Spanners in the works

The Liberal Voice links to a couple of stories I'd seen about Bob Barr getting into the race and Ron Paul's tiny number of supporters trying to stage an upset at the convention.

I disagree with Joe and Marc Moore: I don't think these developments are healthy. Marc says that "[d]isagreement, discussion, and eventual agreement would strengthen rather than weaken Republicans at a time when the party is in what can only be termed disarray"; Joe thinks that the convention will be spiced up and more newsworthy "if Paul forces come up with some great quotes, angry followers, etc that could add the beloved conflict to what was supposed to be zzzzzz-er scripted coronation." What I'd like to know is how a floor fight over whether the Federal Reserve should be abolished can possibly be helpful? Paul and his supporters are plain loony about some issues, wrong about others, and are problematic even on the issues about which they are absolutely correct. For example: I think that the public can be brought around on limiting the size of the federal government. We have not lost the federalism fight yet; perhaps I am too optimistic, but I believe that Lino Graglia is wrong that the American people have become full-blooded larsonites, desiring for America "a 'normal' national government, able to deal with whatever it sees as a national problem, like other national governments," see Graglia, Lopez, Morrison, and Raich: Federalism in the Rehnquist Court, 31 Harv. J. of L. & P.P. 761, 785 (2008), at least, not when it is explained to them that the purchasing price of such is the end of limited government. (One salutary effect of the Bush administration is that it has made liberals friends - fairweather friends, to be sure, but on-the-record friends - of at least some constitutional restrictions on government.) But we aren't going to bring them around (indeed, may push them away) by conclusory yowling by the Paul Chorus that we need to abolish every arm of the federal government except State, Defense and Justice right now. (That's an exaggeration, but only slightly.)

So, I do not see these developments as helpful. To the contrary, it is unbearable, frankly, watching these quislings trying to shipwreck our chances in what is in any event going to be a tough election to navigate. Newt Gingrich nails it: by getting into the race as an independent, "Bob Barr will make it marginally easier for Barack Obama to become president. That outcome threatens every libertarian value Barr professes to champion." the same goes for the Paulistas who want to blow a whole in the bottom of their own hull. To add insult to injury, as Cap'n Ed points out, these saboteurs are less mass movement than jejune gunpowder plotters: "Paul has won all of 26 delegates. Even if he wangled a few dozen more through manipulations in caucus states like Nevada, at best he’ll come up with 100 delegates in a 2,200-delegate convention. That’s not a revolution, it’s a lunatic fringe," and as James Joyner observes, "[i]t would be absurd to give a guy who received less than one percent of the amassed delegates at the convention a platform for harming the party."

The primary process is a form of institutional settlement, and even those of us who aren't thrilled that the process yielded McCain as the nominee should accept the result. I can never remember if it was Hancock or Franklin who warned that we must hang together or else will surely hang apart, but it's an apt warning. Either we all pull in the right direction, or the result will be a President utterly antithetical to all elements of the GOP coalition who will take us (very possibly irrecoverably) in completely the wrong direction. If Washington had thought it better to stand and fight when victory was unlikely than to cede some territory in service of obtaining stronger ground and improving the odds of ultimate victory, I fancy we would still be taking orders from London. McCain is the nominee, for better or worse, and we should set aside the issues that we disagree on in order to defeat a common enemy. All elements of the party must come to realize this. If the price of preserving the entirety of the Constitution is a slight and temporary constriction of any one part of it (even granting, arguendo, the dissenters' premise that McCain would do so), that is a price we shouldn't hesitate to pay. Who can be thought sensible who would cede the keep in order to safeguard the ramparts?

Still, at least Paul's book will put an end to the idea that he is "the real conservative" in the race, a peculiar notion advanced by some of his supporters. Paul may be a libertarian (I don't think so), a total loon and a populist (as I think), but he now explicitly announces that he sees himself as seeking a revolution. Revolutionaries, ex vi termini, are not conservatives.

Editorial note: past experience has shown that mentioning the P word in blog posts tends to produce a flood of Paulistas coming forth to defend their man's honor. As ever, comments from unregistered users will be held for moderator approval, and comments that display some level of independent thought - including comments disagreeing with this post - are very welcome. With the foregoing in mind, however, comments that do nothing more than repeat rote cheerleading talking points from the Paul campaign will not be authorized.