Posted on 01/18/2012 2:47:31 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Where Would Ron Paul Supporters Rally if Paul was Not Running in the GOP Primary?
Rep. Ron Paul ran for president as a Libertarian in 1988. [GHW Bush [R] was elected]
Rep. Ron Paul ran for president as a Republican in 2008. [John McCain [R] won the nomination and Barack Obama [D] was elected]
Rep. Ron Paul is running for president as a Republican in 2012. [????] Perhaps another Obama win?
Is Rep. Ron Paul and his base helping or hindering the conservative cause?
Nowhere. And that's what's so fascinating about the Ron Paul phenomenon.
Look at the guy. He's easy to knock as the crazy uncle (or worse.) Earlier in his career, he was a fringe candidate. By all the conventional rules of politics now, he still should be.
And yet, he's at the head of a genuine mass movement. A mass movement that's coalesced around him, rather than the reverse. A movement whose heart is young people, who will carry a lot of what they got from him when they get older.
I know it's primary season, and detachment isn't welcome, but I want to call attention to the fact that Ron Paul has threw one helluva Hail Mary pass and it was caught. Even if he ends up going nowhere, he rates being in the history books because his current reach is so improbable.
When the histories are written about this time, Ron Paul is likely to be compared to William Jennings Bryan.
Another truth that is constantly denied.
Who will be around to protect and defend (inc your country) if someone like Paul prevailed?
Mom’s basement?
I can assure you that Ron Paul will not be limiting government any time soon.
I think the correct answer is both mom’s basement and Iran.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2829309/posts
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/12/to_get_ron_paul_you.html
If you keep a mental note of of the Paulophiles online and on the radio, it is pretty clear that most of them have a liberal tilt, not a conservative tilt. Some of them are hardcore libertarians who are as partisan as the Republicans and Democrats (whom they despise with equal relish for their partisanship).
The former do not plan on voting for Paul or any Republican. Their goal is to split the Republican vote by using Paul to point out that the RINOs that comprise our current pool of candidates are not fiscal conservatives and that that is what we need most right now.
The latter will not vote for a Republican. They will write in their candidate if they have to.
As I have said repeatedly, Libertarians and Conservatives have some mutual interests (smaller government, reduced spending, fiscal sanity). But that is where the friendship ends. There is a critical divide between Libertarians and Conservatives that cannot be bridged and we often end up doing each other more harm than good when it it comes to politics.
Could be. Check the tagline I’ve had for a while now.
Forgot to add to the first paragraph that they have a liberal tilt but there are two camps. The first group of Paul supporters are actually Democrats performing their own “Operation Chaos” and who are trying to pick our candidate for us. The second group are the hardcore Libertarians.
Bump!
If Paul isn’t running they will vote Democrat.
I'm guessing a Phish concert............
I imagine a lot of the protesters that held siege on the Wisconson State Capital are Paul “supporters.”
Any leftie supporting Paul is seriously deluded. But the onus of that delusion has to fall on said lefties, not on Paul. Likewise, anyone suffering from the delusion that Paul does not have a fiercely conservative record (like you, apparently), will have to come to terms with their own delusions. Paul can’t do it for them.
Fiscal conservatives, and the Tea Party especially, are rendering themselves totally irrelevant by shunning the only candidate that is and has always been standing up for their demands. And for what? Because he’s not pushing a neocon foreign policy? The Tea Party was never about foreign policy to begin with, and anyone having a problem with Paul’s old-school Republicanism as pertains to foreign policy would be better served by voting for the War party - namely the Democrat Party. The Republican Party, up until the Miserable Failure that was George W. Bush and his pseudo-conservative cronies, was always opposed to unnecessary foreign entanglements.
Comic book conventions.
Actually, I think the Paultards are doing a *good* thing by reminding us of several things.
1. Freedom. Whatever law you pass, it is going to have some negative effects. How will it affect the freedom of the average citizen? We don’t ask that question enough and the Paultards are pointing that out.
2. Monetary policy. Paul is dead wrong, but since when have so many people even known there was such a thing as monetary policy? The debate is good. (BTW, our currency *is* indirectly backed by something, and that “something” is crude. If you move it back to gold or silver, you’ll just have more conflicts over the supply of gold or silver).
3. Foreign policy. Paul is dangerous. But hey, it’s the same position privately espoused by many Dems, so it gives us the opportunity to really sharpen our arguments.
Can I guess that without RON PAUL, possibly upward of 50% would back Obama, or veg out and not vote at all. The other 50% are perhaps split between the ultra defiant who are ultra fed up against the Republican Party and ALL their candidates and therefore without RON PAUL may not vote at all either, and the rest are a few more of the defiant, but who will move to Gingrich and at least cast a ballot.
They may appreciate Newt’s dramatic conservative rhetoric that does, sometimes, reach Churchillian proportion; something which has been sorely missing on our side of the aisle, since Reagan. It has been known to move nations. Quirks and all, just a little inspiration counts for something now.
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