Touché.
Honestly that depends on who you ask. Everyone from Ron Paul supporters to rank and file Republicans will admit there’s quite a difference between the two.
For Ron Paul supporters they’ll say Rand’s not as “ardent” or as “steadfast” or something to that effect. Essentially that he’s ultimately not as libertarian as his father…or at the very least not as uncompromising and vocal about it. This of course is a good thing in the eyes of the average Repub. They tend to like Rand more because he’s better about not saying things that rub them the wrong way. I think Ron himself would admit that Rand is much more politically adept.
Whether this means Rand is actually less libertarian (read: voluntarist) that his father, or he’s simply a better politician (i.e. he’s able to be a voluntarist and still find a way to not scare off Republicans), I’m not sure.
But either way the bottom line is, Ron and Rand are certainly not the same guy. And in the eyes of many, a Romney/Rand ticket is considerably more compatible than Romney/Ron.
Again you’re assuming Ron and Rand hold the exact same ideology and positions on literally everything. They’ll be the first to tell you they have disagreements and debates at the family table.
I guarantee you Rand Paul running on a Romney ticket will not sacrifice a single Ron Paul supporter. Ron will be retired. Who will be left? If Rand continues on his path, barring unforseen circumstances he’ll be an enormous force, as he’ll inherit all of Ron’s supporters…the whole Campaign for Liberty, whatever’s left of the Tea Party, and quite a few “regular” Republicans including your Hannitys and your Limbaughs. He’ll be too much of a good candidate with too much support.
My guess is the biggest deciding factor is going to be how well he can handle the foreign policy questions. If it weren’t for that, Ron would be a much bigger force in the mainstream GOP.
However, a big difference will be the fact that Ron supporters are going to be taking over the GOP over the next decade or two. The whole party is quite poised to shift, so these “Republican no matter what” folks will get to be a smaller and smaller part of the party, meaning they’ll end up just going along because for one thing, following the party is what they’ve always done, and two, they have nowhere else to go anyway. The difference is it just won’t be their party anymore.
I’m not sure what you mean. You’re asking what the Democrats might do?
Yeah…foreign policy is essentially the main thing they can’t handle. (Listen to the pundits whine about it and essentially lament the fact that Paul would be such a perfect candidate otherwise).
Obviously as Secretary of Defense or State, foreign policy would be at his forefront. The odds that something like that would get offered are basically nill. (But then again, I’m not on the inside. It’s entirely possible the game plan could go so much farther beyond that that it wouldn’t matter. But I seriously doubt it.) There is no way in hell the elites want Ron f-ing Paul being able to run his mouth with the words “Secretary of State” next to his name. Look at how much he gets on the news now. And he’s just a Congressional Representative. A pupit like one of those I mentioned would give him untold exposure, respect, and immunity from being ignored or railroaded. There would be no possible way for the media to attempt to marginalize him without losing all credibility.
They would either end up being extremely obvious about it, or they would have to abandon their whole “whatever the Federal government says is gospel, and the higher ranking the official, the more important it is”. The media worships high ranking officials. If one of them were Ron Paul, they would either have to back away from their government idolization overall, and go back to the more “watchdog” ways the media was always supposed to be, or single out Paul and just his office, which would expose them as completely bias.
As for Rand, I’m not so sure. I don’t think they see as much of a threat from him quite simply because I don’t see as much of a threat from him. Again, he’s largely been able to avoid the foreign policy scruteny so far. I’m not sure how vocal he would be. I’m not exactly sure how he would go about using the power of a post like that.
As for Secretary of the Treasury, again, despite the enormous progress that’s been made in waking people up to the Fed, we’re not anywhere close to having a guy who authored a book called End the Fed become even Tresurer…let alone the Secretary. (Although, can you imagine having Ron Paul’s signature printed on every damn Federal Reserve Note? That might just be the greatest gag in history.)
Yeah that’s one thing I’m not very familiar with. I do know brokered conventions are quite rare. But as for negotiating for positions in cabinets…that’s outside of my area. I would actually even want to defer to someone like Woods to even ask where to look for information on that.
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