The Ron Paul Scenario / 10-20-11

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!

Part of the reason the MSM is so quick to discount Paul is that he doesn't fit into a neat little box like Rick Perry (gunslingin' conservative), Mitt Romney (establishment moderate), Herman Cain (outsider businessman) or even Sarah Palin (populist freakshow).

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.

(All information gleaned from his extremely informative wiki page.)

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.

Can M.J. Come Out and Play? / 2-20-11

Quick, get your pot now, while it's still cheap.

And still illegal. You know, if you like the risk factor.

Because the end of Pot Prohibition is at hand. (Optional joke: We're going to turn can'tabis into cannabis!)

Anyway, The Economist (worthless gossip tabloid) and YouGov (legitimate market research gurus and polling pros) released a poll earlier this month that shows a majority of Americans favor decriminalizing marijuana and letting the government treat it "like alcohol and tobacco."

Not just a small majority, either. 58 percent favor decriminalization if the parameters are set just right, with the feds taxing it, regulating it, and keeping it out of bounds for minors. 23 percent oppose such a plan.

Breaking down the numbers, 60 percent (!) of respondents ages 34-60 came out in favor of legalizing pot.

More breaking down: the poll's very first question shows that respondents have a mostly unfavorable view of President Obama. These aren't a bunch of hippies and twentysomethings in this sample.

Now granted, a different wording of the same question will get a different result.

"Should potheads get out of jail free?" will score less than 40 percent.

"Should marijuana be made legal?" will score, most times, 40-50 percent of the vote. It did so in a Gallup poll in October of last year with a healthy 46 percent.

"Should marijuana be regulated in the same way as alcohol?" will score the highest. As it did here.

(Bonus Fun Fact: "Should alcohol be made illegal?" scores very high among people living in the 1920's.)

But what is most striking about the numbers is the margin. 58 percent is a strong majority, for sure, but 23 percent against is a puny, sad minority. A minority which won't go mellowly into the night, let's be honest; but if there's something politicians are good at, it's reading polls. 58-23.

58-23. (58-23!)

If another reputable polling outfit can duplicate the same result (without too much cheating), then game over on a national level.

(P.S.: Cool state-by-state info available here.)

Observacations / 1-17-11

Been out of the office for a while. But now, break time's over, ladies and laddies.

So, did anything happen since we last spoke?

Oh. Uh-huh. Mm. 'K.

Well then, I'll touch on three topics, but not at once, because my attention span isn't what it used...

Yeah. Three rounds of politics today. A sports trifecta tomorrow. Spirituality season starts Wednesday. Then we'll be all caught up, you and me.

HOLY BEDFELLOWS, BATMAN

Well, in smack-myself-across-the-forehead news, I found myself, this holiday season, agreeing with -- wait for it -- Pat -- wait for it some more, juuust a little tiny bit more -- Robertson. Not once, but twice.

The first time was no shocker: When P-Rob declared that 2011 would not mark the end of the world, I co-nodded graciously. (No matter how many times a public figure says God likes to kill people for other people's behavior [here's your link, you're welcome], there comes a time when something resembling reason is bound to exit his speaking organs.) And after all, the man has probably read his Mayan Calendar 2012 (365 apocalyptic thoughts for every situation, $399.95 on Amazon.con), so best check back in with him for all your Armageddon needs in a year.

But the second time he and I linked minds... that was stupefying. Said Robertson: "I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot and that kind of thing, I mean, it's just costing us a fortune and it's ruining young people." Even after his spokesman managed to float a near-lie to backtrack, claiming Pat "unequivocally stated that he is against the use of illegal drugs," I find myself aghast at my tattered and shredded view of the religio-conservative icon. He even went on to suggest that treatment, not incarceration, could be a better reaction to weed possession.

For twenty years, I've denounced the man. (Get it? 420 years?) And now he does this? Jerk.

That one took me a while to recover from.

RAINBOW WARRIORS

Speaking of things that failed to cause the end of civilization, discrimination against gay soldiers is officially on its way out. And none too soon. Turns out that the judicial, legislative and executive branches all have struck it down; thus, the DoD is phasing it out over the next few months. Let's be real: polling shows that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Do Discriminate" (not the policy's actual name) had fallen seriously out of favor with a vast majority of the population. As such, the policy's demise was inevitable, but nonetheless, I'd like to advance a theory that casts Democrats in a favorable light here.

I submit:

House Democrats, late in the lame-duck session, cleverly fooled congressional Republicans into believing they would block the extension of the Baby Bush tax cuts for another two years. This after the Senate had declined to consider lifting DADT. AND after President Obama had come out supporting a tax cut extension, however tepidly. But what did the outgoing House D's have to lose? They were already about to lose their majority -- at least they could go down swinging while satisfying the far left. (Me!) While pissing off incoming Weeper of the House John "Boo-Hoo" Boehner (R-Ocryo).

Well, when negotiators discussed how to break the impasse, Democrats said that another vote in the Senate on DADT would probably pacify. Republicans, knowing popular opinion would only continue to cut against them, and wishing to fry other fish in the upcoming session, acquiesced, and framed the issue to cast moderate Republicans (in blue states) as the driving force.

And DADT dies.

It's a pretty theory. One that allows my wing to look good, and astute, too, while much, much, much more importantly, concluding another contemptible chapter in Amalgamated American Institutional Discrimination Against Gays, Inc.

CIVILITEA PARTY

In the wake of yet another mass shooting (yes, I'm gingerly approaching the Tucson mess), the usual voices have made / will make themselves heard.

"We need more gun control!" (True, but get real.)

"We need more guns!" (Seriously?)

"Give him the death penalty!" (Iron. E.)

"It's her fault!" (Not the time or place, idjits.)

"It's not my fault!" (Shut up.)

"He's a right-wing terrorist!" (5... 4... 3... 2... 1...)

"He's a left-wing terrorist!" (Toldja.)

"What we need is more civility." (Pshaw--wait, what?)

We'll get more civility in our political discourse, actually. Just like we did after 9/11. Then with the distance of time, we'll revert to our hyper-partisan ways, present company included, and it'll be as if Tucson never happened. Then, fatalistically, the process will restart with another tragedy. You can hope that it doesn't take place in your neighborhood. Good luck with that.

Happy New Year.

Things that go "bong" in the night / 5-8-09

The rumors are all true: I've never smoked any weed. Never touched any illegal drugs, and I mean that literally. Caught a whiff of a joint once in an adjacent room. Didn't inhale.

But people, come on, really, can't we just stop prosecuting Americans who smoke pot?

I will leave the moral dimension of the argument for another day. I will leave the dilemma of impaired drivers by the wayside. For now. What I WILL do is talk about finances.

It costs this nation about $8 billion annually in prosecution costs and another billion in incarceration to wage war on potheads.

Certainly, mandated treatment is a real cost. Surely there exists a burden on business, when employees are jailed and/or terminated for weed-related offenses.

And think of the other side of the balance sheet: all that lost revenue. The grass tax. It's not just a catchy slogan. It could pay for programs. In a real shocker, California is considering this course of action.

Oh, and you want to make a real impact in the long-term budget, Mr. President? Legalize weed. (He's not going to do it. But maybe someday, someone in power will have the balls or the ovaries to try.)

And by the way, this crackdown on pot users, how well is it working? This well: 94 million of us are or have been users. But now I'm in Tangentville, and I semi-promised to argue for legalization on financial merits only. It'll take an awfully good counterargument to change my mind, but bring it on.

Bonus item: A variety of polls shows a variety of levels of support for legalization. What these polls don't show is that the issue is cut-and-dried.

Finally, a bit of full disclosure is in order: This post was not sponsored by Frito-Lay.