Rise of the Ron Paul Republican

The GOP doesn’t have a Ron Paul problem 

it has a libertarian problem.

Image Source: RonPaul.com

When the GOP lost Congress in 2006 and weren’t able to install a Republican as president in 2008, overshadowed by the “historic election,” it was back to the drawing board for the party of Lincoln.  But it was in March of 2007, just after the 110^th Congress was sworn in, that Ron Paul began to break ground on a permanent home for the libertarian ideals he had been espousing for over 30 years. 

            Libertarianism, while having been traditionally an esoteric subject, began to manifest as a movement in 1971 in response to Vietnam, its voracious appetite for blood and treasure and a burgeoning welfare state both of which contributed to the abandonment of the gold standard.  (It was President Nixon’s decision to rely wholly on the Federal Reserve for our nation’s monetary policy that spurred Ron Paul into office in the first place.)  

To proto-libertarians, drawn from conservatives, independents, blue dog democrats, the progressivism of the left and the conservativism of the right were merely two features of the same problem – big government happily placating, if not, openly catering to corporate interests.  Between the platforms of war and welfare libertarians established their political beachhead in the “Party of Principle” - the Libertarian Party.

In 1978 the libertarian Cato Institute was founded in Northern California and provided needed conceptual ammunition to the fledgling movement.  By that time the “free minds and free markets” of Reason Magazine was in its 8^th year of regular publication and busy popularizing economic superstars like F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Murray Rothbard.  If necessity is truly the mother of invention, the malaise of the 1970s was midwife to the birth of libertarianism. From then on the intellectual-political infrastructure necessary to broadcast and mobilize the ideas of individual liberty grew exponentially.

By 1975 even Ronald Reagan seemed to be equally enamored with the prospects of libertarianism.  This from Reason Magazine:

“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism [emphasis added].  I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals -- if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”

After reading this it should be no surprise why Ron Paul was one of the first to endorse Ronald Reagan for president.  A president who, contrary to revisionist conservatives, didn't always please the hard line neoconservatives.

By the time of Reagan’s rise, however, it wasn’t the libertarians who were to capitalize on the backlash against stagflation and the "new normal" Cater attempted to impose on America, but the Grand Old Party.  Albeit the corruption and tepidity under Nixon and Ford left the party beleaguered and exhausted it was still a dependable and well-financed machine by 1980. 

While Ronald Reagan assumed the ethos of libertarianism and attempted to graft it onto the Grand Old Party some of it stuck, but much of it didn’t.  Reagan too, while previously extolling libertarian virtue fell short of achieving a fundamental restoration of our republic.  The Reagan Revolution was, as many political movements are (think Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street) co-opted by the old guard - the establishment - whom shepherded new energies into old interests. 

From 1980 to 1992 and three Republican administrations the government still grew, foreign intervention persisted even after the demise of the Soviet Union, no departments were cut, and debt increased.  Some of the sound economic decisions bore fruit, which staved off disaster, spurred needed innovation and restored some of America’s confidence, but the course of government expansion was fundamentally unaltered.

The GOP received a second chance in 2000, but after Bush’s restrained foreign policy promises were abandoned and the ill-defined War on Terror began, much of the same occurred under his eight years as had occurred under Bill Clinton. Bush federalized more of the American education system, passed a colossal unfunded prescription drug entitlement program, endorsed massive militarism, sponsored the curtailment of civil liberties and oversaw the unprecedented bailouts of 2007.  All of these decisions echoed the encroachments and profligacy of former Democrats and Republicans alike, hence the Tea Party movement.

Conservativism is not a misnomer as Reagan put it, conservativism is legitimately its own brand and uses a similar tool to progressivism in order to impress its social goals here and abroad - the state.  But unlike progressivism, libertarianism is, as conservativism is, now and for the foreseeable future a part of the "right" and therefore part of the Republican Party.   

Many who call themselves conservatives or conservative independents are in fact libertarians they just don’t know it yet, but they will.  For years libertarians lived in the political backwaters and were never really taken seriously, but since 2008 and the ideological bankruptcy of the GOP they've been called in again as they were in the Reagan Revolution to breath new life into a failing ideology, but this time they're not going away.

Ron Paul has carved out a home for libertarians under the GOP’s famous Big Tent.  After years of proffering an austere voting record, sometimes referred to as academic or impractical, Ron Paul is a living breathing example of constitutional fortitude.  Dr. No, as he is often called will probably be known most for what he stood against than what he stood for, but amidst a government which has for the last 100 years, stood for too much, done too much and grown too large Ron Paul's brand of politics is welcomed.

             The year 2012 bears witness to the rise of the Ron Paul Republican.  From now on those who raise his once lonely banner will have a platform from which to run for office. The libertarian wing is now open for business and will continue to siphon off voters from the Democrats and return disgruntled independents to a still hemorrhaging GOP.  

             There is now a fundable and dependable political machine waiting to propel libertarians wherever they need to go.  Win or lose the nomination libertarians are here to stay – the Ron Paul revolution has just begun.