The LA Times has a good post conjecturing that Ron Paul is winning the Republican party even without actually winning anything simply by way of how much he has shaped the debate in the last few years.
It’s a pretty good piece – it doesn’t dismiss Paul outright but it doesn’t promote him like a Paulbot, and it’s got a good sense of humor. Four years ago, Paul was the only Republican candidate talking about reducing government spending – and now everyone in the federal government is talking about it. And some of the GOP these days are even sounding more open to things like legalizing marijuana or ending wars in the Middle East – small government positions that are typically thought of as anti-GOP. The left likes to dismiss the Tea Party as Koch-infused AstroTurf, but Ron Paul and his supporters were Tea Party before there was a Tea Party.
The post also talks about some classic Paul behavior that I hadn’t heard about:
Paul came up more than 1,000 delegates short of winning the nomination in…wait for it, St. Paul, but here’s what he did do: Talking fiscal discipline, he took his supporters’ donations (more than Mike Huckabee’s hand-clapping evangelicals ponied up, btw) and walked the fiscal walk.
Flying commercial and sleeping in Super 8’s, Paul paid all of his campaign bills. He ended up with a $5-million surplus, a word we don’t often hear associated with things Washington, unless it refers to empty words.
It doesn’t say what he did with the $5 million, but I believe that he did something very legal, moral, and fiscally sound with it. I just trust him – and I can’t say that about any other politician.
That’s one of the reasons I just like the guy. Even though I’ve learned enough about politics, economics, and the world in the last four years that I’m not as gung-ho about him as I was the last time around, he’s still probably closer to my beliefs than any other candidate out there. (Paul is already polling better than he did last time, for what it’s worth.) Sure, some of his positions and statements make me wince in uncertainty, but there’s no hypocrisy or corruption in them – all the other guys make me wince because their positions are worse and I can’t trust them anyway.
So I’m perfectly happy to watch him continue to influence the debate in Washington even if he doesn’t actually win a national election (although his son did win the Kentucky Senate, one of the many previously unthinkable things that have happened in the world in the last few years). I’m not convinced, for instance, that a gold standard would work anymore in our complicated global economy, but our excess-driven debt-ridden fiat system is getting so bad, compounded by government overreach and corruption, that any attempt to pull back in the other direction is, I think, a net improvement from where we are now.
So keep it up, Paul, and good luck at that silly Ames straw poll.
Can you tell me who did your layout? I’ve been looking for one kind of like yours. Thank you.
Currently the main layout is Weaver, which comes with many options and themes, and I’m using the Shadows theme.
Well, at this point Paul’s in the fight just as much as Romney, Bachmann, or Perry. It sounded like his supporters were making waves throughout Iowa and he finished a close second in the straw poll, but it still seems like he’s not getting as much attention as some of the aforementioned candidates. I’ve been perusing Politico’s website the past few days and they haven’t mentioned much about Paul, while a quick glance at “Face the Nation” this morning led to a roundtable discussion about Perry’s entrance into the fold and Bachmann’s victory, but no mention of Paul. To be sure, Paul has definitely woken up some people since 2007, and his campaign has a lot more attention and staying power this time around.
Much like you, I’m not drinking the Paul kool-aid like I used to. 76 is much too old to be running for President, and that makes his VP choice (if he gets that far) just as important as choosing Paul himself. There are some other things I’m not so sure about; he recently said that we should let Iran build nukes and stated that they weren’t already doing it, citing a CIA report on the matter, which is ironic considering Paul’s distrust of the CIA when their conclusions and reports don’t gel with his beliefs. While Paul’s “humble” foreign policy initiatives are some of my favorite things about his candidacy, I think he has a tendency to oversimplify the role the U.S. has in working with other countries while diminishing the extent to which some of the other nations out there really DO hate the U.S.
He has also stated in the past that he wanted to treat all people as individuals and stop speaking about minorities in the form of different racial groups in the hopes of removing legislation that caters to those specific groups, ostensibly in the hopes of creating a more equal society, but he’s never explained how this process would take place, and he’s never laid out a plan or at least an opinion explaining how he would resolve problems regarding racism or equality if they were to pop up during his administration. This is all the more ironic considering that Paul was just promoting a page called “Jews for Paul” on Facebook this week on my newsfeed, which just goes to show that Paul isn’t above politics anymore than the other candidates to promote himself or his goals. I think this also demonstrates the point you made on your first post on your blog, which was excellent by the way, that Libertarians tend to completely ignore game theory.
All that being said, however, I really appreciate Paul’s honesty, his dedication to removing corruption, and a lot of the positions he advocates on various topics. I also think he’s a genuinely good person, which is a lot more than I can say for the most of the other politicians out there right now. It will be interesting to see if he can continue his run for the Presidency into the 2012 campaign season.