I don’t agree with Paul on some state’s rights stuff. I think it’s entirely appropriate for the federal government to prevent state or local governments from violating people’s rights.
But by no stretch does Paul’s states right position on interstate abortions make him pro-choice. If (insert state) wanted to restrict abortion I’m sure he’d be for that bill.
Sickoflibs explained the earmarks thing. Paul would happy if the bills failed but as long as he knows they’ll pass he’ll keep getting his for his district.
If I ran for congress I’d do so on a platform of cutting spending, especially in my own district. I’d vow not to bring a penny home except directly into people’s pockets via tax cuts and in the economic growth that would result from my policies. I’d say “this district needs to do it’s part in refusing the feeding frenzy, let us set an example.”
I would not be elected and the money would be spent somewhere else anyway. Earmarks aren’t new spending.
And that’s why they should be banned, they encourage spending behavior even amongst fiscally conservative congressman. Paul votes no on the bills themselves. Others vote yes and would be less likely to do so if their districts weren’t getting any earmarked spoils.
So you recognize that it is appropriate for the federal government to enforce our God-given rights as declared in the U.S. Constitution (Mankind can declare, or recognize, rights, not create them), yet you don’t think that by refusing to move the federal government to protect the Right to Life (the most basic of our God-given rights) that it disqualifies him from being called “pro-life”?
In the 1850s, in an America in which the Bill of Rights applied only against the federal government (the 14th Amendment, intended by its author John Bingham and the other Congressmen who approved it to apply against the states all “privileges or immunities of citizenship,” including the individual rights declared in the Bill of Rights, was not introduced, approved and ratified until after the Civil War), if a congressman claimed to be opposed to slavery but believed that the Constitution did not permit the federal government to legislate regarding slavery in the several states and went on to say that states had the right to impose slavery on a portion of the population, and went on to oppose the enactment of federal laws that granted freedom to slaves if they legally resided in a U.S. territory, such congressman would not have been deemed to be an abolitionist—heck, that was pretty much Stephen Douglas’s position. The Constitution nowadays provides Congress with many more weapons to fight abortion than abolitionist congressmen had in the 1850s to fight slavery, yet Ron Paul expects to be called a pro-lifer even though he opposes federal efforts to combat abortion?
Ron Paul voted against the Child Custody Protection Act (making it a crime to transport a minor across state lines for an abortion in violation of state parental-notification laws) every time the House voted on it (the only other “Republicans” to oppose it were pro-abortion RINOs). Ron Paul voted against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (recognizing unborn children harmed in violent attacks that were already federal crimes as separate victims in addition to the mother) every time the House voted on it (again, the only other “Republicans” to vote against it were pro-abortion RINOs). Ron Paul voted against the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (similar to the Child Custody Protection Act that had never become law) every time he voted on it (and again, the only other “Republicans” to vote against it were pro-abortion RINOs); Paul’s opposition was not based on a principled belief that the Constitution does not allow Congress to prohibit abortions performed on minors taken across state lines in violation of state laws, since he voted for amendments introduced by Sheila Jackson Lee and Bobby Scott that would have exempted only grandparents, clergymen, nurses, cabdrivers and busdrivers from the law.
Maybe in his heart Ron Paul is opposed to abortion, but his voting record in Congress cannot be described as pro-life, and if he were president he would by no means fight abortion in the way that George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and even George H.W. Bush did. I have my doubts about Paul truly basing his votes on principle (the same goes for his vaunted opposition to pork—he will fill up bills with lots of pork for his district, and then cast one of the few votes against final passage so as to claim to be a principled “pork-buster”), but even if his commitment to the Constitution was the reason he votes as he does the end result is someone I could never support for president (even if he wasn’t crazy and senile).