The Ron Paul Challenge

The news that Barack Obama and Ron Paul are level-pegging in a hypothetical Presidential race, with only eleven per cent preferring some other candidate and a mere six per cent undecided, is made even more significant by the figure among voters not affiliated with either major party, among whom Paul has forty-seven per cent support to Obama's twenty-eight per cent.

Democrats need to reach out to those who would otherwise be attracted to Ron Paul and to his opposition to bailouts, to wars, and to the erosion of constitutional checks and balances.

Democrats also need to reach out to those who would otherwise be attracted to Mitt Romney, the prophet and apostle of socialised medicine, who ran for the Senate from the left of Ted Kennedy.

Democrats need to reach out to those who would otherwise be attracted to Mike Huckabee, economically one of the most left-wing governors in American history, and who also happens to be against abortion and same-sex “marriage” while in favour of Second Amendment rights.

And Democrats need to reach out to those who would otherwise be attracted to Sarah Palin, with her admirable history as a Buchananite battler for job protection, for war aversion, for immigration control and for family values against the archenemy of all of them, the global “free” market, and with her record as Governor of Alaska on the basis of publicly administered natural resources held in common ownership.