Good Luck Chuck

Can there be any reason for another Alan Keyes thread? Yes, I think so. While slapdash organization, delusional arrogance, and despicable policy stances decided the Constitution Party's nomination over the weekend, a contributing factor in the Keyes defeat was… Ron Paul.

It went like this. On Friday, Constitution Party founder Howard Phillips gave a blistering anti-Keyes speech, calling the recent convert a "neocon" who was worse than the GOP on some issues. The key argument for pastor Chuck Baldwin, however, was that Baldwin could attract Ron Paul supporters who might otherwise vote Libertarian.

Chuck Baldwin was out there on the front lines for Ron Paul… Bob Barr spoke with Ron Paul on three occasions, begging him for his support as he seeks the Libertarian Party nomination, but Ron Paul will not do that because in his heart Ron Paul knows that Chuck Baldwin is right, and that if the Paul people are to support anyone it's Chuck Baldwin. This is something we can look to. Ron Paul has attracted scores of thousands of supporters, he's got an estimated $35 million in the bank [Ed.–actually, it's down to $4 million], and these are resources we can look to if we nominate a candidate who has been a friend of Ron Paul, not an enemy of Ron Paul.

Phillips is on to something. Baldwin and Barr represent two very different sides of the Ron Paul coalition. Baldwin represents the Christian reconstructionist side, which I (happily) don't think made up a majority of the rEVOLution. Here's what Baldwin wrote after 9/11, for example.

For nearly a half-century, we have forsaken the moral principles of Heaven. We have legally murdered too many unborn babies. We have too readily accepted aberrant, sexual behavior. We kicked Heaven out of our schools, out of our homes, and out of our hearts. As a result, God is giving us a little taste of Hell.

That's who Phillips wants to reconstruct the Paul coalition. Well, good luck with that. If David Gahan is right, I guess we can all have our own personal Ron Pauls. But at least Keyes got his comeuppance for stepping on Paul's answers at the Des Moines Register debate. (Tom Tancredo's open-handed slap at Keyes that day was probably the only three second period in which I became a Tancredo supporter.)