In a recent e-mail, my Mom wanted to pick my brain concerning Ron Paul. I had been meaning to visit that subject anyway, so I’m posting my reply to her here as well.
I happen to respect Ron Paul a great deal. I do think some of his ideas on fiscal policy are goofy (going back to the gold standard will do nothing to help the current economic problems), but he is absolutely the only one who is running who has consistently vetoed excessive spending, even against his party’s wishes, and think he is right on with regard to some of our foreign policy missteps. Unlike everyone else in the race, Ronmey, Newt, Santorum, Bachmann, etc, Paul has not changed his beliefs to match what he thinks the special interest groups want him to say or do this time around. Just as was the case in 2008, he is not pandering to this group or that. He stands by what he believes… Period.
He has a couple of problems.
(A) The Ron Paul Newsletters. Some of the language in them is inflammatory, if not flat out racist. It is pretty clear that Ron Paul did not write the stuff. Ron Paul has a 30 year history of being in politics and giving speeches AND doing interviews on the various networks, including CSPAN. No one has yet been able to produce a video, or even a sound byte of Paul saying anything even remotely racist. As a congressman, no one has as of yet produced a piece of legislation authored by Paul that can be considered racist. He has had his own medical practice for the last 40 something years. And that is not a string of clinics in his name – when he is not serving in Congress, he actually works there and cares for the patients himself. For all those years, there does not seem to be a single complaint again Paul or his practice for turning away a person of color or giving them sub-par treatment when compared to white clientele. If Ron Paul secretly IS a racist, he certainly does not let that prejudice influence either his work ethic OR his legislative judgement. In 2008, I withdrew my support because of this issue – not because the letters were written, but because Paul did not reveal the person who did write them and slander his name. Now, things are so bad, and the field of candidates is so horrible from both parties, I just don’t care about this. It’s minutia compared to the crap we’re facing.
(B) Ron Paul thinks the 9/11 commission was a white wash. Because he thinks that, people assume / paint him as a closet “truther”, i.e. someone who thinks the US government was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks. That of course is NOT what Paul thinks. He is of the opinion that various facts were purposefully omitted from the report in order to protect the reputations of certain government and allies who were part of the “coalition of the willing”, that lots of information was left out to protect them, along with politicians who made horrible decisions on both sides of the isle, especially Republicans, who were in charge of the Congress at the time when the report was done. He’s almost certainly right in that regard. But, he will be painted as a 9/11 Truther anyway. It’s already happened in a correspondence with a Conservative (“True Conservative”) friend of mine.
That said. Even though I have some real disagreements on some of Paul’s economic ideas, he is by far the ONLY candidate out there who has shown real commitment to underlying principles of the Constitution. All the others in the race, including the guy who is currently sitting in the oval office, care about the Constitution when it comes to the fortification and expansion of the powers of the Executive branch. Ron Paul is THE ONLY ONE who advocates for the reduction of that office, and restoration of powers that were originally given to Congress, but has either been taken by the strong Executive branch, FDR and the New Deal for instance, or has literally been GIVEN to the Presidency by a weak Congress who doesn’t want to take responsibility for anything if it will hinder their re-election chances, such as the the responsibility to declare war, which was last used at the entrance of the US into World War Two.
Going back to the “Truther” thing for a moment. I don’t believe any of that “Truther” clap-trap, and have railed against it many times on my blog. But, if a new investigation revealed that the Saudi government was much more involved in the plot than the first report revealed, wouldn’t that be of some interest, seeing that we are even now in the process of selling them multibillions of dollars worth of military aircraft? Just for the heck of it, lets say Paul is a “Truther”. Hell, the Reagans believed in astrology, and Obama went to a church that preached black liberation theology. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. It’s how they represent us that does. And Ron Paul seems to have represented his constituents in a very honest manner. That matters more than anything else.
Oh, BTW, Ron Paul is no friend to the military industrial complex. Ike would approve of his candidacy.
Yes, I plan to vote for Ron Paul. If I have to, I will change my voter registration back to Republican just to vote for him. As I expect him not to be the Republican nominee, I will therefore write him in on the general election ballot come November. If you really want thing to change, to at least start to get the blatant corruption we see every day out of politics, Ron Paul is one of the very few in our political system who is not bought off by this special interest group or that. He is his own guy.
That used to count for something.
And Here Is The More!!!!!
I am going even further than just voting for Ron Paul. I am going to vote for only Libertarian or Independent candidates for office, at least on the state and national level, and I am going to encourage my friends and relatives to do the same. Our political system is entirely corrupted by moneyed special interests and their lobbyists. Much of the time, when a politician takes the floor to promote bill X, his speech was written by the lobbying entity who will make a profit of the bills passage. Watch CPSAN and laugh at how many times a Congressman has absolutely no idea what he or she is reading. It’s a joke! The healthcare bill did not pass because it was going to “fix” the health care system. It passed because HUGE donors to BOTH parties, the pharmaceutics companies and insurance companies and lawyers who represent medical malpractice cases, know they are going to make a shitload of money due to this legislation, and they made sure that nothing went through that would seriously hurt their income base! Doctors, those on the front line, have said over and over again, that one sure-fire way to bring their costs down was to get rid of some of the unnecessary administrative rules that force them to do more paperwork, which means they will have less time to treat and care for patients. So, what did they get? Ta-Da! Even MORE paperwork!!! There is little in that bill that stops or slows down the rampant inflation of the price of medical treatment in this country. So we argue over the semantics of such bills yet never get around to figuring out why the mess passed in the first place. It’s the system. The hope of both parties and big money donors, is that, if we don’t vote for one party, we’ll vote for the other. Though they don’t get the vote, it’s not that bad for them because if we vote for the other party, we stay inside their system, their construct. They know the political pendulum swings back and forth, and will soon enough swing back their way. The big money donors know that too, which is why they donate to both sides to hedge their bets. In the meantime, we, the people, get screwed! Only when the Parties start losing vote to candidates not within their spheres of influence will real change to the current political system ever happen.
Blog Admin Stuff | Sonicfrog January 10, 2012 | 
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