Where’s the Deliberation? (Or Don’t Overreact to Paul, Please)

Jay Cost has posted the fine comments he gave at Berry College a few weeks ago (at an event funded by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute). He was critical of the present nominating system for its lack of deliberation, drawing, of course, on the classic work of our own Mr. Ceaser.

What’s wrong with our serial caucus/mainly primary method of selecting delegates to the convention is that it produces a convention full of enthusiasts for the inevitable nominee. The convention hasn’t been a meeting of party leaders deliberating about the candidate and the platform best for the party as a principled organization aiming for victory in a long time.

It’s very unlikely this year will be any different. Those who talk about a “dark horse” emerging at a “deadlocked” convention are speaking the language of a different era.

Having said that, there is deliberating going on among our Republican public intellectuals in the various media outlets, from TV through blogs through THE WEEKLY STANDARD, THE NATIONAL REVIEW, leading newspapers, and so forth.

The deliberation so far has been mainly negative: They experts take candidates out—most recently, maybe, Newt.

They’ve been for Romney sometimes explicitly—but always fairly implicitly by not turning much fire on him.

Here’s my quick advice this afternoon:

The “negative campaign” against Newt is fully justified. He would be a disastrous candidate, a dangerous president, and might have actually won (and could still, as Pete explains, actually win).

The big attack on Ron Paul has begun—see THE WEEKLY STANDARD, NATIONAL REVIEW, WALL STREET JOURNAL etc. It’s ferocity is a mistake: Paul won’t get the nomination, and the main danger is that he’ll run as a third-party candidate. He woud be a dangerous president, but he’s a marginal figure still. And the Republicans will need his guys to win in November.

There’s no need to back off completely, of course. But please tone it down a litte.