Ron Paul vs. Lindsey Graham on the Future of the GOP – Washington Wire – WSJ.

Quick Comment:

The reason why the GOP is going to be institutionally resistant to Paul and tend to promote Graham is because everyday people are usually too busy to be political.  This means a few things.

I won’t number these because I’m not worrying about order:

It means that the people who directly benefit from politics are the ones who tend to devote resources to be political.  I’m about to submerge myself in a project but am taking five minutes to post this.  That is the imbalance.  Somewhere someone is actually paid to do things that are political because they are profitable.

Freedom and limited government are profitable for everyone in general but not to anyone in particular.  So those who are looking for opportunities to find profits have a general interest in limiting freedom in order to make money.

Those who invest in the political process have two avenues of investment in a representative democracy: the voters and the officials.  The officials can be bribed legally and illegally in any number of ways.  But there are also a great deal of tax-free ways to manipulate the electorate and “educate them about the issues.”

Add to this the fact that the regime in power can use that power in many ways to fix the game.  They can censor speech (campaign finance reform) and control the process (the difficulty in starting third parties) so that they are never threatened.

This is why democracies in large units are always oligarchies with the only struggles consisting in which establishment will dominate.

(The problems may not be as bad in smaller units, but I don’t have time to explain why I suspect that is the case.)

This is why people pushing the oxymoronic “big government conservatism” truly believe they are doing the GOP a favor.  They see that the only path to power is to be able to do favors and buy loyalty from powerful people.  Justice doesn’t sell; tyranny has something to offer.  How are we going to compete with Obama at the auction if no one has a reason to bid on us?

Everything that is happening now was foreseen by anyone who cared back in the nineties (remember the “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more” populism).  It made a ripple and vanished because most people don’t have the leisure time to revolt; they were trying to make a living (made worse by some poor choices in the need for consumer goods, but still…).

If there is going to be a populist revolt in the near future, it will only be because our establishments have truly made life unlivable.  Economic collapse is the only moment when democracy “works”–if it doesn’t die completely.