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Ron Paul’s views have far more in common with Ronald’s Reagan libertarian OPPONENT in 1980, than they do with Reagan.

The one million people who supported Ed Clark “the peace candidate” in 1980 would be far more receptive to Ron Paul’s platform than Reagan’s.

See for yourself. You can read below what they thought of Reaganism in 1980.

Bi-Monthly Newsletter
Joseph R. Peden, Publisher Murray N. Rothbard, Editor
VOLUME XI11 NUMBER 2
MARCH-APRIL, 1980

We cannot discuss the issues which should have top priority in 1980, without also discussing the candiates whom Ed Clark will be likely to face. Until now, with nearly a dozen major party candidates in the race, we have all been properly giving equal weight to attacking each one. But now things are different. Most of the dozen turkeys have dropped out. It looks certain that Reagan will be the Republican, and probable that Carter will be the
Democratic nominee.

I’m therefore going to make a daring statement: the No.1 threat, the big threat, to the liberty of Americans in this campaign is Ronald Reagan. There are two basic reasons for this statement: ( I ) fundamental principle, and (2) the proper strategy for the LP Presidential campaign. Both principle and strategy, as they should mesh together.

First, on the question of basic principle. The No.1 priority for libertarians must always be foreign policy, a policy of peace, of militant opposition to war and foreign intervention. With the primary importance of war and peace as our guide, therefore, we must conclude that the No. 1 threat to our liberties is Ronald Reagan and the conservative movement from which he springs. Reagan’s calm and superficially reassuring personality - a calm and a reassurance that stems partly from siow-wittedness - is
beside the point: for Ronald Reagan is a sincere ideologue of the conservative movement. And for the last twenty-five years, conservatism has been above all and if it has not been anything else, a policy of all-out global anti-Soviet crusade, a policy hellbent for a nuclear showdown with the Soviet Union.

That IS why a Reagan presidency would likely bring about that showdown, and the consequent virtual incineration of the human race. At every crisis point in the last three decades, the conservatives were there, whooping it up for more and more war: in Korea. at the Berlin Wall, in Cuba, in Vietnam. Only recently Reagan called for a “vast” (his word) increase in military spending when we already have enough missiles to destroy Russia many times over in a second nuclear strike. Reagan calls for intervention everywhere, in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan, and
demands the blockade of Cuba in alleged retaliation for the
incursion into Afghanistan. And what is more, in the service of this policy of global war and militarism, Reagan would totally “unleash” the FBI and CIA, to do again their foul deeds of harrassing political dissent, or invasion of privacy, or espionage and assassination.

Ronald Reagan and the conservative movement are confident
that, in one or in a series of hard-line confrontations, in a continuing game of “chicken” with the Soviets, they could keep forcing Russia to back down. But if they should happen to make just one miscalculation along the way, and we all get destroyed in a nuclear war, the conservatives would not be particularly dismayed.

They would take this result as final proof that the Russians are monsters. and they would be all too content that, though the world be destroyed, our immortal souls will have been preserved. To say that such a foreign policy is dangerous and catastrophic grossly underestimates the point. The property, the lives, the very survival of all of us depend on slamming the door on Reagan and Keaganism, on keeping the itchy fingers of Ronald Reagan and his
Dr. Strangelove colleagues far, far away from that nuclear button.

This is not to say, of course, that Carter is a great pro-peace candidate. To the contrary, in a political climate where the only voices of opposition are from the pro-war right wing, Carter, whose only principle has been to stay in office, is moving rapidly in a Reaganite direction.

No - there is only one peace candidate in 1980, and thank God he is in the campaign - and that is Ed Clark!

A lot of people have met around the country simply regard Libertarians and the LP as “extreme Reaganites”, as “purist conservatives.” We’ve got to let these people and all libertarian-inclined folk know. and make it clear to everyone else for that matter: that if they were right, that if we were really just extreme conservatives or
ultra-Reaganites, they would then have a darned good point.

But the vital point is this: we are not — repeat NOT— extreme conservatives: we are NOT Reaganites. We regard Ronald Reagan and the conservative movement as our No. 1 enemy.

http://www.mises.org/journals/lf/1980/1980_03-04.pdf