Romney in the final election returns.
