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Ron Paul is such a dilemma for many liberals because he doesn’t fit nicely into the current narrow political continuum. It is easy for liberals to ignore how bad Democrats are on many issues because Republicans are almost always equally as bad on those issues or marginally worse. This makes comparing a Democrat to a Republican from the standpoint of a liberal incredibly easy.
Paul, by being way better than Democrats on some issues and way worse on other issues, forces progressives to actually think. They are confronted with the question of what policies are more important to them. They are made to face the reality that on some issues the objective horribleness of the Democratic Party only masks the fact that the GOP position is marginally worse.
The way things normally work
Both parties tend to have surprisingly high amount of agreement on a lot of horrible stuff (foreign wars, drug war, FISA, etc…) and some great stuff (slavery is wrong, first amendment is good, etc…). The areas where the two parties do show some level of disagreement (such as abortion, gay rights, the level of taxes the rich should pay, level of public education spending, Medicare’s design, etc…) often follow on a rather narrow section of all theoretical political discourse.
It is not really that Democrats are good and Republicans are bad when it comes to policy. It is just easy for liberals to frame these things as being that “the Democrats as good and the Republicans as bad” because although the two parties do agree on a fair amount, when they differ the GOP is normally 20 percent worse on those issue than the Democrats. This dynamic makes it easy to hide that there is a whole spectrum of possible political debate being ignored. While the GOP being 20 percent worse on an issue may make the Democrats look good, it doesn’t change the fact even the Democrats’ position is terrible.
Why Ron Paul is different
I’ve created a visual aid. This is only two dimensional to show politics isn’t linear. This should probably be a 50 dimensional matrix, but that is impossible for people to see.
It is easy for liberals to depict Obama as good when compared to Mitt Romney. They tend to share a lot of the same terrible policy positions. The Obama campaign even takes pride in talking how much they are alike on the issue of health care. Where they don’t agree, Romney’s positions are almost always marginally worse than Obama’s. This does not actually make Obama good though, just marginally better than Romney. Of course that nuance is easily lost when faced with a binary choice in the heat of a campaign.
Ron Paul is different. When it comes to some issues like the drug war, military spending and NDAA, he is dramatically better than Obama. The fact that Paul is taking these stances lays bare just how awful some of Obama’s positions are. It forces Obama supporters to acknowledge the unpleasant truth that some of Obama’s actions are evil and repugnant. On the flip side, Paul is way worse than Obama when it comes to many other issues such as child labor laws, Medicare and pollution regulation.
In a Romney versus Obama fight liberals can quickly just point to ‘Obama is better’, even if it is only 15 percent better on just 20 percent of the issues.
To decide if Obama is better than Paul you must first face the reality that Obama is terrible on some issues and then weigh that against the issues he is as good on, or at least better than, Paul. It forces liberals to do the hard work, prioritize what they claim to believe in. In this situation, to defend Obama, you most defend many of his horrific positions as an acceptable sacrifice for a better all-around package.
This is why you get the ideological versus the tribalistic divide on the left over the reaction to Paul’s long-shot candidacy. Progressives who put policy first can appreciate Paul serving as a mirror that accentuates some of the terrible faults of the Democratic Party. The hope is that the shames of being exposed will eventually lead to reform. The Democratic loyalists dislike Paul for a similar reason. For them this mirror is simply making their Democratic leaders look bad.
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I like the idea of charting the candidates in two dimensions, but I think the charting of Romeny and Obama being in different places with Obama slightly better on both dimensions is a mistake.
It’s only true if we pay attention to their rhetoric. In practice there will be little space between where a Romney administration would be and the next Obama adinistration would be.
As the election goes on Obama’s rhetoric will move more and more towards the Left and lots of “progressives” will be fooled into thinking this is a reality. Right now conservatives in the G.O.P. are not being fooled and doing their best to find a true conservative candidate to rally around. But as soon as it’s obvious Romney is the candidate and Fox and the radio voices start promoting him, they too will allow themselves to be fooled.
Oh well.
The real difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that they are two different teams, two groups both vying for political power so they can reap the benefits from them. There is no real difference in what they think is good foreign policy or good domestic economic policy. But they have found that the way to excite the base of their respective teams is to have this rhetorical difference.
The real believes never face unpleasant truths. They will run you around in circles avoiding those truths. That is why people can say: “Sure Paul opposes these various wars, but he got there the wrong way so it doesn’t count.” And that’s why I’ll continue to support Obama, so there.
“The Ron Paul Enigma” is not that complicated. An arch-conservative who uses populist talk to get elected. The extent of Ron Paul’s usefulness of bringing up issues in a debate that might not have been discussed is no more useful than what Dennis Kucinich did in the Democrat primaries in years past. The American public gets duped by the same b.s every selection cycle. Progressives who think Paul is their savior are no better than Obamabots. Professional grifters are all the same.
I agree. The problem is systemic. Therefore, the current failed system must be ended (or upended) and a new and better system must be implemented.
I will only vote for a candidate who promises to end the war on drugs,,, especially the war on weed.
No others need apply.
Bravo, Jon. The lesser of two evils is still evil.
@Ironcomments:
“An arch-conservative who uses populist talk to get elected. . . ”
The point of this exercise was to try to learn to think in more than one dimension. You flunk.
Good chart. A Romney administration will be pretty much identical to Obama’s continuation of Bush policies with some worse stuff and hypocricy thrown in. Don’t listen to disingenous shit-eating democrats who are blind to everything outside of their party loyalty. Obama is a far-right war criminal, corporatist loser.
What percentage of Democrats supported Kucinich in the last Democratic primary? That’s how many progressive Democrats there are. The participants in the Hilary vs. Obama war are useful idiots for the Oligarchy.
Ron Paul is 76 years old! Would you feel the same about his campaign if he announced Rand Paul as his running mate? Who’s going to be his VP, is the thought that worries me.
Not that it’s a likely issue. I hope.