Third party thinking

"Mr. Republican", Sen. Robert A. Taft: his soul goes marching on - in the Ron Paul campaign

Robert Scheer has a debate posted between himself and Ralph Nader over the problems of creating a liberal-left third party: Robert Scheer Debates Ralph Nader TruthDig.com 11/05/07. It's pretty long, but you can listen to a piece of it and get a lot of the arguments. The transcript is also available at that link.

A lot of the conventional wisdom about third parties in the US, which I won't recite in detail here, is wrong. Even though we've had two major parties since 1854 when today's Republican Party was founded, the American party system went through a complicated evolution from 1800-1854, when the Constitutional framework was essentially the same, and winner-take-all electoral districts were also standard practice as their are today. The two-party system isn't written into holy patriotic stone. But any alternative would require some modification of the winner-take-all voting districts.

The most likely candidate at the moment with a possibility of pulling enough votes from the Democrats to elect Benito Giuliani President in 2008 is Ron Paul. Although the Establishment press didn't give it big play, political junkies were surprised to hear that Paul's campaign raked in a record $4.5 $4.2 million in contributions on a single day, yesterday, Nov. 5.

I'm going to have to see if I can find some more detailed breakdown of Paul's support. But right now, his success seems to be rooted in two things. One is technical/organizational, which is the smart use his campaign has made of the Internet, like Howard Dean pioneered in 2003. There's a parallel here. George McGovern's 1971-2 Presidential campaigned showed the fundraising potential of direct mail. Then rightwing activist Richard Viguerie picked up on it and made much better use of it for the Republicans than the Democrats did.

The other is his opposition to the Iraq War. It's important to note Paul's current market-segment popularity as another sign of the opposition to the Iraq War.


Glenn Greenwald, who may actually be more of a left-libertarian than a labor liberal, tries hard to find the good side of Paul's candidacy in The Ron Paul phenomenon Salon 11/06/07. What he knows and explains, but doesn't seem to cause him as much of a problem as it does me, is that Ron Paul is a flaming rightwinger!

Although Greenwald doesn't argue explicitly for a third party, something like this line of argument will be used if he does mount a third party Presidential run in 2008 to pull antiwar votes away from the Democrats. I'm in kind of a PowerPoint mood today. So I have three points about that possibility:

First and foremost, if a Ron Paul (or Ralph Nader) third-party run pulls enough antiwar votes to defeat the Democratic candidate and puts Benito Giuliani in the White House (or Mitt Romney, or the Marvelous Maverick McCain) the Iraq War will continue; it will very like be expanded to Iran, if Cheney doesn't do that before he leaves office; torture will continue as American policy and become further institutionalized; unlimited warrantless domestic spying will continue; nuclear nonproliferation will go into the toilet as several more nations scramble to build nuclear weapons; and the Supreme Court will get a solid far-right majority that will overturn Roe v. Wade and pretty much sing to the tune of Christianists and robber barons across the board. Among other bad things that will happen.

Secondly, to snuff out the possibility of a Paul third-party candidacy that could pull significant numbers of Democratic votes in key states like Florida, they have to sharpen their antiwar position, especially on expanding the war to Iran. If Cheney starts a war with Iran and the Democrats are forthrightly opposing it, Paul will have a real shot at pulling enough votes to put Giuliani in the White House.

Third, Ron Paul is a flaming rightwinger, people!

And a few points about Greenwald's column.

He's right to see Ron Paul's success to date as a reflection of public opposition to the Iraq War.

The structural similarities he describes between Paul's current candidacy and Dean's in 2003 is more-or-less correct. But to a certain extent, that's also a truism. Both are running in major parties primaries in the United States, both were far behind, of course there are structural similarities. But we shouldn't confuse those too much with similarities in policy.

"Isolationism" in American politics is mostly a bogeyman that advocates of intervention use to discredit their critics of the moment. But Ron Paul and the motley assorted of fringe rightwingers and libertarians that seem to be his most devoted supporters really are isolationists. Isolationism is just as much unilateralist as Cheneyist/neoconservative rogue-state Wilsonianism.

Paul's brand of isolationism is hostile to the United Nations, hostile to international law, even hostile to treaties that go beyond arranging the technical details of trade relations.

Paul even claims he is opposed to the Iraq War because it we're fighting it to enforce United Nations resolutions, which is false.

Paul-type isolationsists are opposed to pretty much any kind of foreign aid for any purpose.

International arrangements to deal with the problems of global climate change are a complete horror in the Paul-style outlook of Old Right isolationsists.

Between the Old Right notion of killer capitalism that Paul supports and the "Article 10" states-rights conservatism, his domestic program adds up to something like this: abolish Social Security; abolish Medicare; abolish Medicaid; abolish unemployment insurance; get rid anything that looks like "welfare" payments to unemployed single mothers; drop all anti-discrimination laws at all levels of government, whether the protected classes are based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, whatever; abolish the protections of the American Disabilities Act; end all federal aid to education, preferably do away with public schools altogether; pass anti-immigrant legislation to keep undocumented workers from going to the cops when their employers abuse them or cheat them out of money. I could go on. Greenwald notes that "Paul is as much of an anti-abortion extremist as it gets".

Finally, Ron Paul is a flaming rightwinger.

In fairness, I haven't combed through Paul's position papers to see his particular position of every one of those issues. But that Old Right, "free-market" (really "killer capitalism") economic doctrine and arch-segregationist states-rights Constitutionalism is the outlook he represents. And his current campaign represents one of the most successful efforts yet to "mainstream" some of these crackpot notions into the larger Republican Party, where there's already a gut sympathy for a lot of them.

Greenwald's post includes a YouTube video, which includes Ron Paul making a classic Republican Old Right isolationist pitch: "The Republicans were elected to end the Korean War. The Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There's a strong tradition of being antiwar in the Republican Party." Bob Dole put his foot in his mouth back in the 1976 Vice Presidential debates when he drew on the same twist to sneer about "Democrat Wars" (the two world war, Korea, Vietnam).

Greenwald also takes seriously Paul's criticisms of the current military budget and far-flung commitments. And maybe he intends them seriously. But his fundamental outlook is just as unilateralist as the most hardcore neocon, if not more so. If ever in a position where he really had the power to choose between unilateralism and reducing the American "footprint" abroad, don't count on reducing-the-footprint to win out.

Soldiers' political contributions are said to be higher to Paul than to any other Republican. (I don't know about Democrats.) This is notable as a symptom of opposition to the Iraq War. But it should also be a huge red flag to the Democrats giving a hint of how Paul's antiwar stance could draw antiwar voters away from the Democrats and make Benito Giuliani President.

Greenwald said the Simon and Garfunkel routine at the end of the Paul video wasn't really his cup of tea. But to me, the irony of their singling out this line in particular "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls," (from "The Sounds of Silence") is that those who would be the most severely disadvantaged by Ron Paul killer-capitalist dogma would be exactly the people who make urban graffiti and live in tenements. But they would certainly not be the only ones.

Tags: authoritarianism, glenn greenwald, republican party, ron paul

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