Over at The Cook Political Report, Amy Walter made a good point, Don’t Call Rand Paul the Frontrunner. Basically, she distinguished between candidates who get a lot of media coverage and candidates who actually win. Journalists like covering Rand Paul because he isn’t as dreadfully boring as most Republicans. And he appeals to certain Tea Party folk. But neither of these groups are that important in nominating a presidential candidate. “These ‘bedrock’ voters don’t show up at straw polls. They don’t wave signs or show up at rallies. They do, however, vote.” Or at least they do during presidential elections.

So Rand’s problem isn’t in a general election but in the primary. Or so Walter thinks. I think he has at least as big a problem in a general election. A big part of this is very general. Paul is an ideologue. There is intense attention in a general election. Compare him to, for example, Hillary Clinton. I actually prefer Paul’s view on international affairs to Clinton’s. But in the public sphere, Clinton’s realpolitik comes off as knowledgeable and serious. Paul’s isolationism comes off as the fantasies of a child.

This brings up another issue. Even though I agree with Paul about foreign affairs, I would never vote for him. Just on the most basic level, the truth is that Paul isn’t serious when it comes to foreign affairs. I don’t think he’s thought the issues through half as seriously as I have, and foreign affairs isn’t something I’m very interested in. I fully expect that if he became president, it would Bush the Younger all over again. The great isolationist candidate would turn into the great preemptive striking president.

But it’s deeper than that. While his foreign policy positions would make him seem like he isn’t qualified to be president, the issue doesn’t otherwise mean that much to voters. I would never vote for him because his economic ideas are loony. And I know from experience that libertarian rhetoric always turns into straight conservative policy. So Rand Paul would give us a smaller safety net but he wouldn’t lessen government spying on us and he wouldn’t reduce the number of people in prison for nonviolent offenses.

For most voters, economic issues trump everything else. The only way he might get some traction is to campaign like Reagan in 1980. You might remember that Reagan promised that he was going to cut income taxes by 10% for the first three years for a total of 27% cut. It didn’t work out that way. But at this point, I don’t think voters are going to buy lavish promises. All the big income tax cuts that Republicans have enacted have been overwhelmingly for the rich. And because of the way that most of the tax burden on the poor is in the form of local and payroll taxes, even an across the board income tax cut would be highly regressive.

The only issue that Paul might have is his embraces of cannabis legalization. But even on that issue, it is clear that he holds his nose. And by 2016, I’m not sure it will be that big an issue as more and more states move to legalize. Plus, if Paul becomes the nominee, the Democratic nominee will follow him on the issue. So cannabis is a pretty thin reed to hang a campaign on. Meanwhile, he’s for destroying lots of popular government programs. And he’s a racist, even if he uses pretty words to justify it. Bottom line: he’d be a bad candidate and I’d be more than happy if the Republicans nominated him.

Afterword

Necessary caveat: liberals said the same thing about Reagan. But it was a very different time. We are at the end of 35 years of steady movement to the right. I don’t see people standing up and demanding that we get cracking on destroying our culture even further.