In the aftermath of the Iowa straw poll this past weekend, the Ron Paul campaign has been issuing bitter complaints about the nature of the coverage of the event and their candidate. They are angry about the fact that despite Paul’s near victory at Ames, the press treats him with the same disdain they reserve for candidates who didn’t do nearly as well as the Texas congressman. The Paul camp thinks their man ought to be listed among the frontrunners. As far as they are concerned, this is a clear case of media bias against libertarians.
Unfortunately for the extremist candidate and his vocal fans the press is, at least in this one case, completely right. Though Paul has a devoted following, a lot of cash and will undoubtedly win some protest votes wherever his name appears on the ballot, his chances of winning the Republican presidential nomination are as minimal as those of Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Thaddeus McCotter, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman and maybe even less than some of them. If the press prefers to devote far more of their resources to covering the Republicans who have a reasonable shot at the nomination that is simply a case of giving their audiences what they want: more information about someone who might actually become president.
If that seems unfair to the libertarian crowd that follows Paul around cheering his every irresponsible statement, they’re just going to have to learn to live with it. If anything, Paul gets more than his fair share of attention at times simply because at every debate his outrageous statements can tend to be the focus of comment even though few outside of his immediate circle take him seriously. And that is as it should be.
At the Ames debate last week, for instance, Paul launched into an embarrassing rant in which this supposed apostle of liberty served as an apologist for one of the worst tyrannies on the planet: Iran. He not only denied that the ayatollahs wanted a nuclear weapon but rationalized their desire to do so and, like the regime itself, placed all the blame for tension with Tehran on the United States. As this bizarre passage illustrated, Paul’s wacky right-wing isolationism has morphed into nothing more than a variant of traditional leftist anti-American rhetoric.
That he holds obnoxious views that are completely out of step with the Republican mainstream as well as most Americans is not by itself a reason for the press to give him short shrift. But it is a reflection of the fact that Paul is a mere gadfly whose candidacy exists solely to promote his ideas. His good showing at the straw poll was merely a function of the fact that he has a strong cadre of supporters who are willing to show up and vote at a staged event.
While he will always get equal time in the debates and his activities should be noted, the notion that he should in any way be treated as a serious contender for the nomination or the presidency is absurd. Though he will get votes and deserves, as do all candidates, a hearing, he should be treated as the embarrassing outlier that he is and nothing more.
