Well, this is just standard-issue political bluster, but it would be amusing if it could actually happen:
Ron Paul To Everyone But Mitt: Drop Out
Rep. Ron Paul's campaign called on the rest of the Republican field to drop out of the race and unite behind him in order to defeat Mitt Romney.
"We urge Ron Paul's opponents who have been unsuccessfully trying to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney to unite by getting out of the race and uniting behind Paul's candidacy," campaign chair Jesse Benton said in a statement....
Ron Paul can max out at somewhat more than 20 percent of the vote in a multi-candidate field; a one-on-one race would show us that he can max out at pretty much exactly the same point in a two-candidate field. He wouldn't do any better in a two-candidate race than he's doing now, because every Republican who doesn't love him hates him. As Gallup just noted, Republican voters consider Paul the least acceptable nominee of the remaining candidates. He's less acceptable than Huntsman!
And his maximum is going to be even lower in Bible Belt states where they really, really believe in sending troops overseas to kill brown people for Jesus. (Goodbye, South Carolina -- where, by the way, he's never polled higher than 12%.) And he can match his Iowa and New Hampshire results only in states where they let Democrats and independents vote. (Goodbye, Florida, where his poll peak has been 10%.)
I know, I know -- why should I be gleeful at the thought of Paul's demise? After all, I agree with him on some issues, and I don't agree with Romney on any. I certainly shouldn't be cheered by the prospect of an even more decisive Romney rout.
Well, I think the Romney rout is going to be pretty decisive even with the other losers and also-rans in the race, so I don't see much difference there.
I guess it's just that, for thirty years, I've watched my side utterly fail to counter a GOP narrative celebrating overt capitalism-worship, simpleminded tricorn-hat patriotism, and hippie-peacenik bashing, and now I'm watching another narrative develop that my side is also failing to counter, one of even more extreme capitalism-worship and simpleminded tricorn-hat patriotism ... and it's being sold successfully to hippie peaceniks.
And all it's going to do is lead to bigger holes in the social safety net, and probably no real retreat from militarism or the drug war, because there already exists a large bloc of elected officials who are pretty far along the Paul road on repealing twentieth-century social welfare, and there's hardly anybody on the same page with Paul on the issues on which he's on my side. Paulism just makes Romney and the rest of the GOP more brutal in their assault on economic liberalism; it doesn't make drug and foreign policy any more progressive, or at least it hasn't.
So, yeah, Ron, I'd love it if you'd fight Mitt one on one, just to watch the ass-kicking you'd get.
