Posted on 10/10/2007 12:18:58 PM PDT by mnehring
It's no secret that I don't care much for Ron Paul, but after reading some of the hurt and angry responses from Ron Paul fans to his first place finish in the Right-Of-Center Bloggers Select Their Least Favorite People On The Right (2007 Edition) poll, I thought it might be worth taking the time to explain to them why Paul is so unpopular with mainstream conservatives.
In an effort to be polite, I am not going to be snarky about it, but I should forewarn Paul's fans and, for that matter, any "Big L" Libertarians who may be reading, that they are probably not going to like what they read. I'm not trying to be insulting, but without a certain amount of bluntness, it's impossible to get some of these points across.
First of all, a lot of Republicans are strongly pro-war and the fact that Ron Paul is not only anti-war, but has adopted some of the more obnoxious and inflammatory rhetoric of the Left about the war is extremely grating. According to Paul, Iraq is a war for oil and empire, engineered by neocons, and in Paul's book, we deserved to be attacked on 9/11.
When you aim that sort of rhetoric at people who strongly support the war and feel that it's justified, moral, and in America's best interests, it's guaranteed to generate a huge wave of hostility. Additionally, Paul's thoughtless, "we must leave immediately, regardless of the consequences," position on Iraq comes across as poorly thought out. Even if you thought that the war was a bad idea and opposed it from day one, the idea that we can simply extricate ourselves from Iraq immediately because it's unpleasant, with no consequences, is the sort of thing you'd expect to hear from a 16 year old at an anti-war rally, not something you expect from a candidate for President. Even Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama, all of whom have spent months trying to convince their base that they're the most anti-war of all the top tier candidates, are saying we may be in Iraq for years to come.
Incidentally, this is a problem with a lot of the things Ron Paul wants do: they're impractical in the extreme. Paul is an isolationist, even though that hasn't been the policy of the United States since the thirties. Paul wants to go back to the gold standard, which again, the US went off of in the thirties. Ron Paul also wants to get rid of the Federal Reserve, which was created in 1913.
This sort of thinking, which treats government policy as if it's an intellectual exercise with easily changeable parameters is, in my experience, a common failing of "Big L" Libertarians. In Paul's case, it's almost like his thinking goes, "Let's assume that the last 95 years haven't happened. If I could go back in time to that political climate, what changes would I make?"
You can argue that's how the world should work, but it's not how the world does work. You can't simply undo decades of history and culture, with almost no support for doing so in your own party, the opposing party, or from the general population.
Along those same lines, Paul wants to get rid of the CIA, opposes the Patriot Act, and wants to legalize hard drugs. Taking in all those positions in addition to others mentioned earlier just emphasizes the fact that he does not take into consideration how implementing the ideas that he's presenting will affect the world. In that sense Paul, and for that matter, most "Big L" Libertarians are more similar than they'd like to believe to the wildly impractical, Marxist college professors that conservatives love to snicker at. To people like Paul and these professors, their beliefs seem to be largely divorced from any sort of real world impact that may occur or the political reality that has to be dealt with.
You can win pats on the back for your purity or you can accomplish something in the political arena, but you usually can't do both. Ron Paul does not seem to have figured that out.
Going beyond that, Ron Paul's support for the North American Union conspiracy and his winks and nods to the 9/11 truther crowd appall many conservatives. After spending much of the last six years ripping on liberals for tolerating wild eyed conspiracy theorists, it's embarrassing to many conservatives to have someone on our side, running for President, who's encouraging people on the Right to behave in the same fashion.
This leads us to the last big problem that Ron Paul has: despite the fact that Ron Paul is polling at somewhere between 2%-4% nationally, he has, for whatever reason, more obnoxious supporters backing him than all the other candidates combined. If you write a column or a post knocking John McCain, Mitt Romney, or Rudy Giuliani, you'll certainly have some people disagreeing with you, some of them strongly. If you knock Ron Paul, you'll often have hordes of social misfits making obnoxious comments, spamming your polls, touting conspiracy theories, insulting conservatives in general, and doing everything possible to make nuisances of themselves.
That's not to say that Ron Paul doesn't have his strong points. He is committed to smaller government, slashing spending, liberty, and the Constitution. However, he also has more crippling flaws than any other candidate running for the GOP nomination and those problems cannot be treated as if they don't exist or are irrelevant.
I apologize completely...I missed the point of your post...the way it was written, I thought some of them were your thoughts and comments mixed in in some key areas...
Nevermind...I think we are in general agreement. How embarrassing...I misattributed some of HIS statements to YOU.
Many of those quotes of his I have never heard.
You have to deal with the world as it is, not as YOU WISH it were. Too bad for you it is not 1793 any more.
But then like MOST Paulbots you don’t even understand enough facts to realize how nuts your world view is.
The Founders fought the Barbary Pirates and an Undeclared Naval War against France. This nation has NEVER had a “non interventionists foreign policy”. Even in the 1920-30s the US fought any number of banana wars in the Caribbean and Central America while maintaining US Colonies in places like the Philippines.
So while Dr Paul spouts nice sounding platitudes and ignorant demagogic slogans, that his acolytes mindless lap up, not even the facts support his emotionally hysteric ignorant drivel.
And at the same time, he's getting trashed for not embracing the changes in the federal government over the last 70 years. "Foreign policy" won't make that add up.
Not only is Dr Paul mentally unfit to be President, he is mentally unfit for the job he NOW holds in the Congress
What the author is saying doesn’t add up. “But his foreign policy sucks” won’t make it add up, and neither will that collection of vitriol you’re dragging around.
Fiction does not magically change to fact just because you find reality so emotionally distasteful.
No, those are all Ron Paul quotes and there are more out there. You can find multiple sources on google, I didn't source them because a few are only found on sites FR prefers not be linked.
If I’m wasting your time, then go bother somebody else.
I think risk is disappearing, he seems to be embraced by the left, and no one considers him a Republican.
Still wasting my time. Can you make a coherent logical rational arguement for Dr Paul or is screaming slogans and spitting bile the best you are capable of?
That would be because Paul IS NOT a conservative.
You came to me, princess. If you’re not liking what you find, nobody’s making you stay.
“We could cut the Government in half, but he wants anything that is not in the Constitution done away with. What of the FAA, the CDC, NASA, the Interstates, etc. These are not things I would necessarily want turned over to the states.”
You left out the United States Air Force. The Army and Navy are specifically mentioned but not the Air Force. Guess Ron Paul would find the Air Force un-Constitutional?
Those big magical metal birds seem to be alien to Paul and his klan...
The problem is that many people are opposed to government programs except when it is in their interest. The farmer may look in disgust at the welfare recipient in the big city while demanding his crop subsidy. The mass transit supporter may decry wasteful highway spending while insisting on subsidies for trains and subways. The "law 'n' order" advocate may disdain meddlesome social workers while seeing nothing wrong with speed traps, police bullying and SWAT team terrorism. The catering to special interests is how government has grown to the enormous size it has reached today, even under a supposedly conservative Administration. As long as special interests want socialism for themselves but laissez faire for others, government will continue to grow.
I mostly don’t like Ron Paul because I don’t want to die any earlier than I need be, and I wish the same for my children and grandchildren. IMHO, Paul’s isolationist, let’s leave the world alone bullcrap would result in an eventual American military defeat if put into action.
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