…or better entitled, why a third-party run is a really bad idea:
We need 8 years to quietly infiltrate the Republican Party’s county organizations, especially in rural counties where Democrats are dominant. Nobody wants to be a Republicans in in those counties. Ron Paul Republicans should take advantage of this.
No one wanted to be a Republican in the South, 1877-1960. In 1964, Southern conservative Republicans’ patience paid off. Lyndon Johnson lost the South. The Republicans took it and kept it.
This can happen again in counties that are not inner-city counties. Most aren’t.
Ron Paul, as a good Republican, needs to put aside some of his campaign money to put together a post-election team of specialists in winning local elections. They need to set up an online training program for Republican activists who will become the next generation of leaders at the county level.
Great post worth reading. Tom Woods has more on the give and take here.
I have literally been pounding the table on this for the last five years (or more). If the Ron Paul movement or the Tea Party movement really wants success, the “light switch” theory of just-elect-em-and-we-are-done has to go.
It took 80 years for the quasi-socialist left to get us to where we are today. We’re not going to fix it in five months or five years.
We will fix it, however, if we start taking the pragmatic long view and (1) stop the bleeding, (2) reform the way government does business, and (3) start prying out those institutions that have made society utterly reliant upon government by (4) focusing on creating more independent and self-sufficient producers rather than co-dependent consumers.
A third party effort is akin to going back into the shipyard and building a new aircraft carrier. Better to hold a mutiny on the one we’re on now.
More tangentially… while Mitt Romney isn’t my first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, or even my preferable choice, we march with the army we have. Ron Paul supporters need to embrace the idea that only 20% of the GOP (and ideally, 10% of Americans) support the movement.
That means we need converts… and converts are made with persuasion, not force and certainly not kamikaze politics.