Posted on 11/11/2007 12:39:35 PM PST by PlainOleAmerican
I hate wasting this much press time on Ron Paul. But the Paul campaign is becoming a real threat to the Republican primary process and if allowed to continue, he will take votes away from the most conservative Republican candidates in the party, not the most liberal. This is bad for the party and the country.
(snip)
So, how Republican is Republican candidate Ron Paul?
If he’s funded largely by anti-war leftists, from Democrat stronghold districts and counting on Democrats, Libertarians and members of the Green Party to win the Republican nomination, not very…
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbull.com ...
I wish they would!
Too many RINO’s, too many isolationists, too many looking to the government for solutions....
So how is it the RINOs (this "minor wing of the RNC") manage to make themselves the only choice we have?
No, this would be “your” account.
Listen to all campaign speeches of the last several elections. American voters want to know “what their country can do for them,” not what they can do for themselves.
Americans of all brands are adicted to the idea of free-stuff, not freedom. No matter how many programs the fed screws up, they still look to the fed to provide solutions to every day challenges.
When the RNC adopted the “big tent” theory of growing the party several years back, they brought into their fold RINO’s. Now they wish they hadn’t.
We didn’t get here in a single election and we won’t get out of here in a single election.
We need to move in the right direction at every opportunity, which means, use every opportunity to move in that direction.
Candidates like Paul and Giuliani divide that effort, they don’t unite it.
That’s my story...
(They could be right about that, BTW) Then the rest of us find ourselves stuck with voting against the alternative, like we did against Gore in 2000 and against Kerry in 2004.
Very few voted FOR Bush. Most of us voted against the alternative.
If Giuliani is nominated, we will face the same choice in 2008, only Rudy is left of Bush.
Conservatives need to take back their party, no doubt about it.
But they won't do it with someone like Ron Paul, who is left of every candidate but Kookoocinich on national security.
Your story is that there is virtually no disagreement within the Republican Party over Big Government. They oppose it, almost to a man, so Ron Paul's positions on it are irrelevant - virtually any Republican candidate, other than one that handful of RINOs, will be equally suitable on those issues. Your story is that Americans in general, including the aforementioned Republicans want more Big Government programs. Your story doesn't add up.
Then they try to convince people who want a "real conservative" to vote for that he is one, and start defining "conservative" down to accomplish it.
“What angers most conservatives is his campaign tactics and efforts to hijack the RNC nomination using leftist anti-war money and votes to win the Republican nomination.”
I think what really angers some conservatives, not most, is having the basic premises of U.S. foreign policy questioned by a fellow Republican. This reminds me somewhat of Al Gore’s behavior when his global warming theory is questioned. It seems that all Ron Paul has done is show up for some debates, say what he thinks, and accept donations from legal sources. What particular “campaign tactics” do you especially disapprove of? Does Ron Paul have a “dirty tricks squad” like Dick Nixon used to? It seems that his “dirty trick” is merely openly expressing his controversial opinions.
If you want all 50 states to have closed Republican-voters-only primaries, you can certainly advocate that change. But those are not the rules the game is currently played under.
It seems to me that Ron Paul has done a great service for the Republican party by clearly exposing the fraudulent nature of Democratic ant-war posturing. Nobody can ever take Clinton or Obama seriously as anti-war candidates, after listening to Ron Paul. The problem for Republicans to solve is finding a way to hold on to Ron Paul’s constituency for their eventual nominee. We need Mr. Reagan’s big tent to rule America.
You’re having trouble following the bouncing ball...
Separate Republican voters from Republican candidates.
Then separate growth of government from the desire for government solutions.
This is the problem and what I’m trying to point out. The left wants bigger more powerful government. No secret here...
However, although most Republcians claim to support smaller government, they also tend to support government solutions as well, making no connection between the two.
So yes, it does add up. They ask what their government can do for them, without realizing that they are asking government to grow in order to answer that question.
But, yes, almost every Republican candidate sells smaller government from the campaign trail, most of them truly believing in it. At the same time however, they are also pandering for votes in competition with the left, which will later keep them from either keeping those campaign promises, or from shrinking government. They can’t do both, yet the promise to do both in order to get elected...
That’s my point.
Explain to me what's "conservative" about that.
This interview Ron Paul gave to the pro-pothead legalize-it crowd shown at Youtube is very scary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZJSHYPkWbo
Are we, really, prosecuting a war on terror? The data suggest not. So what could we be doing? Perhaps we are really trying to regionalize the Middle East and Africa like we are doing with the Americas.
Puts a different cast on events.
Now, let's consider national defense. It is important to any nation. It must have been important to Stalin, Pol Pot, any nation regardless of its political organization. National security knows no ideology of liberty or oppression.
What is supremely important is what kind of nation we are organized under what kind of social norms or laws and statutes. What kind of nation we want to keep secure. Or whether, under the rubric of security, we merge ourselves into a conflicting mass of Balkanization and lose our unique identity.
If the latter, then I'm not too sure I even care to keep it secure. So let's not "national security" me. I'm first concerned about just what exactly we are protecting. 
>When you’ve got a candidate like Paul who can bring racists, Jewhaters, and conspiracy theorists into the Republican fold, he should not be criticized. It’s a winning Republican strategy.<
I see many people on FR expressing their frustration about Democrats and other people who don’t have the same opinion on a subject as they do. This results in all sorts of personal attacks. I have been called a racist because I don’t believe that foreigners have any right to come to America illegally and live on the public dole. I have been called a conspiracy theorist because I believe in the existence of the NAU. I haven’t lost any sleep over those accusations.
I have never been called a Jewhater but I imagine someday someone who disagrees with my opinion will call me one. That’s when I will have to ask you and my other Jewish friends to stand up for me. Widening my options, I suppose if you could name a Democrat or a communist who is of the Jewish faith and who has desecrated our flag, raped a woman or molested a child, maybe I actually could be designated correctly as a Jewhater. It’s much easier to just not respect someone than it is to hate them. I’ll work on that title someday but for now I’ll keep my Jewish friends and be happy.
Jackie, When LSUfan gets to posting his/her threads, I just skim over them and don’t get serious because between, you me and the gatepost I think he’s nuts.
I apologize for my unwarranted expression of opinion. You are too fine a person to be roughly included in the crowd.
;-)
The Youtube video has the audacity of comparing a flawed War on terrorism with a flawed War on drugs.
This view is not representative of what most FReepers think and it makes me sick to think the Ron Paul cult can espouse them here at FR.
Pathetic.
If one, as a strict constructionist conservative, thinks the Constitution does not grant Congress the power to ban such things, then legalization thereof is a rational outcome - not because we “want them legal”, but because we want a government that only does what it is strictly allowed to, and no more.
It’s not conservative, anymore than retreat from the war on terror is conservative.
But there are Republicans who believe that both things are conservative. That’s the point.
True, though this does not apply to ALL candidates except RP, obviously.
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