Double Standards Among No-Hope Candidates

In isolation, I agree with Matt and Kevin that the failure to give a lot of coverage to Ron Paul is perfectly defensible.   Not only is he clearly a fringe candidate in terms of positioning, we already have evidence of his non-viability — he ran in a primary so wide-open nobody should logically have been able to win it and was a complete non-factor.    And while, yes, Michelle Bachmann is a longshot to win the nomination she at least has a real shot to win the Iowa primary, while Paul has no chance to win anywhere.

But, having said that, if I were a Paul supporter I would point out that this is a world in which one of the lead political reporters of the New York Times will assert that Jon Hunstman — who is selling a product with even less demand in a Republican primary — should be taken with the highest seriousness. And Hunstman moving forward by adopting Joe Lieberman’s strategy of running against his own party doesn’t seem to have dimmed the media coverage.   So it’s not as if there’s some consistent rule that candidates with no chance to win a single primary or caucus won’t receive media coverage.  If Paul was an establishment moderatish conservative rather than a paleocon I’m sure he’s be getting more than his share even if his chances of winning anything were equally hopeless.     I won’t say that I particularly care about this, but I can understand why people sympathetic to Paul think it’s unfair.