I have been arguing for a while that there is a strange bedfellows coalition forming between progressives and libertarians around ending America’s Imperial adventures and beginning Life After Empire. Yesterday Ron Paul gave an extraordinary speech calling for the end of empire in front of the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual convention. When the speech was over the 10,000 delegates voted in a straw poll for their 2012 Presidential candidate. Ron Paul won easily beating Mitt Romney by 9 points. Paul’s platform is built on two points: end our military adventures and close down the Federal Reserve. The first is built on a different idea of conservatism, citing Eisenhower as a model and the notions about the Fed are based around the idea that Private interests (the New York Banks) should not be in charge of how much money we print. Neither of these seem like very controversial stances to me, but the announcement of Paul’s straw poll victory brought a chorus of boos from the Republican establishment at CPAC. I don’t agree with a lot of what Paul says, but if you watch this section of Paul’s speech you can see an opening for a progressive candidate who was anti-Imperialist and anti-Wall Street and willing to revert to the Democratic principles of Jeffersonian Democratic Federalism.
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