Rand Paul, Libertarians, and Republicans

Libertarians have a highly consistent political philosophy, favoring less active government across the board:  in economics, social policy, and international affairs.

Carl Cannon writes of last night's GOP debate:

Kentucky’s junior senator pounced on Trump’s answer on party unity, but he later tangled heatedly with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie over civil liberties. “I’m a different kind of Republican,” Paul said near the end of the two-hour debate. He may be understating the problem. Paul is actually a Libertarian, and a principled one, be he’s stuck in a binary political system. He did get off one of the best lines of the night, though, while turning a gay marriage question into a question about religious freedom and the Second Amendment: “I don’t want my religion, or my guns, registered in Washington.”

Paul's basic problem is simple:  he is a libertarian in a party that does not have a significant libertarian wing. His father, Ron Paul, ran twice for president but never won a single primary.  In 2014, Pew reported that only about 12 percent of Republicans identified as libertarians, and many of them did not have consistently libertarian issue positions:

Libertarianism is associated with limited government involvement in the social sphere. In this regard, self-described libertarians are somewhat more supportive of legalizing marijuana than the public overall (65% vs. 54%).

But there are only slight differences between libertarians and the public in views of the acceptability of homosexuality. And they are about as likely as others to favor allowing the police “to stop and search anyone who fits the general description of a crime suspect” (42% of libertarians, 41% of the public).

Similarly, self-described libertarians do not differ a great deal from the public in opinions about foreign policy. Libertarianism is generally associated with a less activist foreign policy, yet a greater share of self-described libertarians (43%) than the public (35%) think “it is best for the future of our country to be active in world affairs.”
...

An alternative way to identify libertarians is the process used to create the Pew Research Center’s political typology, released in June (for more on how the political typology was created, read our explainer in Fact Tank). That study used a statistical technique called “cluster analysis” to sort people into homogeneous groups, based on their responses to 23 questions about a variety of social and political values.

None of the seven groups identified by the 2014 political typology closely resembled libertarians, and, in fact, self-described libertarians can be found in all seven. Their largest representation is among the group we call Business Conservatives; 27% of this group says the term libertarian describes them well. Business Conservatives generally support limited government, have positive views of business and the U.S. economic system, and are more moderate than other conservative groups on the issue of homosexuality. However, they are also supportive of an activist foreign policy and do not have a libertarian profile on issues of civil liberties.

(A slightly different version of this post is at the Besssette-Pitney textbook blog.)

Rand Paul Aide Quits

Aaron Blake reports at The Washington Post that Rand Paul aide Jack Hunter has resigned.

Hunter said in an e-mail to the Daily Caller that he will resume his career as a pundit and that he didn’t want to be a distraction for the senator, who is considered a top potential 2016 presidential candidate. Paul’s office has confirmed his departure to Post Politics.
...
Paul stood by Hunter two weeks ago, saying his past comments were “absolutely stupid,” but that he didn’t think Hunter held any racist views.

“If I thought he was a white supremacist, he would be fired immediately,” Paul said.

Hunter formerly described himself as the “Southern Avenger” and wore a Confederate flag mask. He also wrote about raising a toast the John Wilkes Booth and was an activist for secession.

His past writings were first revealed by the Washington Free Beacon.

Last week, Michael Gerson wrote:

Paul’s attempt to dismiss the matter has only added to the damage. “It was a shock radio job,”the senator explains.“He was doing wet T-shirt contests. But can a guy not have a youth and stuff? People try to say I smoked pot one time, and I wasn’t fit for office.”

But Hunter’s offenses were committed as an adult. They included defending a regime founded on slavery, comparing Abraham Lincoln to Saddam Hussein and raising (in Hunter’s words) a “personal toast every May 10 to celebrate John Wilkes Booth’s birthday.” This was not a single, ideological puff but rather a decade spent mainlining moonlight and magnolias in the ruins of Tara.

Paul is rumored to be considering a 2016 presidential run. So his dismissal of the sympathetic treatment of a presidential assassin as the equivalent of sponsoring a wet T-shirt contest requires some explanation. The easier political course for Paul would have been to cut this embarrassing tie and reduce the damage. He still might be forced to do so. But his reluctance is revealing.

This would not be the first time that Paul has heard secessionist talk in his circle of confederates — I mean, associates. His father has attacked Lincoln for causing a “senseless” war and ruling with an “iron fist.” Others allied with Paulism in various think tanks and Web sites have accused Lincoln of mass murder and treason. For Rand Paul to categorically repudiate such views and all who hold them would be to excommunicate a good portion of his father’s movement.

In the past, Paul expressed misgivings about civil rights legislation. 

The Republican Rules for 2016

William March reports at The Tampa Tribune:

The Republican Party's Convention Rules Committee on Friday passed stricter regulations, aimed directly at Florida, to prevent states from setting early presidential primary dates that violate the party's schedule.

Under the new rules, if the Florida Legislature breaks the calendar in 2016 as it did this year, the state would lose all but 12 of its delegates to the next GOP convention.

This year, Florida's delegation was reduced from 99 to 50, although the other 49 were allowed to remain as "non-voting guests" with all the delegate privileges and perks except voting.

This year's penalty, committee members noted, wasn't enough to prevent the Florida Legislature from setting the Jan. 31 date for the primary, nor to prevent the candidates from campaigning here.

James Hohmann reports at Politico:

The Republican Party changed a series of rules Friday to significantly increase Mitt Romney’s power over the GOP and make it harder for insurgent presidential candidates to compete in future elections.

After Ron Paul used the convention process to win the most delegates in some of the states where he lost the popular vote, the Republican convention rules committee passed a measure to ensure that a candidate who wins a statewide caucus or primary ultimately controls its delegation and gets more leverage over picking his delegates. The shift to binding primaries and caucuses means the end of so-called beauty contests.The Romney campaign’s move will mean less consequential state conventions — lower-profile events that typically follow the popular vote caucuses and primaries. It also might fend off potential primary challenges from the right in 2016 should Romney win this November.

Ron Paul Followers and Congressional Elections

At The New York Times, Jonathan Weisman writes:

Armed with an inherited fortune and a devotion to Ron Paul, John Ramsey, a 21-year-old college student from Nacogdoches, Tex., plunged into a little-watched Republican House primary in Northern Kentucky this spring to promote his version of freedom.

More than $560,000 later, Mr. Ramsey’s chosen standard-bearer, Thomas H. Massie, a Republican, cruised to victory Tuesday in the race to select a successor to Representative Geoff Davis, a Republican who is retiring.

The saturation advertising campaign waged by Mr. Ramsey’s “super PAC,” Liberty for All, may be the most visible manifestation of a phenomenon catching the attention of Republicans from Maine to Nevada.

With their favorite having lost the nomination for president, Mr. Paul’s dedicated band of youthful supporters are setting their sights down-ballot and swarming lightly guarded Republican redoubts like state party conventions in an attempt to infiltrate the top echelons of the party.
...

In Minnesota, Paulites stormed the Republican gathering in St. Cloud last weekend, bumping aside two conventional Republican candidates to choose one of their own, Kurt P. Bills, a high school economics teacher, to challenge Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, this fall.

Backers of Mr. Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas, crashed Republican conventions in Iowa, Maine, Minnesota and Nevada in recent weeks, snatching up the lion’s share of delegate slots for the Republican National Convention in Tampa this August, a potential headache for the national party and its presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney.

And Paulite candidates for Congress are sprouting up from Florida to Virginia to Colorado, challenging sitting Republicans and preaching the gospel of radically smaller government, an end to the Federal Reserve, restraints on Bush-era antiterrorism laws and a pullback from foreign military adventures.

Ron Paul Sorta Suspends

At The Washington Post, Jonathan Bernstein comments on Ron Paul's decision not to campaign in primaries anymore:

Rep. Ron Paul is sort of, in a sense, ramping down his presidential campaign; he’s not going to campaign anymore in the states that still haven’t held primaries or first-stage caucuses, although he’ll continue to fight for delegates where the rules allow for contested caucuses and conventions.

Dave Weigel suspects that the timing may be related to coming primaries in Paul’s Texas and his son Rep. Rand Paul’s Kentucky; contesting and getting clobbered in those states might be an embarrassment for the libertarian crusader. Could be, but I think it’s more straightforward. With the media no longer paying any attention to the primaries, there’s really not much of a point in maximizing vote share. Suppose that hard campaigning could lift the Paul vote from 5 percent to 20 percent; how exactly does that do him any good if no one is paying attention?
...
My best guess? Ron Paul pushes for votes on a few platform issues, and settles for platform committee losses on most of them but gets one or two minor victories, with something about the Fed probably the most likely. After that, his delegates then behave themselves in Florida but do wind up trying to generate some favorable publicity for him (and Rand Paul) without doing anything to harm Mitt Romney. And since reporters will be looking for stories, they’ll succeed, at least to some extent.

Keep an eye on the platform.  A number of Romney delegates may be sympathetic to Paul's position on the Fed and other issues.  In 1988 and 1992, by way of comparison, a number of delegates committed to George H.W. Bush were actually supporters of the Christian right.  The Bush campaign had to keep a close watch on the platform committee lest it provide ammunition to the Democrats.  The Romney campaign would be wise to do likewise.

Cost Per Vote, Cost Per Delegate

At National Journal, Major Garrett does the math:

The Paul math goes like this: According to his latest filing with the Federal Election Commission, Paul has spent $32,766,465. He's received 1,079,753 votes for a cost-per-vote total of $30.35. He's won 66 delegates for a cost-per-delegate total of $496,461.

Doug Wead, a senior Paul adviser offered the following:

"The delegate counts, such as those promoted by the New York Times and The Associated Press are pure media fiction. So your delegate-per-dollar is skewed. For example, they (NYT and AP) say the delegate count in Iowa is Santorum 14, Romney 12 and Paul 1. We have one delegate in Iowa? Hmm. I don't want to reveal too much, but our delegate strategy is doing just fine and it is worth every dollar."

Maybe so. But the raw numbers based on available delegate counts don't look good for Paul.

Romney's cost-per-vote (CPV) total is $16.18. His cost-per-delegate (CPD) is $118,218.
The math: $66,793,395 spent with 4,127,917 votes and 565 delegates.

Santorum's CPV is an amazing $4.56 cents. That's just over a quarter of Romney's and about a seventh of Paul's.

Santorum's CPD is $50,873.

He's spent $13,023,588 and won 2,850,546 votes and 256 delegates. Imagine if Romney or Paul were this efficient? Imagine if the federal government or a private business was this efficient? 

Wednesday Math

Santorum got the headlines for winning Mississippi and Alabama. But  Romney seems to have won more delegates for the night.  From this morning's RCP count:

				R	S	G	P
Alabama		50		11	19	12	0
Mississippi		40		12	13	12	0
Hawaii		20		8	3	1	0
American Samoa		9		9	0	0	0
Total				40	35	25

Romney screwed up by letting expectations rise about Mississippi and Alabama.  But the result vindicates his decision to follow the Obama 2008 strategy of steadily building up a delegate count by getting a big chunk of big primaries and overwhelming chunks of smaller caucuses.

Byron York lays out Gingrich's strategy: keep Romney from winning 1,144 delegates and then overtake him in a contested convention.

"Our goal first is to keep Romney well below 1,000," Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said an hour before Gingrich addressed a small crowd of disappointed supporters gathered at the Wynfrey Hotel. "It doesn't have to be 1,000, or 1,050 -- it has to be below 1,100." If Gingrich succeeds, Hammond continued, "This will be the first time in our party in modern politics that we're going to go to the convention floor."
...
To buttress the case, top Gingrich aide Randy Evans sent a memo to reporters on Tuesday noting that the Republican race is about to reach its precise mid-point in the awarding of delegates. By the time the race reaches Louisiana on March 24, about half of the required 1,144 delegates will have been awarded. Will Romney win at least half of those, or 572 delegates? If not, then what is the case that Romney is the inevitable nominee?

"Mathematically, the numbers are just not there," says the Evans memo. "Instead, with four candidates remaining, the GOP nomination now moves into uncharted waters, with history in the making."

The Romney campaign disputes Gingrich's calculation: "His math is wrong -- we've won OVER 50 percent of the delegates thus far," writes one Romney aide. But the fact is, Romney's lead is not overwhelming, as long as a rival candidate is thinking not about overtaking Romney but just about keeping him from reaching 1,144. Whatever the case, Gingrich's delegate argument is a rationale for his staying in the race, even after losing two states, Alabama and Mississippi, that some Gingrich advisors called must-win, at least before he didn't win them.

GOP Delegate Math

As a previous post noted, the nomination process is about arithmetic, not just psychology. At Frontloading HQ, Josh Putnam says that neither Santorum nor Gingrich can get the 1144 delegates necessary for the nomination.

FHQ has been saying since our Very Rough Estimate of the delegate counts a couple of weeks ago that Romney is the only candidate who has a chance to get there. But, of course, I have not yet shown my work. No, it isn't mathematically impossible, but it would take either Gingrich or Santorum over-performing their established level of support in the contests already in the history books to such an extent that it is all but mathematically impossible. Santorum, for instance, has averaged 24.2% of the vote in all the contests. Since (and including) his February 7 sweep, he is averaging 34.7% of the vote. That is an improvement, but it is not nearly enough to get the former Pennsylvania senator within range of the 1144 delegates necessary to win the Republican nomination....The bottom line here is that Romney has enough of a delegate advantage right now and especially coming out of today's contests that it is very unlikely that anyone will catch him, much less catch him and get to 1144. The latter seems particularly far-fetched given the above scenarios. And that is a problem in this race. Well, a problem for Gingrich and Santorum anyway. If all either of them can take to voters is an argument that all they can do is prevent Romney from getting to 1144, then neither has a winning strategy. That sort of strategy has a half life; one that will grow less effective as, in this case, Romney approaches 1144. Complicating this scenario even further for Gingrich and Santorum is the fact that if neither can get to 1144 or even close to it, neither is all that likely to be the candidate to emerge as the nominee at any -- unlikely though it may be -- contested convention.

At The Washington Examiner, Timothy Carney agrees:

Mitt Romney may be incapable of delivering a knockout punch, but as long as he stays on his feet, he's nearly guaranteed to win on points.

Republican nomination battles used to be punch-out affairs -- win enough early primaries, and your opponent would be forced to quit because he couldn't raise enough money. But in the era of super-PACs, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum can stay in the race as long as their billionaire patrons, Sheldon Adelson and Foster Friess, keep writing checks. Ron Paul, meanwhile, has an army of idealistic supporters who pony up $50 each week that he keeps campaigning....Counting delegates this early is an imprecise art. Some delegates are not bound, and the early caucuses did not actually allocate delegates to the national convention -- that will occur in state conventions this spring or summer. The Associated Press' estimate puts Romney currently at 415 delegates, to Santorum's 176, with Gingrich and Paul controlling 105 and 47, respectively. A candidate needs a majority of all delegates in order to win the nomination, which this year comes to 1,144.

Two of the remaining winner-take-all states will be uncontested, Utah and Pennsylvania. Romney is all but guaranteed to win Utah's 40 delegates on June 26, and so if Santorum win his home state's 72 delegates on April 24, his net gain is 32 -- leaving him about 200 behind Romney, with about 1430 remaining. The remaining states are scattered geographically and demographically, distributed evenly between Romney's base (the Northeast), Santorum's (the heartland), as well as the Romney-leaning West and the Gingrich-Santorum South.

If Romney were to stumble and win only a third of the delegates in the remaining states, Santorum would have to win more than half of all the delegates in order to pull ahead, meaning that Gingrich and Paul together would have to be held below 16 percent. To date, not even counting Romney's blowout in Massachusetts, Romney has won nearly half of the delegates while Santorum has won about one-fourth. That means the only path to Romney losing requires Santorum to double his past haul, while Romney drops by about 70 percent. That's not likely.

Volatility

At National Journal, Alex Roarty writes:

Calling the 2012 Republican presidential primary the most volatile for the GOP in generations isn't political hyperbole - it's empirical fact.

Since the start 2011, seven different candidates or potential contenders could claim to be the Republican race's front-runner, according to polling from Gallup. The list includes Mike Huckabee,Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. In at least one Gallup poll, each claimed at least a share of the lead in the GOP race. (Huckabee and Trump are the only two who never officially declared themselves a candidate.)

I wrote in October, when Cain's campaign was at its peak and before Gingrich's and Santorum's rise, how the contest had already seen the most upheaval since 1964. That year, four different people - Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, Henry Cabot Lodge and Barry Goldwater -- were leading the race in at least one poll. A fifth man, William Scranton, surged to within a point of the lead two weeks before the party's convention.

Santorum Surges Again

Pew finds that Santorum leads Romney 30-28 percent among Republicans and leaners:

Rick Santorum's has pulled into a virtual tie with Mitt Romney in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, according to latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Feb. 8-12. Barack Obama holds sizable leads over Santorum, Romney and Newt Gingrich in general election match-ups.

Santorum is now the clear favorite of Republican and GOP-leaning voters who agree with the Tea Party, as well as white evangelical Republicans. Currently, 42% of Tea Party Republican voters favor Santorum, compared with just 23% who back Romney. Santorum holds an almost identical advantage among white evangelical Republican voters (41% to 23%).

Romney holds leads over Santorum among non-Tea Party Republicans (34% to 19%) and moderate and liberal Republicans (34% to 20%).

Gallup's findings are similar:

Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are now statistically tied for the lead in Republican registered voters' preferences for the 2012 GOP nomination -- 32% to 30%, respectively. Newt Gingrich, who led the field as recently as late January, is now third, favored by 16%, while Ron Paul's support has dwindled to 8%, the lowest level yet seen for him in 2012.

Ditto CBS/New York Times.

Nevada

Mitt Romney won the Nevada caucuses by better than a two to one margin over Newt Gingrich.  The entrance poll showed him winning all voter groups except:  those with no religion, those who picked "true conservative" as the most important candidate quality, and self-identified independents.  They went for Ron Paul. and those At the Daily Mail, Toby Harnden writes:

Another loss, another failure by Newt Gingrich to concede a race to the winner, Mitt Romney. Rather than deliver a speech, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives instead opted to hold a press conference to unveil a supposed new campaign strategy.

The weakness of his position during the rambling 22-minute event was underlined by the fact that he had to begin by denying he was planning to drop out. 'I'm not going to withdraw,' he said. 'I'm actually pretty happy with where we are.'

It has been reported that he would announce he was 'going positive' for the rest of the campaign. Instead, he unloaded a stream of peevish bile about Romney, quoting everyone from George Soros to Charles Krauthammer.

Gingrich's new strategy? To achieve 'a series of victories' that would put him in a situation of 'parity' with Romney after the Texas primary, currently scheduled for April 3rd but likely to be delayed by litigation and where a massive winner-takes-all haul of 155 delegates are at stake.

Sooner or later, however, Gingrich will need to start winning again - and before April. He's not on the ballot in Missouri on Tuesday, when Romney is favoured in Colorado and Minnesota looks like a toss-up. Then we have Michigan and Arizona at the end of February, where Romney is the heavy favourite.

A few issues of timing. Romney gained from Nevada's decision to go early.  On the other hand, turnout suffered because the caucuses took place the day before the Super Bowl, when people (especially bettors) were thinking about things other than politics.  The possible delay of the Texas primary -- which could hurt Gingrich -- results from litigation involving legislative and congressional elections, not the presidential race.  Redistricting represents federalism in action.

A cautionary note from The Las Vegas Sun:

Mitt Romney’s easy victory in Nevada’s Republican presidential caucuses might, in the long run, be less important than the fact that a surprising number of Republicans who could have participated Saturday chose to stay home.

Republicans’ disappointing turnout foreshadows difficulty energizing GOP voters in Nevada, a key swing state in November’s general election.

Turnout was unlikely to match 2008, when 44,000 Republicans participated in Nevada’s caucuses. Complete figures were not released by the state party as of 10 p.m. Saturday, an indication of a lackluster showing.

“It was less than what we had planned for,” Clark County caucus Director Michael Chamberlain said on KNPR.

DMR Poll: Romney Leading, Santorum Gaining

The Des Moines Register reports:

Mitt Romney tops the latest Des Moines Register Iowa Poll in the closing days before the Iowa caucuses, but Ron Paul and Rick Santorum are poised within striking distance.

The poll, conducted Tuesday through Friday, shows support at 24 percent for Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts; 22 percent for Paul, a Texas congressman; and 15 percent for the surging Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.

But the four-day results don’t reflect just how quickly momentum is shifting in a race that has remained highly fluid for months. If the final two days of polling are considered separately, Santorum rises to second place, with 21 percent, pushing Paul to third, at 18 percent. Romney remains the same, at 24 percent.

“Momentum’s name is Rick Santorum,” said the Register’s pollster, J. Ann Selzer.
Another sign of the race’s volatility: 41 percent of likely caucusgoers say they could still be persuaded to change their minds.

IN IA, 45% of Ads Are Anti-Newt

At CNN, Kevin Liptak reports:

Anyone seeking an explanation of GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's recent drop in Iowa polls may find answers in a new analysis of Iowa political advertising.

The survey, conducted by Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group, finds 45% of all political ads in Iowa have been attack spots against Gingrich. Only 6% were supportive of the former House speaker.

 Gingrich's opponents were quick to pile on after he became the front-runner in December. A super PAC supportive of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney carried out a sustained assault on Gingrich's record, saying the former House speaker "has more baggage than the airlines."

Other candidates, like Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, produced ads that slammed Gingrich for being a Washington insider who was paid to influence votes after he left Congress. Gingrich has denied those charges.

Good Gallup Numbers for Romney, So-So for Obama

Gallup reports:

Mitt Romney has edged ahead of Newt Gingrich, 27% to 23%, for the national lead among Republican voters for the first time since Gallup Daily tracking of the Republican race began on Dec. 1. Ron Paul remains in deep third place with 11% of the GOP vote, followed by Rick Perry at 8%.

Former Speaker of the House Gingrich began December with a dominant lead over the rest of the field with 37% support, compared with Romney's 22% and single-digit percentages for all other candidates. Gingrich's support began to fall after the first week of December, landing at his current 23% for the five days of interviewing conducted Dec. 22-23 and Dec. 26-28.

The collapse in Gingrich's lead has been accompanied by slight gains for other candidates, as well as a small increase in the percentage of Republicans who don't have a specific choice for their party's nomination.

After a brief bounce coinciding with the holidays, some good economic figures, and the GOP's payroll-tax blunder, President Obama's approval rating is back underwater: 50 percent disapproval, 41 percent approval.

Gallup also reports:

Americans perceive Jon Huntsman, Mitt Romney, and Ron Paul as closest to themselves ideologically, and Michele Bachmann and Barack Obama as furthest away.

A USA Today/Gallup poll asked Americans to rate their own ideology -- and the ideology of the eight major presidential candidates -- on a 5-point scale with 1 being very liberal and 5 being very conservative. Americans' mean score on this scale is 3.3, meaning the average American is slightly to the right of center ideologically. Huntsman's score matches that at 3.3, but that mean rating excludes the 45% of Americans who did not have an opinion of Huntsman. Of the better known candidates, Romney's and Paul's 3.5 scores are closest to the average American's ideology.

...

Obama's mean ideology rating ends up furthest away from Americans' own mean score because Republicans place him far to the left, with an average of 1.7, compared with 2.5 among independents and 2.8 among Democrats. In fact, Obama is the only candidate whose ideology is perceived very differently by party groups; Republicans, Democrats, and independents generally perceive each of the Republican candidates' views similarly.

Defections from Bachmann

Supporters of Michele Bachmann are deserting her in a very public and very embarrassing way.

From The Des Moines Register:

In a stunning, late-breaking Iowa caucus turnabout, the state chairman for presidential candidate Michele Bachmann ditched her campaign Wednesday night to endorse Ron Paul, a rival in the race for the GOP nomination.

The defection of Kent Sorenson, an Iowa state senator, came just six days before Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, and caught the Bachmann campaign by surprise. Sorenson had chaired Bachmann’s caucus efforts here for months, and even attended a Bachmann event in Indianola on Wednesday afternoon just hours before appearing at a Paul rally in Des Moines to announce his endorsement.

“I believe we’re at a turning point in this campaign,” Sorenson said in his announcement at the Paul rally “… I thought it was my duty to come to his aid, just like he came to my aid during my Senate race, which was a very nasty race.”

Sorenson, an Indianola Republican, was elected to the state Senate in 2010 with support from Paul and his legion of Iowa backers. His announcement was greeted with sustained applause from a crowd of roughly 500.

From The Daily:

A political action committee which had planned to support Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign has very quietly defected to Mitt Romney — and it's spending big on his behalf.

Citizens for a Working America, the so-called Super PAC which aired TV ads against a Democratic congressional candidate last year, had indicated earlier this year that it was backing the Minnesota congresswoman in the GOP nominating contest. But the group instead made a $475,000 Iowa ad buy on Christmas Eve in support of Romney, according to Federal Election Commission data published today.

The so-called independent expenditure was listed as supporting Romney's candidacy, and an Iowa political operative who has seen the ad confirmed to The Daily that it's a 30-second positive spot about the former Massachusetts governor that doesn't mention any other candidate.

Former Aide Criticizes Ron Paul

At Right Wing News, former Ron Paul staffer Eric Dondero writes that Paul is neither racist nor anti-Semitic, but....

He is however, most certainly Anti-Israel, and Anti-Israeli in general. He wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations. His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the America taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.
...
 
It’s his foreign policy that’s the problem; not so much some stupid and whacky things on race and gays he may have said or written in the past.

Ron Paul is most assuredly an isolationist. He denies this charge vociferously. But I can tell you straight out, I had countless arguments/discussions with him over his personal views. For example, he strenuously does not believe the United States had any business getting involved in fighting Hitler in WWII. He expressed to me countless times, that “saving the Jews,” was absolutely none of our business. When pressed, he often times brings up conspiracy theories like FDR knew about the attacks of Pearl Harbor weeks before hand, or that WWII was just “blowback,” for Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy errors, and such.
...

There is much more information I could give you on the sheer lunacy of his foreign policy views. Let me just concentrate on one in specific. And I will state this with absolute certainty:

Ron Paul was opposed to the War in Afghanistan, and to any military reaction to the attacks of 9/11.

He did not want to vote for the resolution. He immediately stated to us staffers, me in particular, that Bush/Cheney were going to use the attacks as a precursor for “invading” Iraq. He engaged in conspiracy theories including perhaps the attacks were coordinated with the CIA, and that the Bush administration might have known about the attacks ahead of time. He expressed no sympathies whatsoever for those who died on 9/11, and pretty much forbade us staffers from engaging in any sort of memorial expressions, or openly asserting pro-military statements in support of the Bush administration.

Ron Paul and the John Birch Society, 2010

Ron Paul's relationship to the John Birch Society is not some long-abandoned fling. David Frum, among others, notes connections of a more recent and seamy variety.  Also see this speech to a JBS luncheon on August 20, 2010:

                     

Part 2 here and Part 3 here.


In 2008, William Buckley recalled the 1962 National Review article that effectively excommunicated the JBS from the conservative movement:

Unless Welch himself disowned his operative fallacy, National Review would oppose any support for the society. 

“How would you define the Birch fallacy?” Jay Hall asked.

“The fallacy,” I said, “is the assumption that you can infer subjective intention from objective consequence: we lost China to the Communists, therefore the President of the United States and the Secretary of State wished China to go to the Communists.”

“I like that,” Goldwater said.

What would Russell Kirk do? He was straightforward. “Me? I’ll just say, if anybody gets around to asking me, that the guy is loony and should be put away.”

“Put away in Alaska?” I asked, mock-seriously. The wisecrack traced to Robert Welch’s expressed conviction, a year or so earlier, that the state of Alaska was being prepared to house anyone who doubted his doctrine that fluoridated water was a Communist-backed plot to weaken the minds of the American public.
_____________

In the next issue of my magazine, National Review, I published a 5,000-word excoriation of Welch:

How can the John Birch Society be an effective political instrument while it is led by a man whose views on current affairs are, at so many critical points . . . so far removed from common sense? That dilemma weighs on conservatives across America. . . . The underlying problem is whether conservatives can continue to acquiesce quietly in a rendition of the causes of the decline of the Republic and the entire Western world which is false, and, besides that, crucially different in practical emphasis from their own.

Ron Paul Videos

Ron Paul has denied knowing much about his old newsletter, which contained inflammatory language about race.  But Andrew Kaczynski has posted video of a 1995 C-SPAN interview in which Paul discussed the newsletter  (at 1:40):



 He has additional video at Buzzfeed:

 

Gingrich, Perry Fail to Make VA Ballot

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has failed to qualify for Virginia's presidential primary, the Republican Party of Virginia announced early Saturday.

The state GOP announced at 2:40 a.m. that Gingrich, like Texas Gov. Rick Perry, had failed to amass the required 10,000 signatures of registered voters to qualify for the March 6 contest.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, certified earlier Friday by the state GOP, will be the only candidates on the ballot.

The stunning result means Gingrich — who lives in McLean, led among Virginia's GOP primary voters in the latest poll and is vying with Romney for national front-runner status — will not get a chance to compete with Romney in the state's primary.

Gingrich's list of Iowa supporters -- famously full of errors and inaccuracies -- foreshadowed his failure in Virginia. Sweating the details has never been his strength.

Romney and Gingrich Have an Authenticity Problem

Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake write at The Washington Post:

A bare majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents see former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as willing to say what they actually believe, according to a new Washington Post-ABC-News poll.

Call it the authenticity gap.

Just 52 percent of Republicans in the survey say they can rely on Gingrich either a “great deal”(21 percent) or a “good amount” (31 percent) to “say what he really believes.” The numbers are even less encouraging for Romney, with just 16 percent saying they feel they can rely on him “a great deal” to voice his actual opinions and 35 percent saying they trust him a “good amount” to speak his mind.

Those numbers compare unfavorably to Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who is the only candidate aside from Romney and Gingrich who clocks double digits in the national ballot test. Fully two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they have either a “great deal” or a “good amount” of faith that they can rely on Paul to say what he believes.The trust issue comes up repeatedly in the data. While six in 10 say they would vote for either Gingrich or Romney, just 35 percent say that either Romney (22 percent) or Gingrich (13 percent) is the “most honest and trustworthy candidate” in the field.

The data provides one — though not the only — explanation for why the frontrunners, particularly Romney, have been unable to close the deal with voters as of yet.