When Hell is as cold as Boston is right about now

A recent article in the Times of London recounts the latest goings-on in America’s presidential race. Here’s a taste:

…Fred Thompson picked up the much sought-after endorsement of the Iowa Republican congressman Steve King yesterday, while Mr Giuliani’s campaign was reported to be cancelling advertisements in New Hampshire so that it could focus efforts on later states such as Florida, where his poll lead was being eaten away by Mr Huckabee. The Republicans, who by this stage are usually uniting around an establishment candidate, are in utter disarray this year with voters indicating strong doubts about almost every one of their five top-tier candidates. Ron Paul, a sixth Republican candidate standing on a maverick libertarian ticket, is doing his best to make the field even wider and announced yesterday that he had smashed fundraising records for a second time by generating no less than $6million (£3million) on a single day, Sunday.

One Ron Paul zealot commenter in the “Have Your Say” field is upset with the insufficiently prominent mention of the most libertarian of the Republican hopefuls. “Sarah from London” complains:

Ron Paul is America’s anti-war, pro-liberty candidate with integrity and a coherent political philosophy. No wonder the powers that be are trying to bury him at the end of news stories.

But see, Sarah, the reason newspapers are “burying” mention of Ron Paul at the end of stories is that he has no chance whatsoever of becoming the next president. Why does a fringe candidate polling in the low single digits merit front page coverage? Sorry, this is the real world, not the fantasies of Ayn Rand. Americans, like the vast majority of voters in rich countries, sensibly value the economic stability afforded by government-provided social insurance, consumer protection laws, and prudent regulation of the economy. And there’s a reason such things are popular, by the way, and that reason is that, for millions of people, life was brutish, nasty and short before the advent of the evil welfare state.

Ron Paul’s radical libertarianism is thankfully a fringe movement. The numbers don’t lie.