Posted on 11/01/2007 11:36:05 AM PDT by SJackson
Ron Paul is a seductive mistress. His popularity on MySpace and YouTube is now legendary. It helped him raise more than $5 million in the third quarter of this year's fundraising cycle. Even some among the media elite — on both sides of the aisle — can't resist his charm. Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan gets downright giddy over Paul. And liberal Hardball host Chris Matthews (who cut his teeth under big government, East Coast Democrat Tip O'Neill) has declared of the libertarian from Texas: "He's my guy! I love Ron Paul!"
But do people understand what Paul really stands for? Like every siren song, his policies are fraught with danger. Let's take a look:
1. Foreign Policy and the Constitution. Paul is what you might call a Constitutional originalist. He divines his governing philosophy from the Constitution and America's Founders. But his understanding of their vision is profoundly flawed. Paul appears to believe the founders vested absolute authority for foreign-policy making in Congress, not the executive. "Policy is policy," Paul wrote in 2006, "and it must be made by the legislature and not the executive." But there's almost no evidence the founders saw it in such simplistic, absolute terms. Law professor Michael Ramsey, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, recently noted (pdf) this in very eloquent terms in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Reasonable people can agree that Congress has failed its oversight responsibilities with regard to Iraq and the Bush Doctrine. But Paul's thinking here is simply not supported by the weight of historical evidence.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.foreignpolicy.com ...
And what Ross Perot said was mostly correct, we needed to get a handle on Government waste and growth.
What undid Perot was that he felt his daughter's wedding was more important then being President and left his supporters high and dry.
Had he stuck to the election, he might have actually won and we would not have had Clinton.
I do think his campaign was helpful in getting the GOP in power in 94, however.
On one hand, he is considered to be some out of touch idealist, yet, when he handles votes in a practical manner, he is labeled a hypocrite.
Now, I am sure, he voted against the bills when they come up (if they are unconstitutional), but he does represent voters in a district that pays taxes.
He votes against farm subsidies, yet his district is largely composed of farmers.
If the money is going to be spent (and it will) he has a obligation to see that they receive some benefits from the taxes they paid.
Ron Paul believes the only way to deal with terrorists is to appease them. He said that America was responsible for 9/11 because we did not do enough to appease his muslim buddies. If we had not been a friend of Isreal the the terrorists would not have attacked us. I guess Paul thinks we need to get terrorist aproval before we can help any friend we have.
Ron Paul is nutter.
Ron Paul has a lot of supporters on the left and right.
Ron Paul will run for President under a third party ticket.
If the GOP run a liberal like Rudy, Hillary will win because Ron Paul will take more votes from Rudy than Hillary.
ANSWER = The GOP needs to nominate a conservative like Hunter or Thompson. Ok I am not completely convinced Thompson is a conservative on some issues but he will do.
Print this out...remember it....good as gold :-)
The didn’t ask me or anyone I know. We were all out earning money when they called.****
I think the economy is in really bad shape. Recently a poll showed that close to 70% thought the economy is bad.
You, younger folks, don’t know how really bad it is. In 1966, when I started my first real job, I got paid the equivalent of $85,000 in today’s money (masters degree research chemist). A couple years later I switched to teaching and got paid the equivalent of $50,000 in today’s money, as an entry level teacher, with a masters degree.
There are tons of people making less than the minimum wage of the 70’s in our country today. But the minimum wage didn’t mean much back then as most people made well over the minimum wage.
Back then one wage earner could support a family/
“Aw comeon!
LOL!”
It happened, and according to a few other people I have talked to, this wasn’t just an isolated incident.
“Ron Paul is not an isolationist, he is someone who believes that the United States is best defended when it defends its own interests and uses its greatest asset, freedom, the very thing that the world loves about the United States.”
So pulling our military out of places like Germany, Japan, Hungary, etc, and withdrawing from the various defense alliances that we are a member of such as NATO isn’t isolationism?
I guess that your heerow will also end the joint training that our military conducts with our allies?
His views are the same shortsighted and simpleminded views that ended up getting us into WW2.
“If the money was going to be spent, he certainly had a responsibilty to see that some it got returned to Texas tax-payers.
Ron Paul is the most consistent voter in the House against unconstitutional bills, including pay raises for members of Congress.”
To paraphrase the principal from the movie Billy Madison:
“No where in your rambling incoherent response did you come close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. We are all dumber for having read it.”
Your heerow requested 13 million dollars for a project he OPPOSES!
He has said numerous times that he is against NAFTA, and he is against this highway project.
So why the hell is he funding it?
ron paul is a liar and is full of sh*t and is leading sheeple like you by the nose. Hell I bet he has no intention whatsoever to follow through with a single one of the promises he made that people like you gobbled up hook, line, and sinker.
My wife and I started at minimum wage at the same company in 1982. She left in 1988 and never really earned much after that & hasn’t worked at all in the last 10 years. We bought our house and land in 1990, paid it off in 2005.
We’re very comfortable for the most part. The company I work for hasn’t had a down year. Last year sales were up 16% over previous year. This year could be better.
If I listened to the doom and gloom crowd, I would be so much poorer. I wouldn’t have taken the risks that have.
It used to be that people bought houses to live in and not as a means of financing their quest for endless new toys. Another generation learns the lesson that there isn’t any such thing as a free lunch. If it is called a housing “market” does that mean it never goes down? Or are we just conditioned to this from our limited experience?
Polls are not the best measure of an economy. Nor are feelings a good measure of an economy.
A toast to a return to sanity in the housing market so todays young can afford to buy a house.
166,000 New Jobs Created Last Month, Double Expectations
http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=5&issue=20071102
Despite the Gloom, More Bush Boom
Solid third-quarter GDP adds another chapter to the greatest story never told.
By Larry Kudlow
If things are so bad, why are they so good?
http://author.nationalreview.com/latest/?q=MjE0OA==
Ron Paul is against NAFTA and has voted against it.
Yet, that money is going to be spent and the taxpayers of his district have a right to get some of it.
However, that may be a bit complicated for people who quote from movies such as 'Billy Madison'.
So pulling our military out of places like Germany, Japan, Hungary, etc, and withdrawing from the various defense alliances that we are a member of such as NATO isn’t isolationism?
No, it isn't!
We were in most of those nations because of the Cold War, which last I heard we won and now is over.
So, there is no need to have our troops spread throughout the globe protecting nations that are very capable of protecting themselves.
I guess that your heerow will also end the joint training that our military conducts with our allies? His views are the same shortsighted and simpleminded views that ended up getting us into WW2.
And where did you get the idea that we would have no joint training with our allies?
No, Ron Paul's views on that issue are simply common sense.
The MSM see Ron Paul splitting the republican vote a la Perot, thus a dem, probably Hill, wins the WH. So they’ll promote his candidacy ad nauseam.
So, you are saying that Ron Paul workers go around calling people 'traitors' on a regular basis?
He doesn't? He said it was our foreign policies that were responsible for the attacks. I would say he is blaming us, not his muslim buddies.
No, he is blaming the bad foreign policies of the U.S. government.
And don't we conservatives say the same when we say that Clinton's inaction against the attacks in Somilia, the Cole, the first attack on the World Trade Center, and our embassies also were responsible for emboldening them to increase their attacks?
So, U.S. government actions did play a part in the attacks of 9/11.
I have noticed that the elites never seem to bring up Clinton's weakness on these debates, and never critize any of the Government policies that contributed to 9/11 because they do not want to admit that it was the Government that failed to protect us.
Bin Laden admitted that when he saw U.S. troops being withdrawn from Somalia, he believed the U.S. did not have the stomach to fight against Islam.
The point that Ron Paul is making is simply that no action is done in a vacuum and when they are taken, they must be looked at the possible long range as well as the immediate short range effects on U.S. policy and interests.
Ron Paul wanted to kill the terrorists and wanted a declaration of war to show the nations resolve in doing so.
Now, what Ron Paul is saying is that our actions had unintended consquences, which they did.
Ron Paul wantes our pilots armed to make sure that this doesn't happen again, yet the government drags its feet on that issue.
Ron Paul wants our borders to be controlled and the government fights against that.
He wants us out of entangling alliances that can drag us into a war that we have no business being in.
Ron Paul wants us to surrender.
Ron Paul wants us to declare war when we fight a war.
Ike wasn't surrendering when he ran to get us out of Korea.
Nixon wasn't surrendering when he ran to end the Vietnam war.
We have been in Iraq for 5 years, what is the definition of victory?
And is that not blaming us for not appeasing his terrorist buddies?
Not at all.
He is saying that foreign policy decisions have ramifications, that the politicans do not want to take responsibilty for.
[ And don't we conservatives say the same when we say that Clinton's inaction against the attacks in Somilia, the Cole, the first attack on the World Trade Center, and our embassies also were responsible for emboldening them to increase their attacks? ]
So you think we should follow Clinton's example?
No, but did you hear any of the candidates point that out?
They want to point to the fact that Islam hates us, but there is nothing new about that.
The question is, what gave them the confidence to strike us directly.
the fact is Clinton's weak policies emboldened Bin Laden to strike in the United States.
So, where is the criticism by the Republicans of Clinton's foreign policy-that can be directly linked to 9/11?
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