“I know he is nuts, dangerous and tramples the US Constitution now.”
Can you explain to me what you mean exactly? I saw someone else reference it earlier in the thread too, but I thought Paul always deferred to the Constitution, which is why Romney had even made that statement Saturday night “Ask the Constitutionalist” regarding whether a state should ban birth control. How is he trampling the Constitution?
See my explanation in my post 17 in this thread.
>>How is he trampling the Constitution?<<
I think the reply will be along the lines of not providing for a national defense, and that his drug policies will injure the common good, or some such.
As Republicans, I think we’re missing an opportunity here. Paul’s supporters (I’m guessing here) can probably be sorted into two groups, a lot of them with one foot in each group.
The first group wants what I want, extreme limits placed on the federal government, and soon. No mainline GOP candidate, other than Governor Perry, argues for closing down whole departments of the federal government (and Perry flubbed that message with his “oops” debacle.) But Perry and Paul are both right. We need to drastically reduce the scope of the federal government’s powers, because failing to do so creates the sort of environment where someone like Obama can wreak havoc due to the confusing array of national laws and regulations, many of which would have been deemed flat out unconstitutional by the founders.
In this regard, I think Perry, Santorum, or Gingrich could step up that part of their message and appeal to many of Paul’s current supporters.
The other area I find interesting is drug policy. I don’t think there’s any question that many of Paul’s young supporters, and maybe most of them, are concerned enough about our draconian marijuana laws that they will support someone like Ron Paul if he simply has the courage to say he’ll change them. Personally, I think it’s time for a serious discussion about treating marijuana exactly the way we treat cigarettes, and much like we treat alcohol. We could cut the jail populations in half (guessing here) and definitely improve prospects for efficient law enforcement when it comes to harder drugs.
While I doubt that any of the three conservative candidates (Santorum, Gingrich, Perry) have it in them to broach this subject in a way that will appeal to Paul’s supporters, if one of them did, the “electability” factor would, I suspect pull a lot of Paul’s support to the candidate who did so.
When 20% of the GOP primary voters consistently support a candidate, whether he be a loon or not, I think it’s foolish to ignore the reasons his supporters are so dedicated. Something useful could yet come out of Paul’s candidacy, should a more viable candidate decide to take his supporters more seriously, especially since much of what those supporters believe is in line with reining in the federal government.