What was the cause of the failure? I asked him. He: "We didn’t realize this is a mature economy. So many permits, regulations, accounting rules, taxes! In China, we could have got this off the ground in no time, working out of back rooms and sticking up poster ads. Here — forget it! You’re killed by lawyers’ and accountants’ and agents’ fees before you get started. Stick up an ad, the city comes after you."
Something analogous applies to politics. If Washington, D.C. were the drowsy southern town that Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge rode into, Ron Paul would have a chance. Washington’s not like that nowadays, though. It is a vast megalopolis, every nook and cranny stuffed with lobbyists, lawyers, and a hundred thousand species of tax-eater. The sleepy old boulevards of the 1920s are now shadowed between great glittering ziggurats of glass and marble, where millions of administrative assistants to the Department of Administrative Assistance toil away at sending memos to each other.
Few of these laborers in the vineyards of government do anything useful. (In my experience — I used to have to deal with them — few do anything much at all.) Some of what they do is actually harmful to the nation. On the whole, though, we have settled in with this system. We are used to it. It’s not going away, absent a revolution; and conservatives are — duh! — not, by temperament, revolutionaries.
Worth repeating in full - too many non-productive rent-seekers are the cause of most of our problems. Unfortunately, it's like trying to change an oil tanker's course a hundred yards from the rocky coastline.
But if there is no one who's willing to try to turn the wheel, the tanker and the coastline are doomed. OTOH, spinning the wheel might make the rest of the crew think about the situation and realize that the ship isn't doomed. If someone reverses the engines; someone else thinks to drop the anchor; someone else starts preping the lifeboats; maybe the ship or at least the crew isn't lost.
That's the role that Ron Paul is playing. Would I like to see him nominated; sure.
Do I think he's going to be nominated; no, at least not if the GOP power brokers have anything to say.
Do I think that he could implement all the things he stands for; no, not with the Washington bureaucracy.
Do I think he'll get a surprising number of votes in the primaries; yes, if his message gets out.
Do I think that that number of primary votes will make the other candidates look at his platform versus their own; yes, if they want to prevent a third party revolt among conservatives.
Do I think he can begin to turn the GOP ship around; I hope so.
That's why Paul is attracting the attention of so many; he represents the hopes that they have for a true conservative government.