Ron Paul is, by all mainstream media accounts, the longest of long shots to win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
And yet.
And yet.
There exists a scenario by which Paul could nab the nomination. I'd like to explore it today. Won't you ride with me? Please ride with me. And remember to keep your eyeballs inside the car at all times.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Some highlights and lowlights of Paul's career:
He voted against the Iraq war. The money quote: he found himself "annoyed by the evangelicals being so supportive of pre-emptive war, which seems to contradict everything That I was taught as a Christian." He voted against the so-called Patriot Act and calls gay marriage a states' issue, not to be trifled with by the federal government.
At the same time, Paul says hospitals should not have to treat illegal aliens in emergency rooms. He would eliminate FEMA, the IRS and the Department of Education. (Say what you will, the country is better for having all three of those entities.) He voted against legislation aimed at catching online child predators.
The eccentricities: He's opposed to all foreign aid, he favors decriminalizing marijuana, he opposes the trade embargo on Cuba, and he habitually votes against legislation not expressly authorized by the Constitution. He'd scrap the Federal Reserve and return to the gold standard abandoned under Nixon. Also, he's 76. I'm told that's considered ancient.
Summarizing, if Ron Paul were an ice cream, he'd be the anti-vanilla. He'd be Rocky Road, except with chili peppers instead of marshmallows.
And yet.
And yet.
Paul won the Value Voters straw poll last month.
He polls at around 10 percent, give or take. He lost by less than a percentage point to Michele Bachmann in Iowa over the summer. He's tantalizing in his potential to win, or get crushed like a bug.
So how on God's greenish earth does this guy snake his way to the nomination?
Well, Rick Perry and Herman Cain have some pretty serious flaws. Perry reminds everyone of Bush, and not of W's theoretically good parts. The guy leased a ranch called "N*ggerhead," and not by accident, nope, for a whole decade. He invested in porn; he volunteered for Al Gore. His oft-touted "Texas Miracle" boils down to finding a few minimum-wage jobs without health insurance for his poorest citizens, of which there are many, all while watching the state's unemployment rate rise faster than the nation as a whole. Look it up. He calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme. "Vote for me! I'll dismantle the safety net!" Interesting strategy.
Cain?
Turns out he's pro-choice. Or maybe not. His evolving stances and awkward dances on the abortion issue make Romney look like a poster child of consistency. (In case you're not following the race too closely yet, that's a jab at both men. In case you don't know anything about American politics, conservative primary voters care a great deal about abortion.)
And the pizza magnate's gimmicky 9-9-9 tax plan got
destroyed by his competitors in a debate last week. It wasn't pretty, from a Hermanesque standpoint.
So what about Mitt? Good ol' Mittens, the guy who stays put with a 28 percent share of primary voters, no matter what. Doesn't go up, doesn't go down. Does his ceiling even stretch to 50 percent, ever? Or is he this year's version of what Hillary was in 2008, when she fell victim to a vehement ABC -- Anybody But Clinton -- swath of the Democratic electorate?
Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum (Google him, it's worth it), Jon Huntsman and Bachmann are either dead in the water or losing traction quickly. Chris Christie isn't running, neither is Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee's obviously lying facedown in a ditch somewhere, and in case you forgot, Tim Pawlenty dropped out over the summer.
The nominee will be Cain, Perry, Romney or Paul. Except it won't be Cain, not after this week's multiple meltdowns. He is not ready for prime time, all the time.
Really, it'll be Perry, Romney or Paul. Except it won't be Perry. He debates poorly, he looks unpresidential, he turns too many folks off, he won't play well in the general election, and every intangible in the book seems to be working against him. In another election cycle, maybe.
So it'll be Romney or Paul.
But say something happens to Romney. Already, he's treated us to "
Corporations are people, my friend" and "
I'm running for office, for Pete's sake, I can't have illegals!" That's just in the last eight weeks, with 54 more of those to go before Election Day. Oh, and there's the little matter of how he set up Obamacare in Massachusetts. Say he compounds gaffe with gaffe, loses his cool a couple times, flips or flops on this or that issue, again, and who knows?
Better yet, say the Republican primary voters who actually show up are:
* Conservative Christians who believe Mormonism is a cult
* Social conservatives who dislike his record
* Wary of insiders this election cycle
* Folks concerned about his flipfloppiness
* Still upset about health care legislation
and those voters go ahead and choose an alternative. What happens then? Does Romney crest past 30 percent anywhere besides New Hampshire?
If Romney, Cain and Perry are somehow out of the picture, your nominee stands to be one of the also-rans from six paragraphs ago, or Paul. The latter has an organization that puts his remaining opponents to shame. He has name recognition. By all accounts, he's a smart man, if quirky, and he projects an image of responsibility and honesty. He has a devoted following. (You could call them disciples! Or discipauls!)
Let's go to the calendar, then, and play this thing out chronologically.
It's January 15, and Ron's just finished winning Iowa and Nevada, nicely sandwiching his second-place finish to Romney -- by five percentage points! -- in New Hampshire. Paul is blowing expectations out of the water. He starts to raise funds like Obama 2008. Or, to be more precise, like
Ron Paul 2007.
He loses to Perry in South Carolina on the 21st, but the four social conservatives split the far-right vote in Florida ten days later. Romney wins there, by default, with 26 percent. Nobody is impressed, especially because he just finished fifth in SC. Fifth!
Following a string of unimpressive results in the caucuses of CO, MN and ME on February 7, Perry's funds dry up at last and he drops out. Bachmann leaves the race a week later, but only after hanging on to barely take the Minnesota caucuses, where Paul finishes second.
Eight states have voted. Romney leads Paul by one delegate.
The two split Michigan and Arizona. Massachusetts selects Romney on March 6, but that's the same day Texas goes big for native son Paul. In fact, the other 11 states voting that day swing 7-2 to Paul, with him winning all five caucuses plus Vermont and Ohio. Cain nets the two leftovers, Oklahoma and Georgia, but having won just those two contests, and polling at 10 percent nationally, he calls it a campaign.
So do Santorum and Huntsman, who've won nothing; neither man has even placed second thus far.
With the pool of candidates thinning, Romney experiences a small uptick in poll numbers, but faced with essentially a choice between a libertarian and a moderate, many primary voters stay home. The ones who don't are, you guessed it, the Discipauls, who are emboldened by their man's now sizeable lead in delegates.
Gingrich stays in, gets a bump in the polls, and annoys the hell out of Mitt.
Desperate, Romney goes negative. He makes a disturbing campaign ad that is generally reviled, he loses his temper, he says something stupid, again.
To the great chagrin of the Republican establishment, Paul wraps up the nomination in April and coasts into the convention with a backroom deal-proof lead in delegates.
Granted, the scenario described above is... farfetched. But so very much NOT out of the realm of possibility.
Here's the primary calendar. It's front-loaded with Western states, Southern states and caucuses.
It could happen. It won't. But it could.
