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politics and politicians Title: Ron Paul And Libertarians Can't Be Discounted If the Republican Presidential race were decided on intensity of support, Ron Paul would be the frontrunner. Of course it’s not, so Paul’s constant showing of about 10% in nearly every poll allows the political class to treat him as a fringe candidate. Whether or not you agree with his libertarian doctrines, he deserves more regard because of the loyalty he draws from his supporters and the importance of their votes. Handicappers will speculate on who will win Paul’s voters when he is forced to drop out. I don’t expect Paul to drop out, or for very many of his supporters to abandon him when the process comes down to the two-person race many anticipate between Mitt Romney and Herman Cain or Rick Perry. Instead, I could see Paul gaining support, especially if Cain’s candidacy is blown up by sexual harassment charges. Paul is the hero of libertarian voters. He is a physician turned Constitutionalist politician. His first run for President was as a Libertarian in 1988, and ran as a Republican in 2008. Paul has represented a district near Houston that includes Galveston for 12 terms, beginning in 1976 and including two separate breaks in service. He has said he will “never vote for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution.” He opposes foreign interventions (Paul voted against the Iraq War Resolution) and favors withdrawal from the UN and NATO. He opposes NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. Paul has pledged never to raise taxes and or vote to approve a budget deficit. While he has been called “the intellectual Godfather” of the Tea Party movement, he is not the favorite among Tea Party supporters in our IBOPE Zogby polls. Paul’s views on our use of military power may be one reason for that. Instead, Cain is the runaway leader among those who say they are influenced by the Tea Party. Paul’s supporters are more uniquely and proudly libertarian. Our polling samples usually yield just more than 100 voters who identify their ideology as libertarian. That isn’t sufficient for me to cite specific polling numbers for that subset, but it is enough to give us a sense of what they think about all of the candidates, including our incumbent President. Libertarians who approve of Barack Obama and believe he deserves re-election are rare. In match-ups with Cain, Romney or Perry, Obama gets less than 10% of libertarians. Those numbers are predictable, but less interesting than the roughly one-third of libertarians who say they would vote for someone else or not vote at all if the race was between Obama and Romney or Perry. That number becomes smaller if Cain opposes Obama. Those results are from an early October poll, before charges of sexual harassment against Cain. An Oct. 18 poll, also before the Cain accusations, found Paul the expected leader among libertarians, but with Cain not far behind. There are parallels between Paul and the candidacy of Ralph Nader. Yes, Paul is running as a Republican while Nader ran as an independent or on the Green Party line. But in both cases, the support for Paul and Nader is a rejection of both parties. Don’t expect Paul to endorse one of his GOP rivals, or for it to matter very much to libertarians if he did. Instead, the Republican nominee must go to the libertarians with proposals that fit their views. Cain would appear to have the least trouble succeeding with them, probably because he comes to the race as a businessman, not a politician. If Romney is indeed the likely nominee, he would need to move even harder to the right to win the trust of libertarians. The risk of doing so might not be worth the reward in a campaign where Obama will present himself as the centrist running to prevent a right wing takeover of Washington. Paul gets labeled a fringe candidate. But in this era of a closely divided electorate, anyone who commands the allegiance that Paul does from an activist libertarian movement must be accounted for in the political calculus.
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