Reason Magazine - Topics > Mitt Romney

Romney Out

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:41:00 EST

Romney to drop out of presidential race at CPAC today, ABC reports.

Romney Was for the 'Assault Weapon' Ban Before He Was Against It

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:25:00 EST

LJ at Race 4 2008 catches Mitt Romney reversing his position on the federal "assault weapon" ban in the space of less than two months. In a December 16 interview with Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press, Romney said that if elected president he would sign a bill reviving the ban, which expired in 2004. In an interview with Glenn Reynolds and Helen Smith over the weekend, Romney said he saw no need for new gun control legislation and would veto any that crossed his desk.

Romney told Russert that he wanted to "keep weapons of unusual lethality from being on the street" and suggested that the "assault weapon" ban, a version of which he signed as governor of Massachusetts, was part of that effort. Evidently he does not realize that such laws ban firearms based not on their "lethality" but on their scary, militaristic appearance. Functionally identical guns fell on different sides of the line drawn by the federal ban because of irrelevant details such as the composition of the stock or the presence of a bayonet mount. Many firearms not covered by the law (e.g., ordinary shotguns) were more lethal than the intermediate-caliber guns it proscribed. As with the ban on "partial birth" abortions, the ban on "assault weapons" set a potentially powerful precedent precisely because the distinctions it drew were so arbitrary.

Not that Romney has given the issue much, if any, thought. When he wanted to look like a gun control moderate, he supported assault weapon bans. Now that he wants to look like a diehard defender of the right to keep and bear arms, he opposes them. He used to emphasize his differences with the NRA, and now he claims an NRA endorsement he never actually received.

Rant: Make Mine Mormon

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:00:00 EST

The problem with Mitt Romney is that he isn’t Mormon enough. His unusual, unpopular religion is the one part of his public image that doesn’t feel like it came out of a focus group. Naturally, he does everything he can to minimize, marginalize, and neuter it. Most voters, he said at one point, “want a person of faith as their leader. But they don’t care what brand of faith that is.” He thus reduced his purportedly heartfelt beliefs to a brand name, just another toothpaste in the great big CVS in the sky. It might not be Colgate, but the important thing is that he brushes daily.

That’s a far cry from the other Mormons who have run for president. I’m not referring to Mitt’s dad, George, whose effort to be elected in 1968 was an unremarkable affair until he announced that Lyndon Johnson had “brainwashed” him into backing the Vietnam War. (With Romney, Eugene McCarthy cracked, “a light rinse would have been sufficient.”) I’m referring to the church’s founder, the Prophet Joseph Smith, and to its most famous excommunicant, Sonia Johnson. They had real personalities, with all the eccentric texture that implies. Maybe too much eccentric texture, but too much is better than Mitt’s bowl of nothing.

Smith ran in 1844 on a platform that called for a larger country (he wanted to annex Texas and Oregon) and a smaller House of Representatives (he wanted to “reduce Congress at least one half”). He also believed the president should be able to suppress mobs—especially anti-Mormon mobs—without a governor’s approval. “The state rights doctrines are what feeds mobs,” he wrote. “They are a dead carcass—a stink, and they shall ascend up as a stink offering in the nose of the Almighty.” Perhaps offended by this choice of words, a mob killed Smith in an Illinois jail five months before Election Day.

Smith didn’t think much of imprisonment either. In a plank unlikely to appeal to Mitt “Double Guantanamo” Romney, Smith argued that only murderers should be incarcerated: “Petition your state legislatures to pardon every convict in their several penitentiaries, blessing them as they go, and saying to them in the name of the Lord, go thy way and sin no more!” This wasn’t as radical as it sounds: Prisons were a recent invention in 1844, and they were closely associated with the same Yankee reformers who hated Mormons.

And Johnson? She came to prominence in the late 1970s, when her work for the Equal Rights Amendment prompted the church patriarchs to excommunicate her. In 1984 she was the nominee of the leftist Citizens Party. Pedants might insist that Johnson’s campaign came after she exited the church, thus disqualifying her from the list of Mormon presidential candidates. They should consider Johnson’s subsequent career, in which she abandoned liberal reform for a mix of anarchism, radical feminism, and militant polyamory.

Johnson eventually declared that any romantic relationship between two people—even two women—is a patriarchal “slave ship.” So like Joseph Smith before her she embraced a bigger love, only without the men and (in theory) without the hierarchy. She started a separatist commune out West, her own lesbian Deseret in the New Mexico mountains. You can’t remove your formative influences: Reading Johnson is like reading Brigham Young filtered through Valerie Solanas.

Will Mitt’s Mormon roots shine through someday? Will he suddenly spew something wonderfully strange? (I don’t count his revelation that L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth is his favorite novel, though his choice does suggest he’s ecumenical about those “brands of faith.”) Maybe he’ll start to talk about exaltation, my favorite element of Mormon theology. With enough work, the doctrine says, the faithful shall “be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them.”

Huey Long gave us the greatest campaign slogan in American history: Every Man a King. Romney could one-up him by crying Every Man a God. Instead he promises “true strength for America’s future,” which isn’t incompatible with godhood but sure sounds a lot duller.

Jesse Walker is managing editor of Reason.

Rocketship Rudy Sets His Sights on Mars!

kleinp@spectator.org (Philip Klein) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 17:00:00 EST

Tampa, Florida--"I hate pandering... have all my life," Rudy Giuliani once told Newsmax. "It's one of the worst characteristics that politicians have--pandering to people...There's a dishonesty in that that really offends me."

That was in 2006. This year, the former mayor of New York City is trying to win an election. With his national lead eroded and his presidential candidacy on the brink, Giuliani has staked everything on winning today's Florida primary. In the process, he has developed a strange new appreciation of the space program and the perils of the homeowner's insurance market.

"We're going to get to Mars before anyone else gets there," Giuliani boasted at a rally on Monday by the Orlando Sanford International Airport. "And we're going to reestablish our space program and eliminate that gap, so we can get our people up to the space station ourselves. That's something I learned about here in Florida, and I am committed to doing it."

Beyond supporting an industry that is an important part of the state's economy, Giuliani's main gambit to win votes and influence people in the Sunshine State has been getting behind something called the National Catastrophic Fund. Under this proposal, the federal government would help in the event of a major natural disaster, which would spread risk and thus allow insurers to offer more affordable homeowner's polices to residents of hurricane-prone Florida.

"The idea is to be there with a backstop that will allow a private market to work so that people who have risk will pay more but at least they'll have insurance that [isn't] excessive," Giuliani explained last week.

Contrary to Giuliani's assertion, the private market in Florida is functioning quite efficiently, because it is sending homeowners the signal that it'll cost them if they choose to live in an area in which there is a high risk of a hurricane. To artificially lower insurance rates would only encourage more people to move to the state, meaning more costly storms in the future. Giuliani's response to critics is that the federal government ends up stepping in anyway, so being proactive is actually the more fiscally conservative thing to do.

At every campaign stop "America's Mayor" has been touting the fact that he is the only Republican in the race that supports the National Catastrophic Fund, and he took out a television ad educating voters on his position. During last Thursday's debate, when Giuliani had the opportunity to ask a question to one of his rivals, the former prosecutor grilled former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on his lack of enthusiasm for the giveaway.

Yet Giuliani has received very little in return for taking such a strong stand on the fund and the desperate need for a publicly funded Mars expedition. His poll numbers have continued to dwindle in the state, and Florida's GOP Gov. Charlie Crist, a leading proponent of the idea, ended up endorsing Sen. John McCain, who said no to the fund.

To be sure, not all economic pandering is created equal. While Giuliani doesn't have much to show for his efforts, Mitt Romney's latest incarnation as a born-again John Edwards has paid enormous dividends.

After defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he had spent tens of millions of dollars, Romney's chances of capturing the Republican nomination seemed slim. But in Michigan, he won by promising to save the auto industry and fight for every job, and he has continued to echo populist themes in Florida. At campaign stops here, Romney talks about the "economic squeeze" and "help[ing] middle class families make ends meet."

After spending most of last year running away from his Massachusetts health care plan, Romney now fully embraces it, defending the various mandates that are part of the program. He has been promising that as president, he'll work to get every American insured.

Not only is Romney pushing the idea of universal health care, but according to a report in the Politico, his campaign has attempted to woo senior citizen voters in Florida with robo calls attacking the frontrunner McCain for voting against "the AARP-backed Medicare prescription drug program."

That multi-trillion-dollar entitlement program has served as a monument to President Bush's betrayal of limited government principles, and the AARP has been the biggest obstacle to achieving entitlement reform because of its use of scare tactics directed at its elderly members. The idea that Romney, who is trying to portray himself as an economic conservative, would employ similar scare tactics to assail a rival for opposing the boondoggle is staggering. Yet many conservatives have concluded that Romney is their last hope of stopping McCain, whom they dislike on immigration, campaign-finance reform, and other issues. So they are giving the former Massachusetts governor a free pass on his dash to the left on economic issues.

In the primaries so far, McCain himself has avoided the type of economic pandering that his rivals have engaged in, and it has been greeted with mixed results. He had a better-than-expected showing in Iowa despite his opposition to ethanol subsidies. And his refusal to endorse the idea of a catastrophic fund didn't cost him the endorsement of Gov. Crist. In the span of a few weeks, he improbably went from also-ran to the head of the GOP pack, both in Florida and nationally.

Which isn't to say he hasn't paid a price in the campaign.

"We went to Michigan, and we told them the truth," McCain recounted at a Tampa rally Monday night, referring to his acknowledgement that auto industry jobs leaving Detroit weren't coming back. He then joked, "They didn't like it much."

Philip Klein is a reporter for The American Spectator.

Discuss this story at reason's Hit & Run blog.

The Accidental Congressman

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:31:00 EST

Pundits, academics, and Republican activists in Georgia want to make this perfectly clear: Paul Broun is an accidental congressman.

“I was flabbergasted when he won the election,” admits Jim Box, one of many eminences in the Georgia Republican Party who declined to endorse the 61-year-old house call doctor before his upset victory in a special election last July. Box runs the GOP in Clarke County, which surrounds Athens and includes the University of Georgia; it’s the area that gave Broun his winning majority.

“All the long-term historical indicators,” says Merle Black, “indicate that Broun should have lost.” Black, an Emory University political scientist with a peerless knowledge of Southern politics, bets that Broun will serve one term and lose the next Republican primary. Box agrees.

It’s easy to see why they’re skeptical. Broun, a self-described “strict constitutionalist,” believes that the income tax should be abolished, that civil liberties degraded since 9/11 should be restored, and that fetuses deserve American citizenship. He has been married four times; opponents grumble that he performs house calls because hospitals won’t hire him. This isn’t the usual background of somebody who gets elected in Georgia.

So how did Broun get to Congress? After Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.) died of cancer last February, 10 candidates—six Republicans, three Democrats, and one Libertarian—fought for his seat. The entire Republican establishment, from Norwood’s widow to local party leaders, endorsed a venerable state senator named Jim Whitehead. To them, Broun was a meandering fringe candidate who had squandered his good name (his father was a state senator from Athens) in three previous defeats: a 1990 House race, a 1992 House primary, and a 1996 Senate primary. In the last contest, he finished fourth, with only 3 percent of the vote.

Whitehead ran a front-runner’s campaign, skipping debates and promising to continue Norwood’s moderate conservative legacy. Broun ran the same campaign he always has, pledging to support bills only if they fit a quirky four-part test: They have to be moral (according to the Bible), constitutional (according to the version he keeps in his suit pocket), necessary (according to logic), and affordable (according to a balanced federal budget). Even after tapping into $200,000 of his own cash, Broun raised just half as much money as Whitehead did and finished a distant second in the first round of voting, 43.5 percent to 20.7 percent. Since no one received a majority, there was a runoff, but nearly everyone expected Whitehead’s win.

But then Whitehead got smug. As the runoff approached, he didn’t run any TV ads or do any polling. He joked about bombing everything at the University of Georgia except for the football team. He accused Democrats of registering “known Al Qaeda terrorists” to vote. It was a slow-motion collapse. Broun ended up muscling past Whitehead by less than 400 votes out of about 47,000 cast.

“I hope my colleagues will go to school on what my election meant,” Broun says. “Everybody thought it was a slam dunk, my opponent winding up here. But he’s not here.”

There are two reasons why Broun’s career is worth examining closely. The first is Broun himself. He compares himself happily to Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), the anti-war libertarian presidential candidate: Both men are physicians who carry pocket Constitutions and often find themselves on the losing side of congressional votes. (Broun likes Paul, but he doesn’t share Paul’s views on Iraq and won’t make a presidential endorsement.) The day he was sworn in, Broun joined just 13 other Republicans (and 150 Democrats) in supporting a bill to call off raids by the Drug Enforcement Administration on medical marijuana distributors. He was one of only four congressmen to oppose the Drug Endangered Children Act, which allocated $20 million to take care of children living among drugs and drug dealers, and one of three to vote against establishing a new registry to keep track of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (“Lou Gehrig’s disease”).

Asked about both votes, Broun hauls out his Constitution and flips it open to Article I, Section 8. “We don’t have authority to create things like that,” he says. “This lists the functions of the federal government, and it’s about a page and a half long. I’d say most of the things this Congress does, we don’t actually have the authority to do.”

Broun worries that interpretation of the Constitution has been off for a very long time. “Maybe it was when they decided Marbury v. Madison when the courts hijacked the Constitution,” he says. “I think you can go back to John Adams with the Alien and Sedition Acts that passed when he was president. The thing is, human nature is such that people want to garner more power. What fuels the great growth of government—and I’m talking about more and more centralization from local governments to state governments, from state governments to the federal government—is that basic human nature.”

Broun doesn’t share his party’s thinking on what the U.S. should be doing during a “war on terror.” Asked if he agrees with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney that the biggest threat facing the country is Islamic terrorism, he shakes his head. “No,” he says, “our biggest threat is a lack of understanding of what the Constitution says and what the Founding Fathers meant for it to say. We’ve left that behind.”

Back in Georgia, Broun’s own party is plotting to replace him, beginning with the July 2008 primary for his seat. State Rep. Barry Fleming (R-Harlem) entered the race soon after the runoff and has out-fundraised Broun by about 9 to 1. Local pols expect Fleming to win.

“I wouldn’t be running if I thought there was sufficient leadership being exhibited by our congressman,” Fleming says. “I’m offering voters a choice: someone who’s sharp, well-spoken, and can articulate conservative ideas and then walk the walk in Congress.” The implication is that Broun is none of those things, and that his lonely votes against popular programs are a waste of a perfectly good Republican seat.

But opinion on the Hill doesn’t jibe with opinion among Georgia Republicans. After Broun’s victory, conservative columnist Robert Novak reported that incumbent Republican House members facing primary challenges were “terrified.” Last fall some Hill staffers and Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) told me to pay attention to Broun, saying he was turning heads at party conference meetings with his strict constructionist arguments.

And that leads us to the second reason Broun’s career deserves our attention. His victory kicked off a season of angry voting.

Consider the case of Greg Ballard, a Republican ex-Marine who in November defeated Indianapolis’ Democratic mayor, Bart Peterson, with one-tenth his money. Everyone expected Peterson to win, despite the city’s high crime rate and property taxes. But he lost to the underfunded Republican, and GOPers took the city council majority from safe-seeming Democrats.

Then there was the unexpectedly competitive congressional campaign of Massachusetts Republican Jim Ogonowski, another first-time candidate. The farmer and retired Air Force officer came within six percentage points of winning an open House seat in a district that had voted for John Kerry and Al Gore by better than 14 points. The candidate’s ads were crayon crude: “The problem: Congress is broken. The solution: Jim Ogonowski.” But voters were angry, and for 46 percent of them a Republican who had opposed the Iraq War (but said we now had to win it) became the vessel of their anger. For Broun, it was yet more evidence that his victory was part of a wave of anti-Washington, anti-establishment voter outrage.

Even if Broun is wrong and his victory was a fluke, his beliefs resonate in a year when Ron Paul, initially dismissed as a fringe candidate, raised more money and held bigger, more enthusiastic rallies than his party’s less libertarian front-runners. Barry Fleming may start this campaign as the favorite, but there is substantial, enduring support for a congressman who shares the voters’ contempt for Congress. Party leaders won’t be able to wish that sentiment away.

David Weigel is an associate editor of Reason.

Some Positive Thoughts About Negative Campaigning

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:03:00 EST

Negative campaigning has a bad reputation, routinely being disparaged as juvenile taunting that serves only to degrade public discourse. A New York Times headline the other day noted "Bickering and Negative Ads in Countdown to Caucuses," as though these were the moral equivalent of an old married couple grousing about that mess in the kitchen.

Even devoted practitioners feel the duty to deplore negative campaigning. After commissioning an ad accusing Mitt Romney of grievous departures from conservative wisdom, Mike Huckabee was so remorseful that he refused to run it—though he managed to disseminate his charges in a news conference where he sorrowfully screened the spot for the news media. Explaining his newfound magnanimity, Huckabee asserted, "It's never too late to do the right thing."

But what was so terrible about the ad? It merely said that as governor of Massachusetts, Romney raised taxes, left a budget deficit, provided abortion coverage in his universal health care program, and failed to carry out a single execution—all of which appear to be grounded in fact, and any of which a few voters would find interesting.

The spot thus passes the only two tests voters should apply to any campaign attack: Is it true, and is it important? Accusing Romney of having devil's horns would be unacceptable because, though significant, it's not true. Accusing him of owning too many sweaters, though true, would be over the line because it doesn't matter.

It would be nice if politicians were all saintly figures who invariably do the right thing. Since they are not—and since Americans often disagree on what constitutes the right thing—negative campaigning serves the helpful function of illuminating facts that a) people are likely to care about and b) the targets would prefer we didn't know. In fact, if it weren't for attacks on the air and on the stump, our campaigns might have all the nutritional content of a Coke Zero.

What would we glean about the current candidates from watching only their own positive ads and presentations? That Hillary Clinton has unmatched experience in government and is a good listener to boot. That John Edwards is tireless in fighting for You. That Mitt Romney loves his highly photogenic family. That John McCain is a common-sense conservative.

That Mike Huckabee is unabashedly in favor of Christmas. That Rudy Giuliani will kill terrorists with his bare hands. That Barack Obama's serene wisdom would make Gandhi look like Bill O'Reilly.

Compare those blinding revelations with what we know about the same candidates from unflattering portrayals offered by their opponents and other uncharitable souls: Clinton's experience is greatly exaggerated. As a state senator, Obama's Zen-like approach to divisive legislation often led him to vote neither "yes" nor "no" but "present."

Giuliani has a history of support for gun control and abortion rights. Huckabee has changed his position on illegal immigration. Edwards has changed his position on the Iraq war. Romney has changed his position on everything.

Any of these particular discoveries may strike you as good, bad or irrelevant. But the only reason they get attention is that they furnish some voters with information that will influence their vote.

I don't want to be entirely positive about negativity. Political attacks can also be nasty, unfair or even outrageously false. When a top Clinton campaign official wondered if Obama might have been a drug dealer in his youth, the suggestion was all three. But rather than damaging Obama, the claim backfired, forcing the aide to resign.

That episode goes to show something else good about even the most indefensible attacks: They often tell more about the attacker than the attackee. The smear of Obama reminded some people of Clinton's pattern of ruthlessness toward her enemies—a pattern at odds with the image of quiet strength and personal warmth she has worked so hard to cultivate.

When Huckabee asked whether Mormons (such as Romney) really believe that Satan is the brother of Jesus, he did voters a similar service. Mormons say this is a mischaracterization, and I'm not qualified to address questions of theology. But true or false, it's about as relevant to a candidate's fitness for office as whether he believes in purgatory. And by raising it, Huckabee made himself sound like he should be running for pastor, not president.

Thomas Jefferson once said that he would prefer newspapers without a government to a government without newspapers. Given a choice between politics with no negative campaigning and politics with only negative campaigning, I suspect he would prefer the latter.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Operation Live Free or Die

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 07:00:00 EST

NEW HAMPSHIRE—The first New Hampshire ad Ron Paul purchased with his giga-hauls was dubbed "Catching On." Dr. No's donors greeted it like a new strain of some flesh-boiling virus. High up among the ad's problems, they argued, was the oddness of the featured actors—all of them amateurs, almost all of the male actors sporting beards. "If Ron Paul doesn't get the nomination," wrote the sage Jongo2124 on YouTube, "I'm single-handedly blaming that bearded atrocity."

I have seen the Paul campaign in action, and I can confirm that there are beards. Lots of them. Middle-aged electrician beards, gravitas-adding beards on thirtysomethings, thin hipper-than-thou beards on the youngest volunteers. Massachusetts grad student John Notley wears a massive, red Nordic mane that earns him the nickname Thor. It's reminiscent of a semi-famous photo from the 1972 presidential race, of a waddling businessman handing out Nixon literature right next to a skinny hippie handing out McGovern fliers. The difference is that the nameless McGovern flunky was campaigning for acid, amnesty, and abortion, while Paul's crew wants to bring back the paleoconservative sobriety of Sen. Robert Taft.

They're a happy bunch of people, which comes as no surprise. For the first time in their lives, libertarians and men (and women) of the Old Right are bunking together, partying together, and knocking on suburban doors to talk war, abortion, and monetary policy. And people are actually talking back to them.

"We've talked to people that no one else knows to talk to," said a volunteer from Portland, Oregon who goes by the handle Ball. Vanishingly thin, tucking a Murray Rothbard T-shirt into snow pants and adjusting sci-fi eyeglasses, he marvels that no other campaign has tried to steal Paul's thunder. Any Republican campaign (or Democratic campaign, for that matter) could have talked to blue collar voters about why their dollar was collapsing or why we went to war in Iraq, but they didn't, and Ball's finding voters who were waiting to hear about those issues. He reflected on the towns he's canvassed. "Dover is Ron Paul mania," Ball said. "Blue collar people who want to know why the dollar is going down. Derry sucked. All country club Republicans and limousine liberals. Upper crust who don't understand or care about this."

The canvassers have all kinds of theories about what's working and what isn't. They agree that Manchester is tough, that towns with lots of wealthy Republicans are hard going, but the further you drive north, the more Paul support you see. Organizers for Operation Live Free or Die, the grassroots group that's putting hundreds of Paul volunteers in hotels—and 14 houses—across the state, talk about Paul "owning" towns closer to Canada. Aaron Jones, an Indiana musician who pounded the pavement in tiny Franklin, hit one neighborhood with 30 homes and got nine requests for lawn signs.

Rival campaigns don't know how many people are backing Paul. The Paul campaign won't even say how many people they think they can turn out, whether they think they can win, or whether they'd take a bronze medal and call it a win. "We're running hard, everywhere," says Jared Chicoine, the New Hampshire director for the campaign. He kept the campaign's targets close to his vest. "Our voters are conservatives, Republicans, and Independents who want low taxes, who don't like big government intruding in their lives."

In some ways Chicoine sounds like a typical Paulista. "I honestly didn't plan on doing a presidential race this year," Chicoine said. (He's been working on races in the state since 2000.) "My friends were signing up with Thompson, or with McCain, and I was unconcerned. Then Ron Paul got in. I'd been following him for years, since the 1990s, and I never thought he was about to run for president—I had to go and do this."

But in his strategy and his priorities for the campaign, Chicoine illustrates the gap between Ron Paul staff and Ron Paul volunteers. Apart from the debates and select rallies, when Paul has unabashedly talked about the war on drugs, foreign policy blowback, and monetary policy, the candidate and the campaign have focused more on the issues that motivate conventional Republican voters than the ones that speak to libertarian stalwarts. Much of the direct mail that the campaign is blasting across the state could have been designed by pander-happy Mitt Romney or hard-right Duncan Hunter. Simple green fliers, designed for drop-offs at churches, contain the text of Paul's eulogy for Pope John Paul II. One mailer boasts of Paul's donations from military members and features a photo of a massive gunship and the promise that Paul will "Defend America by Defending Our Borders." An optimistic mailer with pro-life overtones fronts an adorable baby smiling above the legend, "Millions like me are counting on you." On a more explicit pro-life flier, the baby is giving a thumb's up.

Some of the volunteers agree with those messages, but just as many wish the campaign would get off them. Anthony Reed, a 20-year old volunteer from Texas, complains that the anti-immigration ad now plastered across the New Hampshire airwaves alienated a friend. Now she supports Obama. There's grumbling in the office about independent voters (the minority of them who pick up their phones or answer their doors) voicing support for Paul but saying they'll vote for Obama or McCain because they want "change." How does a cash-flush insurgent campaign like Paul's win those voters? Try and get the campaigners to agree.

"Maybe I just haven't been on this earth long enough, but I think they should just run videos of Ron himself," Ball told me in the kitchen of an Operation Live Free or Die house. "That first video of him explaining why he got into the race was the best thing he's done." He shook his head. "I don't like these ads with a generic narrator talking about the border invasion, like Paul is just another Mitt Romney."

I mentioned this exchange to some Paul canvassers. "You can't compete with Mitt Romney on the ads," one of them said. "No way. He looks like a car salesman."

"Be fair," said canvasser and Free State Project organizer Jon Maltz. "He looks like a used luxury car salesman."

You hear enough of the bellyaching about the Paul campaign's strategy and you wonder if it's just that: bellyaching. What volunteer is ever going to be 100 percent satisfied with the campaign giving him orders? What the Paul campaign is doing looks like micro-targeting, the tactic campaigns use to find disgruntled, disconnected voters and connect with them on the specific issues they care about. Non-voters who go to Mass might like those pro-life fliers, for example. Maybe they'd crumple up a mailer about the drug war and recycle it with their magazines. But the volunteers' critique sounds more solid when they worry about the campaign's logistics.

"Our call lists are pretty flawed," one Paul canvasser said. "There are these names of people who moved out of state or are absolutely committed to another candidate. There are people who tell you they don't vote, but the list says they voted in 2000 and 2004."

That particular canvasser wasn't brought down by that experience. He folded it into his theory of the race: "If these are the lists everyone is using then maybe the pollsters who are calling them are missing our voters."

Of course, pollsters don't use the same lists campaigns use. In Paul's case, it's a list of Independents and Republicans cobbled from lists the campaign purchased and winnowed down by canvassing. It's the sort of organizational problem that could make Tuesday harder than expected. Operation Live Free or Die has done some of its own canvassing, reminiscent of the third-party groups like America Coming Together that couldn't coordinate with John Kerry's 2004 campaign and underperformed the well-oiled Bush-Cheney campaign. So it is with grassroots campaigning in an era of strict campaign finance reform. ("The only thing I like about campaign finance reform is that it's saved me from giving even more money to Ron Paul," volunteer Ofer Nave told me.)

New Hampshire's primary politics could change dramatically after the Iowa caucuses. Fred Thompson might drop out of the race, Mitt Romney could steal momentum back from John McCain, Obama could fade and free up independent voters who had planned to back him. And that Republican race, moribund for months until John McCain started perking up, is going to be less attended to than the Democratic race. The number of volunteers working for Paul could match the talent, if not the numbers working for the frontrunners. They will probably exceed the numbers working for Giuliani and Thompson, who are doing poorly in pre-primary polls. After the Iowa Caucus results proved that Paul does appeal to independent voters, and that his poll numbers don't fade on election days, we'll see what's going to work in New Hampshire.

David Weigel is an associate editor of reason.

One Cheer for Huckabee

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:40:00 EST

I have to confess I'm enjoying Mike Huckabee's victory, even though I disagree with virtually all of his platform. Mitt Romney represents everything Americans hate about politicians: the empty man hungry for power and willing to say anything to get it, the privileged man who thinks he can buy an election without actually standing for anything. Intellectually I know I should prefer him to Huckabee. I'd rather my rulers be driven by personal ambition than by ideology, except in those rare cases where their principles bear some resemblance to mine. But for now I'm happy to let my visceral reaction to Romney rule my mood. If I can't have optimism, then at least I can have schadenfreude. If politics were a 1980s teen gross-out comedy, Mitt would be the Alpha Beta frat and the Iowa caucuses would be the revenge of the nerds.

Libertarians With Guns (Otherwise Known as "Libertarians")

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:53:00 EST

MANCHESTER, NH - Oh, the joys of not being in Iowa right now. With no candidates turfing this state today, I got to spend the morning with about 20 members and friends of the Free State Project, the effort to move at least 20,000 libertarians into New Hampshire to mold the state into a Rothbardian garden of Eden. At 8:30 we met in a hotel lobby, and at 8:45 we piled into a school bus ("Nothing says liberty like a school bus!") and puttered off to the Manchester Firing Range. On the way out of the hotel the bus passed by the Straight Talk Express, a reminder that John McCain's buoyed campaign will be taking over the hotel when the Free Staters leave.

I sort of expected everyone to have some skills with firearms, but the group was bisected: Half the crowd was inexperienced, half the crowd brought their own guns or other equipment. Management tried to sooth the novices, explaining the kick they could expect from the different weapons: "The glock kick is like pattycake with a small, strong child." One FSer brought homemade .45 shells for his Lincoln 11, which wasn't working as smoothly as it used to. "This group is half people who want to learn to shoot and half people who are kind enough to teach them," said Free Stater Jon Maltz.

I had planned to interview the Free Staters in between shots (BLAM! BLAM! "It wasn't until I read Human Action that I really understood the economic system." BLAM! BLAM!) but we had industrial strength headgear and restrictions on filming the events. So I did most of my talking on the bus to and from the event and milling around. Bill Alleman, who blogs and posts videos under the name NHBikerBill, laughed about the Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton ads that trumpet their work for average schlubs ("He saved my daugher! She unclogged my toilet!") and argued that only Paul's got truly excited supporters.

"Nobody wants to vote for Romney or those other guys, but there are these voters who vote out of habit: Oh, there's an election, I'd better decide. Why should those votes count as much as votes for Ron Paul?" Bill shook his head. "You listen to him and you say 'This is how it should be, goddamn it!'

Scenes from the Ron Paul Revolution

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 07:15:00 EST

Note: Watch reason editor Nick Gillespie debate Bill O'Reilly on Ron Paul's candidacy at Fox News.

On the morning of October 30, a large group of people gathered outside The Tonight Show’s Burbank studio. According to GloZell, a local eccentric who attends every taping of the show, only the lines attracted by Hollywood heartthrobs such as George Clooney, Justin Timberlake, and Daniel Radcliffe had ever come close to matching the crowd’s size and enthusiasm. But this throng had gathered to cheer Ron Paul, a 72-year-old obstetrician and Air Force veteran turned Texas congressman. Paul was there to hawk not a movie or a record but his long-shot campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

During the broadcast, host Jay Leno respectfully attended to Paul’s calls for hard money, withdrawal from Iraq, and a flat income tax of zero. Offstage, Leno got Paul to autograph his copy of the congressman’s recent book, A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship.

Later in the show, while performing “Anarchy in the U.K.” with a reunited Sex Pistols, punk icon Johnny Rotten gave Paul a thumbs-up and a “Hello, Mr. Paul,” later adding, “When are we getting out of Iraq?” In between, more ambiguously, he waggled his ass in Paul’s general direction. But he shook hands with the congressman afterward, and according to Paul supporters on the scene he expressed respect to him privately. Paul, watching the broadcast with supporters at a Hollywood Hills fundraiser that evening, shook his head at the aging punk’s antics, noting, well, we do promote tolerance.…

That day encapsulated Paul’s surprising campaign. It featured a powerful show of grassroots support, respect from unexpected places, and an infiltration of radical ideas into American mainstream culture. There was the aging iconoclast Rotten, mixing the anarchy he stood for as a kid and the market capitalism he lived out as an adult (the Pistols had reunited to help promote the video game Guitar Hero III), symbolizing the range of liberties Paul represents to a movement that includes both Christian homeschoolers and heathen punks. And there was the question so many Americans want answered, the question central to Paul’s campaign as the only Republican candidate opposed to the war: When are we getting out of Iraq?

When the Paul campaign began, most of the political cognoscenti considered it a quixotic joke. Now it’s one of the hottest stories of the season. The reason for the turnaround is money. On November 5 alone, Paul took in a gigantic haul of $4.3 million. His third quarter 2007 draw nearly matched that of the far more famous John McCain, and his net cash on hand going into the primaries exceeded that of everyone but front-runner Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson (though millionaire Mitt Romney has his personal reserves to fall back on). As of press time, in the fourth quarter of 2007, Paul had collected $10.7 million, generally in amounts well below the legal $2,300 maximum for individual donations.

By November, Ron Paul was getting respect from surprising and prominent places. Conservative bigthinker George Will called Paul “my man” on ABC. Texas singer-songwriter-novelist Kinky Friedman told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Paul is “probably telling the truth.” Singer-songwriter John Mayer was caught on video informing a pal that “Ron Paul knows the Constitution, and I’m down with that.” Even Eleanor Clift, conventional wisdom on the hoof, said on The McLaughlin Group that “Ron Paul with his antiwar libertarian message will be the story coming out of New Hampshire for the Republicans.”

Paul is also the wonder of the Internet, with campaign mojo fueled almost entirely by his shockingly large number of fans on Meetup.com, a website that allows people with a shared interest to find one another and meet offline. Paul has more than 67,000 Meetup followers, about 20 times more than his nearest competitor, Barack Obama. That virtual presence has translated into more than just donations. Five thousand Paul supporters showed up at a November rally in Philadelphia, and his poll numbers in New Hampshire reached 8 percent in a mid-November CBS/New York Times survey—exceeding both Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson.

If news is the unexpected, Ron Paul’s rise was the news of the presidential campaign last fall. But Paul himself is not news. He’s been pushing his libertarian values, derived from his love of the U.S. Constitution and the Austrian school of free market economics, through all of his 10 terms in Congress and in between. (He has served in Congress three times: from 1976 to 1977, from 1979 to 1983, and from 1997 to the present. He ran for president as a Libertarian in 1988.) What’s news is the self-styled Ron Paul Revolution—his mass of self-coordinating supporters. The candidate’s critics invented the term “Paulistas” to mock those supporters as wild-eyed radicals. Many of them then claimed the word for themselves, adopting it as a badge of honor.

Four years ago, Howard Dean’s Democratic campaign offered an earlier example of a grassroots mass movement that came pretty much from nowhere, beholden to no power structure, decentralized in how it got information and in how it organized itself to act. But the Ron Paul Revolution adds a twist: This movement is passionately dedicated to a smaller, less activist government.

As this is written, before a single primary vote has been cast, it’s difficult to predict this movement’s future, especially when you remember how Dean’s campaign imploded after the Iowa caucus. But Paul’s backers are confident their man will at the very least be a new Goldwater. He might not win the presidency, they say, but he will reignite excitement about small government in his party and his country, and thus might help reverse the last half century and more of government growth and activism in both domestic and foreign policy.

In the last weekend of October, after months of following Ron Paul action on the Internet and locally in Los Angeles, I tagged along with the Ron Paul road show in Iowa. Over the course of just 24 hours stretched over two days, I saw Paul talk to more than 500 college kids in Ames, more than 700 assorted Des Moines citizens, hundreds of state GOP activists, and a dozen Des Moines area pastors. I saw a skilled politician with a diverse and disproportionately young band of backers—supporters who stretched far beyond a traditional Republican Party base, who loved their man and his message with an enthusiasm undaunted by whatever his electoral prospects turn out to be.

‘Dr. Paul Cured My Apathy’
On the Friday evening before Halloween, Paul is scheduled to speak at Iowa State University in Ames. To get from Des Moines to Ames, I hop on the Constitution Coach, a former school bus owned by Dave Keagle, a Christian homeschooling father of seven. Keagle’s wife, Christa, and their children are on board, along with a dozen or so other Paul supporters. The bus is painted red, white, and blue, with slogans summing up Paul’s message: “Taxpayer’s Best Friend.” “No Amnesty.” “No NAFTA.” “No National ID.” “No Patriot Act.” “Pro-Gun Owner.” “Life.” “Liberty.” “Freedom.” Christa tells me Paul is the first candidate her family has ever been able to get behind 100 percent, with no reservations. She was also impressed with how Paul was able to relate to and remember the names of all her kids on a previous Iowa campaign swing.

I talk to John Carle Jr., a 43-year-old self-employed CPA who dabbles in real estate, and his wife, Meredith, a Korean orphan brought to America as a child. Like most of the Paulistas I meet, he’s fresh to politics, with no history of activism or enthusiasm for any candidate from any party. He’s not a part of any existing Republican base: He’s a disaffected independent who thinks he’s finally found a politician who “oozes integrity” and “is inspiring the best in people.” Paul’s the only candidate he trusts on post-9/11 civil liberties issues. “If they can pick anyone off the streets and send them to a secret camp,” Carle says, “I don’t wanna be part of that country.”

Carle, who has a firm grasp of the candidate’s positions, explains his love for Paul in measured terms. He gets emotional only once, choking up for a beat as he repeats his favorite of the fan-made signs you see at Paul rallies: “Dr. Paul Cured My Apathy.”

The talk at Ames draws an overflow crowd of more than 500 college kids. There are a few longhairs, a few punks, but it’s overwhelmingly a conventional gang of well-groomed Midwestern youth who happen to be wearing hundreds of “Ron Paul Revolution” T-shirts. The event got no free local or campus press. The crowd was gathered almost entirely through Meetup and Facebook, another online social networking site.

“I hear you’ve got a revolution going on,” Paul begins, “and it’s being led by the young people.” Then he recites his first big applause line: He’s not much for passing laws, but he might consider one requiring the next election to be held on the Internet.

Those are the only explicit nods to the crowd’s youth and online activity. From there on, it’s all classic Ron Paul: Get rid of the income tax and replace it with nothing; find the money to support those dependent on Social Security and Medicare by shutting down the worldwide empire, while giving the young a path out of the programs; don’t pass a draft; have a foreign policy of friendship and trade, not wars and subsidies. He attacks the drug war, condemning the idea of arresting people who have never harmed anyone else’s person or property. He stresses the disproportionate and unfair treatment minorities get from drug law enforcement. One of his biggest applause lines, to my astonishment, involves getting rid of the Federal Reserve. Kids have gathered, not just from Iowa but from Wisconsin and Nebraska, in classic hop-in-the-van college road trips, to hear a 72-year-old gynecologist talk about monetary policy.

He wraps up the speech with three things he doesn’t want to do that sum up the Ron Paul message. First: “I don’t want to run your life. We all have different values. I wouldn’t know how to do it, I don’t have the authority under the Constitution, and I don’t have the moral right.” Second: “I don’t want to run the economy. People run the economy in a free society.” And third: “I don’t want to run the world.…We don’t need to be imposing ourselves around the world.”

Paul does not mention abortion or immigration—areas where his views are more conventionally conservative and not of great appeal to this age group. He’s against abortion and thinks the fetus is a human life deserving of state protection, but he also thinks that like all such crimes against persons, abortion is a matter for states to decide without federal interference. He thinks that border defense is a legitimate function of government, and that government has been doing a bad job of it. He wants tougher border enforcement, including a border wall; he wants to eliminate birthright citizenship; and he wants to end the public subsidies that might attract illegal immigrants. Paul’s style of libertarianism includes a populist streak of distrust for foreign forces overwhelming our sovereignty, whether through the United Nations, international trade pacts, immigration, or a feared “North American Union” between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

On the ride back to Des Moines, I meet, among other Paul fans, Bryan Butcher, a 50-year-old high school teacher and part-time drummer for a belly dancing troupe. He’s a pony-tailed former Marine who had thought of himself as a “social liberal” and an Obama fan. “I feel we do need to take care of people,” Butcher says. But Ron Paul has helped him see that “the socialist idea of government taking care of people hasn’t helped, that people need to take care of people, and that’s the smart way to go.”

The Paulistas delight in their independence and fervor. At a press conference after the Ames talk, a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter asks the candidate about all the Paul signs he sees around Pittsburgh. “You guys must have a big operation there,” he says.

“If we do,” Paul says with a small smile, “we don’t know about it.”

‘You Are Friends for Life’
Iowa and New Hampshire, which hold a caucus and a primary respectively in January, are the early-voting states where the campaign is concentrating most of its unexpected largess and where the unaffiliated revolutionaries are concentrating their energy. But more New Hampshire than Iowa. Iowans are perhaps too staid for the revolution.

I’m on Des Moines’ downtown drinking strip after Paul has spoken at a state GOP dinner, sitting with two Paul staffers and two Paul fans. A tipsy young Romney supporter approaches us. She actually likes Ron Paul, she grants. She could even call him her second choice. But Ron Paul fans? They’re outside agitators, she insists, almost scary in their intensity. Iowans don’t appreciate their shouting, chanting style of campaigning, or their insistence on sticking their huge, silly “Ron Paul Revolution” signs in places they do not belong, often violating both propriety and the law.

I ask Jan Mickelson of WHO-AM, a leading Des Moines talk radio host who describes himself as a Christian libertarian and a Paul admirer, where the classic Iowa Republican “values voter” stands on Paul. He first notes, with a mixture of admiration and disquiet, that Paul partisans are “crawl-over-broken-glass zealots. Fiercely devoted. Passionate. Wherever he appears they appear, wherever he’s on TV they watch, whatever poll they can participate in, they respond. If you get on their right side, you are friends for life. If you nuance even a little bit your support for him, they come at you.”

Iowa Republicans, Mickelson says, have “two impulses” toward Paul. “They find the limited government message very attractive,” he says. “They find his war policies confusing and irritating. They don’t understand how you can be a constitutionalist for limited government and be against the war and not be aiding and abetting both Al Qaeda and Moveon.org.”

So New Hampshire is where the Paulistas are hoping for a surprise victory. It’s happened before for radical outsiders with populist appeal: Pat Buchanan scored the state in 1996. (And see what it got him.)

Vijay Boyapati, an Australian immigrant, was a software engineer for Google who was running a 100-member Google-internal pro-Paul listserv. (Paul filled two rooms to overflowing at a July talk on Google’s campus in Mountain View, California.) Boyapati quit his job in November to devote all his energy to his project Operation: Live Free or Die. His goal: Recruit a thousand Paul supporters to relocate to New Hampshire for a weekend or even for weeks—he plans to rent a house and give up a whole month himself—doing retail canvassing and campaigning to push Paul over the top there.

The official campaign has ponied up more than $1 million for TV commercials in the Granite State. The three ads focus on Paul’s personal integrity, on his opposition to national ID cards and other civil liberties violations, and on his support for a noninterventionist foreign policy. In one spot he notes that “both parties have put their pet schemes ahead of our rights”—a direct blow against his own party.

In the age of Bush Republicanism, Paul barely qualifies as a party man in good standing. But in New Hampshire independents can register and vote in the Republican primary on Election Day. And in the Iowa caucus, any legal voter can show up and vote for Paul. That’s good news for a campaign that must rely on support beyond the Bush-era GOP faithful.

‘We Want to Have a Peaceful Revolution’
The inventor of the phrase “Ron Paul Revolution,” and the designer of the T-shirt logo in which the evol in revolution looks like the word love backward, is 46-year-old Ernest Hancock, a longtime activist in the Arizona Libertarian Party and a radio host. The logo recycles an image he developed for his own (losing) 2006 bid for secretary of state in Arizona. “We want to have a peaceful revolution, so the love is effective in portraying a revolution, but not violence,” says Hancock, known among Libertarian Party activists for always staking out hard-core, no-compromise stances. The logo, which is not an official campaign symbol, is immensely popular among Paul fans, dotting the nation wherever Paulistas can show up in T-shirts or put up stenciled signs or banners.

Hancock says that when he first heard rumors that Paul might be running, back in January 2007, “I called [campaign chairman] Kent Snyder and said, ‘All I need to know is if this is for real.’ When he said yes, I said, ‘Thanks, have a nice day, you’ll never hear from me again.’ ”

Hancock spends most of his time these days crossing the nation, showing locals how to make Ron Paul Revolution signs economically, how to find used banners and billboard pieces for cheap or free and print on the back. He advises activists on how and where to hang them. Hancock’s an anarchist, but he has learned to love the federal highway system for the opportunity to reach a captive audience on the cheap by hanging banners off overpasses.

And if the banners get torn down within hours? “So freaking what?” he says. “Two hundred thousand people saw it.” And, uh, is any of this illegal? “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t care.” Well, Ron Paul is on record as supporting civil disobedience.

Hancock’s crusade is not the only guerrilla effort on Paul’s behalf. Meetup groups are organizing a campaign to send thousands of handwritten pro-Paul letters to Iowa voters. A strange variety of viral videos infects YouTube, many of them featuring unofficial Ron Paul campaign songs. The range of styles in these Ron Paul ballads reflects the eclecticism of the Ron Paul Revolution: from wan old-school folk to ’90s-style jazzy trip-hop, from sprightly garage rock to straight Sinatra steals. Some lyrical samples, from the trip-hop number: “We need Ron Paul/For the long haul/Cause he’ll stop all the wars/Where the bombs fall.” From the garage pop tune: “Ron Paul!/He’s got brains and he’s got balls/Ron Paul!/Who you gonna cast your vote for next fall?/Ron Paul!”

An Eclectic Revolution
As a very successful politician, Ron Paul knows how to sell what’s appropriate at any given moment, within the bounds of his principles. This talent helps forge a movement that appeals across gaps that standard political analysts might think unbridgeable, such as the one between pot-smoking libertine college kids and evangelist pastors.

When Paul speaks to those pastors in Des Moines, he talks about border security, sovereignty, and the North American Union, topics missing from the college talk. He tells of witnessing a casual abortion in medical school, and how much it disturbed him. But even to this audience he stresses that preventing abortion must ultimately be a cultural, spiritual, and family matter, not something solvable through top-down federal action.

Afterward, a couple of pastors tell me they’re “less libertarian” than Paul but plump for him anyway. The “leave us alone” message has wide appeal; as Nate Howe, an L.A.-area computer security worker in the banking industry and an organizer with the local Meetup group, tells me, a recent Hollywood fundraiser found “Ron Paul talking to someone who’s very accomplished in business and then a kid next to him with a Mohawk, and both are saying, ‘I like this guy; he’s saying go live your life, and if you don’t hurt anyone, the government shouldn’t bother you.’ ”

I hear variants of this from many Paulistas. They recognize their scene’s eclecticism but see no reason that, whatever your personal values or lifestyle, you can’t get behind the man who wants to leave you alone.

There’s one strain of the Paul movement, though, that often alienates his other supporters and potential supporters. Ranging from John Birchers to 9/11 Truthers, they’re the type whose distrust of government is enmeshed in elaborate, complicated, and implausible conspiracy theories. To the extent those people have a favorite candidate, it’s apt to be Ron Paul. One big reason: He shares their refusal to believe the government always has good intentions.

My friend Phil Blumel has been active for the last decade in Florida GOP politics and has been following Paul closely for two decades.

He’s a big Paul supporter and has been encouraged at how many rank-and-file Republicans seem open to his message. He understands Paul’s appeal to the conspiratorial types, though he doesn’t share their interests, and doesn’t think Paul really does either. “I’ve heard him speak 40 times, and you can never really tell that he actually believes in any particular conspiracies,” Blumel notes. “But he speaks in a language such that conspiracy nuts believe that he does. Me not being a conspiracy nut, he speaks vaguely enough that I can listen and it doesn’t sound like he really buys it.

“That’s a political skill,” Blumel jokes, “triangulating between the sane and the insane and keeping them both on board.” As an enthusiastic supporter of the campaign who nonetheless disagrees with Paul’s stances on immigration and sovereignty, Blumel has been pleased that as the campaign has gained traction, Paul has emphasized issues with more mainstream appeal: war and the economy.

With that traction has come a wave of “Who Are the Paulistas?” media stories. The ultimately dismissive, if often amused, spirit of many of them is summed up by an anecdote in one of the articles. After noting some Paul fans’ penchant for wearing costumes, including colonial era garb, Time’s Joel Stein describes how, after a New Hampshire rally, a staffer for fellow GOP candidate Tom Tancredo “walked up to a guy in a shark costume and asked him if he was a Ron Paul supporter. ‘No. They’re all nuts,’ replied the shark. ‘I’m just a guy in a shark suit.’ ”

While left-leaning writers such as Glenn Greenwald at Salon and John Nichols at The Nation have been Paul defenders, the right-wing press has frequently featured bitter animus against him. For example, the conservative columnist Mona Charen scoffs that Paul “might make a dandy new leader for the Branch Davidians.” At The Weekly Standard’s website, Dean Barnett writes, “If you’re the kind of person whose neighbors call you a crank, you probably see Ron Paul as a kindred spirit. And chances are he’s with you on the subject for which you’ve achieved your notoriety in crankdom.”

In my interviews with dozens of Paul supporters from across the country, I encountered not a single nut or dedicated conspiracy theorist. In fact, they all evinced a general belief in free markets and the Constitution that should, in theory, make them welcome members in good standing of the American right.

The Revolution’s Future
Most of the current Ron Paul Army has mustered in only with this campaign. Most of them had never heard of him, or thought of themselves as libertarians, before six months ago. The predominance of newbies bothers Jorge Besada, an economics fan in a Hayek shirt who shipped in from Nebraska to hear his man talk in Ames and Des Moines. Without a solid grounding in the verities of Austrian economics, Besada worries, Paul supporters won’t be optimal sellers of the freedom message. Too many of Paul’s positions, whether his hard-money stance or the larger questions of how free markets and free people will function and achieve social goals without constant government management, require a sophisticated economics background to really get, he fears.

There are no survey data about the Paul movement, but certain rough generalizations seem valid. They are not an unwashed rabble of weirdos, as Paul’s right-wing critics like to say; most are either college students or adult professionals, though usually not rich. They generally support Paul all the way. (Those with Libertarian Party backgrounds are likely to differ on immigration and abortion.) The war issue is important to them, but so are the larger matters of civil liberties and fiscal conservatism. They imagine themselves continuing the fight for these ideas in some capacity after the election, but they often aren’t sure how. Many, though, promise that any future candidate for any office pushing the Paul line will have their support. And some promise to be those future candidates.

Some Paul fans with more political experience, both Republican and Libertarian, are working to keep the revolution alive even if their candidate fails to take the nomination. In Florida, Paul partisans are encouraging their comrades to join county GOP executive committees and reshape the party from the bottom up in Paul’s image. In Alabama, a Paul organizer sees single-issue freedom-oriented grassroots groups already arising from the activists Paul has energized, including campaigns dedicated to gun rights and to fighting a national ID card.

There is a lot of clamor among Libertarian Party higher-ups and activists to get Paul (who remains a lifetime member of the party) to seek its nomination if he fails to get the Republican nod. Many insiders agree that it would be his for the taking at the party’s May convention. One downside for the L.P., which most seem willing to overlook, is that laws in a handful of states (including Paul’s home state of Texas) would bar him from the presidential ballot because of his campaign in the GOP primary. Paul continually denies that he’ll make a third-party run, but his denials are always couched in terms of not thinking about it or planning it, as opposed to categorically denying that he would ever under any circumstances do it.

Whatever his future plans, Paul insists this revolution is about his message, not him. But small hints of a cult of personality hover around some of his fans’ devotion to the candidate. Almost all the supporters I talk to stress their trust in him and often assume he’s probably right about most things, even issues they haven’t put a great deal of thought into.

These Paulistas are what hopeful libertarians have fantasized about for decades: a disaffected but engageable mass of Americans, many of them hidden among the 45 percent or so who tend not to vote. They support an argument advanced by David Boaz of the Cato Institute and David Kirby of the America’s Future Foundation, who estimate, based on detailed polling data, that 9 to 14 percent of Americans hew to a roughly libertarian political ideology—and that this group has been shifting away from the GOP during the current Bush administration.

Such Americans represent a deep, natural well of libertarianism waiting to be tapped. And Ron Paul has hit a gusher in a year when every other Republican stands for big government and war, and when YouTube and Meetup are a private, self-selected national TV network and town hall for 24-hour Ron Paul. But when he’s gone?

I ask Paul, as he shakes hands and chats with every one of the 100 or so fans in his hospitality suit after the Iowa GOP dinner, about the future of the Ron Paul Revolution. First he admits to being as shocked as anyone by what’s happening. For years, he resisted calls to run again for president. He thought it was too early in the long-term libertarian educational project for such a campaign to get anywhere.

“Even if I said, ‘OK folks, we didn’t make it, let’s all go home’—I don’t think it would happen,” he says. “I’ve been laboring in these fields for 30 years and wasn’t reaching many people and thought maybe my role is only to lay the foundation with a few speeches, voting the right way, setting a standard. I don’t know what will happen. Something amazing could happen in Iowa and New Hampshire, and that will decide a lot. But many of my supporters indicate they will be running for office. They understand my positions, and it would be pretty neat to see a bunch of new members go to Congress with these views.”

If something like that happens, Paul’s connection with Johnny Rotten and punk rock may be deeper than it first appears. It has often been said that early punk precursors like the Velvet Underground and the Ramones may not have sold many records themselves, but that everyone who bought one formed his own band to carry on the spirit. Even if Ron Paul doesn’t get that many votes, his voters may end up running for office themselves. It would be a fitting legacy for a very do-it-yourself political movement.

Senior Editor Brian Doherty is the author of This is Burning Man (BenBella) and adicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (PublicAffairs). He first wrote about Ron Paul for The American Spectator in 1999.

Ron Paul as Long Tail Candidate?

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 11:20:00 EST

Newsweek's Andrew Romano has a story out about "long tail candidates" which zeroes in on Ron Paul and features some comments from yours truly and the invaluable Arnold Kling. Snippets:

Paul may still be the longest of long shots. But he's a long shot who can lure 5,000 supporters to his rallies and more than triple his entire '88 war chest in a single $6.6 million day. That's a whole new level of high-passion, low-polling politics-and in a long-tail world, others are bound to follow. "Ron Paul is the harbinger," says Nick Gillespie, editor in chief of the libertarian magazine Reason. "Just as the major entertainment companies are producing far more varied and individualized fare, I think we're going to see more and more political candidates who are more interesting in and of themselves but deliver smaller and smaller numbers."...
Over the decades, Americans have become increasingly unhappy about having to cram themselves into one of two "big box" parties. Seven of the last 10 elections were won with less than 51 percent of the vote; in three of the last four, no candidate won a majority. Today, two thirds of U.S. adults (and a full three quarters of 18- to 30-year olds) say they would consider voting for an independent candidate in the next election. The rise of Howard Dean (another anti-establishment Web phenom) and the recall of California Gov. Gray Davis mirrored this breakdown of consensus; 2008's fragmented Republican field is further proof. "The long tail is not the political center," economist Arnold Kling has said. "It is not a third party waiting to form. It is not a coalition. It is not a 'silent majority' of either the right or left. It is simply every variety of political belief that does not fit within the two major parties." As the Web allows niche voters to form communities, raise money and get heard, it's inevitable that the major-party machines will clash with-and ultimately accommodate-the individualized constituencies they're struggling to serve....
Gillespie argues the reward is a more responsive government. "Being just a Republican or just a Democrat no longer gets at what people are about," he says. "In order for a Mitt Romney to gain traction in a traditional party, he's going to have to mine the more marginal candidates for ideas and support." Paulites, take heart. Sadly, the gold standard isn't coming back. But the days of "not having the opportunity to get the message out"? Those are gone for good, too.

More here.

reason talked with Long Tail theorist Chris Anderson here. And applied the LT to beer here.

The Friday Political Thread: Free State of Mind Edition

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:56:00 EST

There actually isn't a full-blown political thread this week, as I'm taking a short breather. From January 2nd to January 9th I'll be in New Hampshire covering the Republican primary—for the most part, covering Ron Paul and the state's rugged population of libertarians. That means I'll be watching the Iowa caucus, from afar, with members of the Free State Project and a TV tuned to C-Span. It also means I'll be filing reports from Paul campaign HQ, from the trail, and eventually from Paul's election night party. If you're in one of the lesser 49 states or, God forbid, some other coutry, stay tuned to the blog. If you're actually in New Hampshire, get in touch at dweigel at reason.com.

The week in brief...

- Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, scrambling both US foreign policy in Pakistan and the positions of the presidential candidates.

- John McCain basked in poll numbers that reflected a "surge" reporters had been predicting for nigh on four months. Mitt Romney looked frazzled trying to blunt his momentum.

- Barack Obama slapped John Edwards for benefitting from a 527 ad; Edwards counterpunched and then folded like a dixie cup, asking the 527 to stop.

- Hillary Clinton stopped her fall and now stands tied or ahead of the field in the first three primaries.

- The president vetoed a $696 billion defense bill because it exposed the Iraqi government to lawsuits.

Below the fold...

- John Tabin parties with the "best hair champions" of the Dems and GOP.

- Justin Raimondo takes on the anti-Ron Paul smear merchants.

- Mark Sunwall says Ron Paul is the only internationalist in the race.

- Jonathan Cohn asks whether John Edwards, in the throes of a populist campaign, had lost his ability to appeal to the middle class.

No music video this week, either, but there's a full-blown music post coming up later.

The Third Coming of Alan Keyes

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 08:52:00 EST

Eighteen hours later, no one has answered the basic question of the final pre-caucus GOP debate: What in the hell was Alan Keyes doing there? A technicality in the debate requirements let him onstage, sure, but wasn't it an insult to the other candidates, who've been campaigning here for months, to invite a guy who clearly hadn't been stumping in rec centers or even prepped for the event? Byron York followed Keyes to get an answer.

“You have a couple hundred paid staff in Iowa?” a reporter asked.

“No, it’s not paid staff,” Keyes said. “Are you listening or not?”

“It’s a question. How many paid staff in Iowa?”

Keyes had had enough of such details. “You are working, I guess, for the elites who want us to believe that campaigns are about money,” he told the reporter.

“Do you not wish to answer the question?”

“No, I want you to understand that you don’t have the right to dictate our political process. It belongs to the people, not to you. And money doesn’t buy votes.”

I jumped in again. “Ambassador, I’m going to ask you one more time. Have you personally been doing campaign events here in Iowa in the last few months?”

“I have had several campaign events here in Iowa, but I will not define those events as you do,” he said.

“In the last few months?”

“I don’t define those events as you do. And I don’t think you have any right whatsoever to establish yourselves as the arbiter of what constitutes an event. I will do that in a way that reflects the best needs and purposes of the people who are working with me. Because as I see it, every time somebody comes forward and takes the pledge, that’s an Iowa event.”

Is this really the same guy who ran for the Senate in 1988 and had his campaign managed by Bill Kristol? Or the guy who scored 14 percent in Iowa eight years ago? He sounds, honestly, like he's had a psychotic break. Anyway, his childish whine about media bias and money made a little sense in 2000, when George W. Bush vacuumed up millions of dollars to freeze out Steve Forbes, but in 2008? When Mike Huckabee is outpolling Mitt Romney after spending one-twentieth the cash? Or when Ron Paul can build a movement online, for basically free, and vault into the top fundraising tier?

Keyes's rants about the media aren't even fresh. In 2000 Peter Bagge followed Keyes for Suck.com and came out with the definitive profile of the man.

Romney and the Role of Religion

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:55:00 EST

Columnist Ron Hart on Romney's recent rap about religion:

A Pew Research Center poll in September found that 25 percent of GOP voters, including 36 percent of white Protestants evangelicals, said that they would be less likely to vote for a Mormon. Rudy Giuliani with his three wives does better than Mitt Romney with his stable solid marriage of 30 years and his great kids. Folks, that is small-minded and wrong.
The Democrats are smarter on this. Their leading candidate Barrack Obama has admitted to drug use and no one cared. Meanwhile, the GOP base slices and dices its candidates; forcing them into in a ludicrous competition over issues of religion and morality that should have no bearing on their ability to govern.

More here.

New at Reason

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:47:00 EST

Steve Chapman chides Mitt Romney for his religious bigotry.

The Friday Political Thread: Religion of Secularism Edition

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:09:00 EST

There's a lot more to chew over (and I do some of that in an America's Future Foundation podcast with Eli Lake and Amanda Carpenter) but some of the basics...

- Mike Huckabee continued his poll surge, culminating in a Newsweek poll that gave him a 39-17 point lead over Mitt Romney in Iowa. The poll was taken Dec. 5 and Dec. 6. Quick: What happened on Dec. 6?

- The Ron Paul Blimp got set to launch.

Unconvincing quote of the week...

"Americans do not respect believers of convenience. Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world."
- Mitt Romney, Dec. 6

Stop the Bandwagon, I Wanna Get Off! Iowans are notoriously wimpy about negative campaigning, and Hillary Clinton's shockingly abrupt blitz against Obama has inspired one of her state co-chairs to switch to Obama.

"I think the Clinton campaign went negative," [Gary] Thomas said in a telephone interview on Thursday. He attributed his defection to the new tone Clinton took last weekend, describing it as divisive. Obama officials said Thomas committed to them this week... The switch by one man—even someone in elected office, as Thomas, a Burlington city council member is—may mean little in the end. But Baxter's eagerness to speak out—against Clinton and now, on behalf of Obama—comes as the campaigns are trying to assess the impact of a sharper tone by Clinton that began last weekend.

This comes via Ben Smith, who wonders if the Clinton campaign will move its focus from Iowa to other contests and build a "broader case" against him. But the Clinton lead is shrinking in New Hampshire and South Carolina, too, and they're not notorious for their daintiness.

Fred Thompzzzzzz. Here's one measure of the rapid fade underway at Fred Thompson HQ. In July you had to shell out $35 for a Fred future at InTrade. Now it's $5—about the same value as John Edwards. Here's another measure: This video of Fred at a town hall-style rally in Orange City, Iowa. Just try and stay awake, and understand why when Huckabee was told that Thompon had criticized him for not reading the National Intelligence Estimate, Huckabee joked: "I guess it's easy to read it if you're not busy campaigning."

Below the fold...

- Jeremy Lott urges Mitt to make a real Mormon speech.

- Shawn Macomber writes one of the last (and best) Tom Tancredo stories you'll ever read.

- Jacob Heillbrunn recaps the TNR-NR dirty war.

This week's Politics 'n' Prog should be self-explanatory. If Geddy Lee's tight pants don't rattle your faith in the Creator, nothing will.

The Single Weirdest Fact About American Politics Is That Utah Is the Reddest State

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 12:10:00 EST

While Mitt Romney struggles with how to present his Mormonism to the public, it's a good time to remember the first Mormon to run for president. You may have heard of him: a fellow name of Joseph Smith. From a column Bill Kauffman wrote in 2004:

Q: Who was the first U.S. Presidential candidate to be assassinated?

The folks in the best position to win this toughest of all bar bets are, alas, usually absent from the bar. They are the Mormons, and the answer to this question is none other than Joseph Smith, "The Prophet," founder of their faith and independent candidate for the Presidency in 1844....

Smith set out his views in a curious eight-page document which Mormon missionaries distributed throughout the country. His platform blended pique and prophecy, the quotidian and the exotically idealistic. Angry that Congress had not responded to Mormon cries for help, he pledged to "reduce Congress at least one half" and cut members' pay.

Like the nascent Liberty Party, Smith took up the cause of abolition, which will surprise those who know Mormonism only as the faith that denied the priesthood to blacks until 1978. "Break the shackles from the poor black man," he pled, suggesting that slaveowners might be compensated by revenues from the sale of public lands.

Sailing in the mainstream, Smith promised "more economy...less taxes" and a "judicious tariff," and lest the reader suspect that the Prophet had forgotten his own people, he called for the President to be granted "full power to send an army to suppress mobs," even over the objection of a state's governor.

What is most beguiling about the document, however, is Smith's view of crime and punishment: He was against both. "Petition your state legislatures to pardon every convict in their several penitentiaries," Smith urged, "blessing them as they go, and saying to them in the name of the Lord, go thy way and sin no more!" Try running on that platform in Utah today.

Smith opposed incarceration for all crimes but murder. Instead, miscreants ought to work on the roads or "any place where the culprit can be taught more wisdom and more virtue." Smith reminded those hardhearts who doubted that criminals might be reformed that "Love conquers all."

Insert Daniel Tavares joke here. The anti-prison plank wasn't actually as radical as it sounds today: Prisons themselves were a relatively recent invention in 1844, and they were closely associated with the same Yankee reformers who hated Mormons.

For more on Smith's presidential campaign, see this old issue of Dialogue.

Who Hearts Huckabee?

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 09:40:00 EST

Libertarians John Tabin and Shawn Macomber, blogging at the American Spectator, are scratching their heads about Mike Huckabee. Not just the candidate, but the media love-fest. Tabin:

Am I the only one who finds Huckabee viscerally unappealing? There's nothing endearing to me about a cross between a diet guru and a televangelist selling condominiums in Heaven, which is how Huckabee strikes me. The guy's so full of crap I can smell it wafting out his ears. He's running on a quirky-at-best tax plan that has no chance of passing, and gets a free pass from some of the same people who harp endlessly on the alleged phoniness of Mitt Romney (whose left pinky is better qualified for the presidency than Huckabee).

Tabin's not alone. Monday night I talked with a former GOP congressman/Romney endorser about Huckabee's surge and he seemed just as mystified. But he wore a sort of shit-eating grin when he talked about the anti-Huckabee backlash to come. "He's been so under the radar that no one's taken a look at his record on immigration," he said, giving one example. "I think you're going to see that change soon, though."

However... what if it doesn't? The Huckabacklash hypothesis relies on the mainstream media getting bored of Huckabee and deciding to exposes his personal weirdness and scandals. There is no indication of this happening. Here's one (admittedly flawed) metric: Do a Lexis search for mentions in major newspapers of "Romney" and "Tavares," as in Daniel Tavares Jr, the murderer released by a judge Romney appointed. There were 59 mentions from January 1 to December 3 for a story that broke about two weeks ago. Then I did a search for "Huckabee" and "Dumond," as in Wayne Dumond, the paroled rapist who committed murder after a parole board, urged on by Huckabee, let him out. Twenty-five mentions from January 1 to December 3 for a story that had been pushed by various people all year.

The fact is that reporters really, really like Huckabee. One reason is his general affability but another is something the other GOP candidates can't steal: His liberalism. Much as reporters want Barack Obama to succeed to diminish the power of more radical black politicians (something I noodled three years ago), I think most (less me) like the idea of a Beliefnet/Michael Gerson big government conservative taking the religious right over from the Bill Bennetts and Pat Robertsons.

Never Mind the Paulmania, Here's the Huckster!

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 12:41:00 EST

Mike Huckabee's sudden status as a statistically plausible GOP front-runner is as good an excuse as any to link to Ryan Sager's interesting "Crackpot Revolution" rejoinder to the contention (made by Nick Gillespie and I in the Washington Post) that Paulmania represents a "libertarian moment." Excerpt from Sager:

While I'd be delighted if the GOP were gripped by libertarianism - that is, a resurgent commitment to economic and social freedom - the truth is actually quite the opposite. [...]
[W]hile he claims to be for free trade in principle, Paul has earned the praise of Lou Dobbs for railing against America's involvement in NAFTA, CAFTA, the WTO and every other trade accord under the sun. In Wednesday night's debate, he could even be found endorsing conspiracy theories about a North American Union and one-world government.
In other words, the Ron Paul boomlet resembles that of the real surprise in the GOP race so far - the success of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who polls twice as high as Paul nationally (9 percent versus 4.5 percent). He's also pulled even with Mitt Romney in Iowa.
Huckabee is the opposite of a libertarian. As governor, he hiked taxes repeatedly and oversaw an explosion in state spending. He's explicitly running as a "different kind of Republican," positioning himself as the heir to President Bush's compassionate conservatism (a.k.a. big-government conservatism). His populist economic message includes expanding farm and alternative-energy subsidies and curbing free trade (to insulate us from the global economy). [...]
Big-government, big-religion, globophobic, populist conservatism - this is the message that's got real traction in the first Republican primary. Not Ron Paul's gold-standard nostalgia or support for medical marijuana.

Sager's reason archive here.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:44:00 EST

Sometime reason contributor Eric Pfeiffer has a new blog, Ground Game, for Congressional Quarterly.

Here's a snippet:

...blaming Hillary Clinton doesn't negate the fact that several of last night's questions threw the candidates off-guard: Rudy Giulliani jumbled a question about gun rights, Mitt Romney stumbled on the torture question and several candidates, including Mike Huckabee, struggled with pointed questions on immigration.
The real question facing Republicans today is not whether they should make use of emerging technology, but how the medium can be used to improve their communication skills.There's a tendency in the media to overemphasize the real-world impact of online activism, but the danger to those who ignore the grassroots power of the internet is very real.

More here.

Republican Debate VIII: The Shindy in St. Petersburg

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:31:00 EST

The Grand Old Party is scrapping again tonight in Florida at 8pm eastern time on CNN: The questions have been submitted via YouTube and host Anderson Cooper will do some amending and following-up.

Does it seem like ages since the last GOP debate? That's because it was held back on October 21. Back then Ron Paul had only raised $2.4 million for the quarter and Mitt Romney held the one-day fundraising record. Mike Huckabee was polling in the low teens an Iowa for a respectable third or fourth place showing. Children and small animals cowered in fear of the Fred Thompson juggernaut. So, things are different.

I have an unbreakable committment and might turn on the debate a bit late, so consider this an open thread for anyone watching it.

8:11: I show up 11 minutes late, and... nothing happens. At the Ron Paul debate-watching party I'm at in DC, the doctor's arrival onscreen is greeted by "There he is!" (Future comments from the party will be in parentheses.)

8:12: Rudy... claims New York wasn't a sanctuary city?

8:13: Ever-credible Mitt, who presided over three sanctuary cities in Massachusetts, righteously

8:14: Rudy's new attack line: Romney owned "Sanctuary mansion!"

8:15: Romney's "outrage" software is engaged! ("How did it get to be just them?" "Don't worry, if a debate breaks out they'll stop it.") Romney asks, rhetorically, whether he should hound people who show up for work with funny accents. The irony tickles.

8:16: Duncan Hunter asks if he can "jump in here." No. No, you can't. But the crowd is heckling Giuliani for trying and trying to get the last answer.

8:17: Carlos the Jackal (via video) asks if the Republicans will veto amnesty. Ooh, the hard questions.

8:19: Thompson attacks... sort of. One fun thing we've learned in Campaign '08 is that Thompson is unlistenably dull without a script.

8:20: McCain wades in. ("The fire's gone out of him." "Why is he even in this?")

8:21: McCain runs down the government failures that have made him so righteously angry. ("Campaign finance reform!" "All the failures I helped enable!")

8:22: Tancredo is delighted that we're having a Scary Meskins round. ("His nose should be red.") "Everyone's trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo!" ("That's a verb?")

8:24: "I reject the idea that there are jobs Americans won't take!" ("Would you hire Tancredo to clean your gutters?)

8:25: Ah, the Ron Paul party gives Hunter the esteem he deserves. ("Congressman, my question is: Where's your neck?"

8:26: ("Next question... for Ron Paul!") The next question actually goes to Huckabee. It's a good one about whether, as a guy who gave scholarships to illegal immigrants, he'd do the same for the kids of illegal alien military vets. (Everyone heckles Huckabee for addressing the giant YouTube screen as if it's alive.)

8:28: Huckabee explains that he gave scholarships to kids who were smart, didn't do drugs, earned it, dancing elegantly past the issue that they weren't citizens. ("The best students in Arkansas?")

8:30: Romney punches back and Huckabee pours on the saccarine. "If I didn't get an education, I might be picking lettuce!" ("Who'd rather have Mike Huckabee picking lettuce?" Every hand goes up.)

8:32: The room gets ice cold when Paul gets a question on whether he believes in a North American Union. He handles it as well as he possibly could, framing it as "a conspiracy of ideas." He's been prepped on this: He hasn't always been so adroit. ("He can't cut off those guys who believe in it.")

8:34: McCain complains about power changing the GOP. ("I just feel sympathy for him at this point.")

8:36: Giuliani will "strengthen the dollar" by not filling every open federal job. ("Is he serious?") "Twenty-two percent are found not able to evaluated."

8:37: Emily Ekins is apparently an Institute for Human Studies seminar alum: She asks what three programs Thompson and Paul would scrap. "It's a target rich environment." (There's some squabbling about whether he's referencing Top Gun.) He swerves into his well-rehearsed Social Security answer. ("So... we're abandoning the target metaphor.")

8:40: Paul shoots, Paul scores. "That comment about government changing 'us'--I don't think government changed me!" He hits the three I've heard him talk about: Education, Energy, DHS.

8:42: McCain takes the chance to demogogue at Paul on the war, a warm wave of applause gushing over him like a deleted scene from Behind the Green Door. "I spent Christmas with the troops!" ("OK, Ron needs to knock this out of the park.")

8:44: Grover Norquist gets into it! He asks them to sign "the pledge" never to raise taxes. Everyone says yes. Paul: "I have never voted for a tax increase and never will!" Hunter: "I've voted for more tax cuts than anyone on this stage." ("That's because you've been there for like 50 years!")

8:47: Terrible, terrible answers on farm subsidies. Romney and Rudy ("We have to support Archer Daniels Midland EVERY DAY!")

8:48: Rudy gets asked about the Ben Smith story on his under-the-table, end of mayoralty expense reports. "There were... threats against me." ("9/11! 9/11!" "What, did someone threaten his mistress?")

8:50: Duncan Hunter wants us to "buy American" so when "our veterans come back" they'll have good jobs. You lost your legs in Mosul: You've earned the right to assemble LED screens for PS2s.

8:52: I love that Thompson's YouTube ad was just cribbed from other, better videos using Romney's and Huckabee's own words to garrotte them. Cooper's pissed: "What's up with that?" Thompson: "I want to give my buddies here a little extra air time!" A funny joke that he sort of steps on by running out of words and saying "Uhhhhh."

8:53: Some comedy from Romney about how he was wrong about infanticide before but now MA Citizens for Life like him. ("I only gave them $15,000 and put my wife on their board, but...")

8:56: Great ad from the coal industry. ("Who wants coal for Christmas now?" Every hand goes up.)

9:00: Hunter gets a softball about the second amendment from a Californian with a handgun and he... makes fun of him for his handling. Let's cool it with the comments about how he's a brilliant man who deserves to hit the first term.

9:03: A Fred Thompson answer lulls my room into a nice, mellow place. He's poking the right holes in Giuliani's gun answer, though.

9:04: Did... they... skip over Paul to get an answer from Hunter? So he could wink and ramble about the gun he's already talked about? Also, breaking news: John McCain served in Vietnam.

9:06: A question about how they'd stop the crime epidemic and rescue black people goes to Romney, who says government needs to strengthen familes. ("Can we import parents from Mexico?" "Watch out, Romney wants to rear your child!")

9:07: Giuliani can cut crime because he cut it Harlem. ("We got black people out of Harlem! That reduced crime.")

9:09: A good question on what women who abort their fetuses should be charged with goal to Paul... which makes sense since he's a doctor who's seen an abortion performed, but doesn't make sense in that he's obviously going to leave it to the states.

9:12: Hunh. Giuliani grabs a lifeline on abortion by nabbing Ron Paul's answer.

9:15: The death penalty: "What would Jesus do?" Huckabee soars with a lot of friffery about how hard it was to make the decision. ("Shorter Huckabee: I'll kill people but I'll cry about it.")

9:17: Rudy Giuliani: Not William Jennings Bryan. Some of the Bible is figurative, some literal. ("It's a good answer." "It's the only answer.")

9:18: Oh, God, watching Romney pander on this is like watching the Fantasia Hippos dance ballet. "Uh... yes, I believe it's the word of God." But it's not what Anderson Cooper thinks is the word of God. (Because Cooper believes in the whole thing?)

9:19: God likes Mike Huckabee.

9:20: Commercial time. ("My favorite moment was Tancredo restraining himself and not telling the woman to deport her Chinese daughter.")

9:23: Giuliani's YouTube ad is nice and crazy. He saved New York from King Kong! He stopped the snow from falling!

9:26: McCain: "I'm the only one on this stage who said the Rumsfeld strategy was doomed to fail." Didn't he just try to kneecap Ron Paul?

9:27: "When you were suffering from starvation and disease we brought you food and medicine." (My room groans.)

9:29: Romney is shameless on torture. ("Waterboard him and ask the question again!") McCain smacks him across the podium.

9:30: This is the stuff that exposes Romney's inner Dukakis. "I'm not going to say what methods I'll use." Oh, and he'll ask for McCain's counsel.

9:31: "Life is not 24 and Jack Bauer."

9:33: How long will we stay in Iraq? Thompson is... noncomittal.

9:35: "We never lost a battle in Vietnam!" (There's a fight about this in the room.)

9:37: It's moments like this when I'm sorry I'm collapsing from the onset of... something. (Flu? We'll see.) Paul and McCain lock horns over Vietnam and I have some trouble following it. I'm going to sign off for a bit... have at it.

9:59: A great moment from the Ron Paul party. A black YouTuber asks of black support for Republicans: "Why don't we vote for you." ("Well, have you read the Bell Curve?") This was asked in jest, of course.

10:07: I like how they coupled a questioner who says "Ron Paul, you won't win the nomination" with one who says "Fred Thompson, your campaign is going down in flames so hot I could cook a turkey with them." Wait...

McCain: No Surrender!

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:11:00 EST