Dominant Social Theme: Who is this guy Ron Paul and why does he keep running when he doesn't have a chance?
Free-Market Analysis: One gets the feeling the Republican Party would rather run a dog for president than Ron Paul (left). And yet ... by almost every reasonable account, the libertarian congressman from Texas is still in contention to win the Republican nomination. He's got popular support, healthy bank balances and a message that resonates.
Whether or not Ron Paul wins, he's already had a significant effect on the US national discourse. His candidacy continues to shatter the command-and-control mechanism of the Republic Party – and that's one reason the bigwigs don't like him. He's a walking repudiation of the Republicans' hitherto hidden agenda.
The Republican Party masqueraded as one that respected private markets and believed in limited government. But Ron Paul's candidacy exposed the fault lines and made it clear to millions that the Republican Party's public face was not its private one.
The central core of the Republican Party's belief structure supports the industrial-military complex and employs a strategy of compromise with the US's Democratic opposition that has led to a country that more closely resembles European socialist nations than the pre-Civil War "exceptionalism."
The Republican leaders have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at Ron Paul to try to stop him. They tried to talk Chris Christie, the popular conservative governor of New Jersey, into running and for a while they were focused on Rick Perry – until his big government past came back to haunt him.
Now suddenly Herman Cain is becoming a front-runner, though he was dismissed even in the recent past as an unserious candidate. His "9-9-9" plan has galvanized public attention, perhaps because it is easily assimilated. "Nine percent corporate business flat tax, 9 percent personal income flat tax, and a 9 percent national sales tax," Cain explained.
It sounds reasonable until one realizes that Cain is actually proposing ANOTHER tax. What sane person would believe that the US federal government would be content with these rates for long? Eventually, they would be subject to tax creep; the country would end up with higher rates AND a "national sales tax."
Ron Paul, on the other hand, is about to release a plan of his own that focuses on cutting, not adding. The small-government congressman is also willing to live with a vastly reduced salary if he gets into the White House. Here's more from Brody's "scoop":
The five departments that would be abolished are the Departments of Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce and Interior. However, while the departments would be eliminated, the plan would be to roll certain functions into other departments.
For example, the Department of Education would be done away with but pell grant programs would be phased in somewhere else. There's a lot more details to come but those will be unveiled Monday in Las Vegas. The mainstream media wants to continue to discount Ron Paul even though his poll numbers are healthy, his fundraising is strong and his message is resonating.
Now, in this 2012 campaign, he has developed a new wrinkle as he tries to make a concerted pitch to pro-life social conservatives by talking up the value of human life. Ron Paul is not called Dr. Paul for nothing. He's an obstetrician. Coming off his big straw poll victory at the Values Voter Summit, he's now out with an extremely compelling pro-life ad.
Brody, CBN's chief political correspondent, not only has his "scoop," he seems to understand the larger picture – that Ron Paul's bottom-line impact is the way he's changing the national debate, yanking it back toward something resembling free-market "classical" liberalism.
He writes that even if Ron Paul doesn't win the nomination, "his constitutional conservative beliefs have already won him something far more valuable and long lasting: changing the discourse in American politics."
Ron Paul's announcement about cutting executive departments is yet another example of the kind of libertarian solutions that the Republican powers-that-be have trouble dealing with. Every time Ron Paul introduces these sorts of concepts, another public discussion begins about the nature of the US Leviathan and its appropriate role.
Ron Paul's lasting effect may be his singular success in challenging the role of the American empire and its legitimacy. Using the power of the Internet – helping enable what we call the Internet Reformation – Ron Paul will surely be remembered as a significant "change-maker."
Conclusion: We'll end with Brody's last line, which is a good one: "The media scoffed at him in 2008 but who's having the last laugh?"
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