A reader at Andrew Sullivan’s site projects the following future for Ron Paul’s supporters:
A fundamental difference between the Ron Paul faction of the Republican party and the Dean faction of the Democratic party was Ralph Nader. There was a major wake up call amongst liberal activists that third party politics was going to do more harm than good in the long run. That, in the long run, it was better to channel their energies within the party and change the party rather than overthrow it wholesale. So when Dean came along, the energy that developed around him ended up getting transformed into a movement that was fixated on reforming the Democratic party. The Dean Democrats are liberal, but at their core, deeply pragmatic about how you really get things done in politics.
(…)
My sense is that the Ron Paul supporters aren’t going to have that same drive to work within the party. That rather than being the Republican version of Howard Dean, Ron Paul’s movement is becoming the next generation of Larouchies. While some of his supporters are the more reasonable and libertarian wing of the party, there’s a strong thread of radicalism amongst a lot of them. Many of them drift past being libertarianism to almost being anarchists, believing, not in small government, but practically no government. They emphasize rather extreme steps like eliminating the federal reserve, going back to the gold standard, shutting down the IRS, etc.
Say what you will about the Dean democrats, they are hardly a radical lot. They were very enthusiastic, but deep down, Dean was not that radical except in how he was delivering his message. He wasn’t calling for some extreme change in government, mostly just getting out of Iraq and reforming a few things like the health care system. Because it was not an innately radical group, it could more readily merge into the larger party apparatus rather than become an active opposition to it. I just don’t see how the same thing could happen with the Paulites.
I think that this assessment is largely correct and, speaking as one of the libertarian-oriented Republicans who wasn’t caught up in Ron Paul mania, I can’t say that it’s a bad thing either.
The GOP is weaker now than it has been since Nixon. When they lose the Whitehouse along with Congress and the Senate, there will be a great deal of soul searching within the party, and a strong need to reinvent conservativism. Either this will be done along Huckabee’s lines (unlikely), or the neocons will get the stink off themselves (even less likely), or the party will return to the message of less government, lower taxes, and an end to this nascent militarism. In this, Ron Paul and his supporters will be able to play the same salutory role as Goldwater’s bloc did in the sixties.
The GOP will soon be reduced to ashes. But it is from exactly such ashes that Reagan arose.