Julie Borowski should be excited by Rand Paul’s 2016 presidential campaign. The 26-year-old blogger has become something of an Internet celebrity through clever Web videos giving her libertarian take on current events. She was inspired by Ron Paul’s two Republican runs for the White House.
Borowski isn’t what National Review’s Jonah Goldberg calls an angry “kick-the-cat” libertarian — and not just because she loves cats and would never initiate force against one. She believes in winning elections and influencing public policy. She’d like to see libertarianism become more relevant than it was during either of Ron Paul’s presidential bids. She’s also fairly socially conservative.
Yet in an open letter to the Kentucky senator last month, Borowski sounded less excited than conflicted about Paul’s campaign. She had reservations about Paul’s recent stands on foreign policy, gay marriage, the war on drugs — fairly significant issues.
“At times, it seems like you’re trying to please two diametrically opposed groups at the same time,” she wrote. “Not only will it prove impossible to win the support of both non-interventionists and defense hawks, but you could end up alienating your passionate early supporters.”
The passage perfectly illustrates Paul’s dilemma. To win, he must bring together the people who were passionate about his father with Republicans who would consider casting a ballot for Scott Walker, Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. To even compete, he must avoid a scenario that alienates too many people in both camps.
Paul’s campaign is also something of a movement-building exercise for the libertarian activists first drawn to his father. The organizational muscle built up in 2008 and 2012 could atrophy in the absence of something to fight for in 2016. And there is still a desire to hear a more libertarian message in the Republican presidential debates.
The role of movement leader interests the younger Paul less than it interested his father. The Kentucky senator is more interested in becoming the leader of the free world. But improving on his dad’s past performances would also help grow the liberty movement.
So far, the evidence that Paul is losing his father’s base is rather thin. No, Rand Paul isn’t polling as well as Ron Paul was at his peak last time around. But he is roughly where the elder Paul was at a comparable point in the last cycle and the field as a whole is much more competitive.
There is also a much ballyhooed poll that showed only 70 percent of Ron Paul delegates to the 2012 Iowa Republican Convention standing with Rand this time around. The fact that the defectors are mainly supporting Cruz and Walker suggests that they aren’t searching for a more dovish candidate.
But these Ron Paul voters don’t have as high a profile as Drew Ivers, who ran the former Texas congressman’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns in Iowa (he did the same for Pat Robertson in 1988 and Pat Buchanan in 1996). Ivers isn’t supporting Rand Paul, complaining, “The strategy of sending a blended message is one that has risk.”
Paul has attempted a delicate balance, but hasn’t always gotten it right. It’s worth noting, however, that I heard many of the same complaints about Paul’s ambition and lack of purity when I profiled him for Reason before he even won the Republican senatorial primary in 2010. A lot of it went away as he was attacked by GOP critics like Rudy Giuliani and Dick Cheney.
Similarly, I suspect when Rubio, Lindsey Graham and John Bolton all go after Paul in the 2016 primary debates, it will clarify that the Kentucky lawmaker is different enough from the rest of the field on foreign policy and civil liberties.
Paul does have to compete for more conventionally conservative voters who need to be reassured that libertarian-leaning Republicans won’t neglect national defense and let communities be overrun by heroin addicts.
Even the sainted Ron Paul respected such sensibilities when he was trying to win congressional races in Texas. After returning to Congress in 1997, the elder Paul told Campaigns & Elections he “had never advocated legalization” just “condemned the federal war on drugs.” His campaign manager insisted the congressman disagreed with the Persian Gulf War but “fully supported our effort once the war was underway.”
So far, most libertarian Republicans seem to be giving Rand Paul the same benefit of the doubt. But even patient and pragmatic libertarian Republican bloggers have their limits.
