Posted on 09/13/2007 9:02:42 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Last week the Republicans had another debate, this one on FOX News. Not much has changed in the last few months; Rudy Giuliani is still in the lead in the polls and Fred Thompson is still in second despite the fact he didn't announce his intentions to run until a few days ago. What has changed, and changed for the worse, is the surging popularity of a Texas Congressman by the name of Ron Paul. I've been running into normal, intelligent people who support Paul, and it really scares me.
The reason Paul is as popular as he is has to do largely with his sudden support from Democrats and I have to admit, when I didn't know much about him I thought he sounded like a good candidate. He wants to end the Iraq war, have tighter borders, lower taxes and decrease spending, what's not to like? The problem doesn't lie with his policies and ideas, but rather his execution of said policies. How to end the war in Iraq: immediate pullout not only from Iraq, but from the whole of the Middle East. Never mind the slaughter that will occur with our exit. Paul, by the way, denies that this will happen, as the people saying it will are the same that said it would be an easy win. It was a mistake and we never should have been there.
He has more than one unworkable policy. Who else here wants to abolish the FDA? Dr. Paul is your man. His case against the FDA is that they take taxpayer money and are supposed to regulate the food and drugs coming into the country and those produced here, but there are still cases that get by them. Obviously, he claims, we would be better off with no Federal regulation. Corporations should police themselves. Paul is a big fan of the free market and wants to see an end of just about every federal agency that does anything useful or helpful. DEA? Gone. Medicare/Medicaid? History. IRS? The government has no right to take your money.
Paul is such a fan of the free market and letting businesses do whatever they want that during a recent session of Congress he was the one dissenting vote when Congress decided to stop giving tax money to corporations profiting from the genocide in Sudan. It seems pretty cut and dry, companies are making money off of a genocide. Why would you give them money to keep doing that? Paul's answer: We shouldn't tie the hands of corporations by limiting their business dealings. That pretty much covers foreign policy for Paul.
Paul doesn't like the federal tax system and actually signed a document circulated by the National Libertarian Organization a few years ago affirming this belief. Lower taxes is one of the tried and true methods of getting people to vote for you. The problem with Paul saying he'll get lower taxes is that it's not entirely true. Yes, your income will be less taxed, but Paul wants to raise the sales tax to 23 percent at the least. Have fun being poor, because you won't be able to afford anything under Paul's administration. What would be really interesting is seeing how much price gouging we would see with no regulatory bodies, but I'd rather not think about it.
More interesting is Paul's absolute belief in the free market. He wants to see an end of public service agencies and governmental controls. Private post offices, for example, would be bought up by companies and if you're not served by the same post office as say, the people sending you bills, you might never get the bill. Or you might incur a fee when you get the bill. Imagine all roads in the country being up for sale: Paul sees a future where this has happened and thousands of toll booths are being constructed across the country.
We wouldn't have a nutcase presidential candidate without him being a racist, not these days anyways. Paul luckily fits that bill. He's made his case against the African American community known very well, starting with this comment back in 1992, "If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be." Later he would say the age to be prosecuted as an adult should be lowered to 13 because "black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such." It's no wonder White Supremacist Website and forum Stormfront.org has come out in support of Paul, as has former Ku Klux Klan member and politician David Duke.
Here's a list of things Paul wants to end because they have had failures in the past, or he sees them as useless: CIA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, FDA, IRS, Medicare, FBI, DEA, UN, NATO, NAFTA and CAFTA. That's the short list. This is my biggest problem with Ron Paul. He offers no constructive thoughts, only destructive ones. He doesn't think a single thing can be made to work if it failed even once. Bad intelligence? Cut it out completely, don't try to reform it.
Overall, Paul has no workable ideas. He wants to return to a gold standard, which would destroy the US economy. He wants to cut nearly every government department and build a giant wall (not a fence) on our border with Mexico. I honestly don't understand how people can think he would make a good president.
His campaign is unprecedented, considering his limited gov't and non-interventionist foreign policy message, in that he's going to unfortunately attract radicals from both the left and right.
Sure. Dissolution <> Severe restructuring. Is Ron Paul for a severe restructuring of the CIA or FBI? Or dissolution?
WHO CARES what they think? I support Ron Paul because he supports small government, a non-nation building foreign policy and secure borders. I'm not changing my vote because of some DUers or 9/11 "truther" nuts.
And which candidate is the only one talking about the real issues? Limiting government, controlling spending....NONE of the other Republican candidates have no concrete plans on what to do with SS and Medicare, for example. Only Paul does.
- Only PAUL is in favor of completely doing away with the IRS, while the other candidates bloviate about tax credits or "making the Bush tax cuts permanent."
- Only PAUL wants to abolish the Education department and let the states deal with it, while the other candidates want to "improve" the department.
The one candidate that I know does not have what it takes with respect to the GOP
Paul doesn't need the GOP establishment he's got folks from all walks of the political spectrum working for him.
Of course not! No one here expects any Paulestinian to turn against his/her own kind, after all.
Ah, the obligatory photo-shopped pic of Paul, when you can’t debate the facts.
Guilt by association? Please. One of these white supremacist groups favored Thompson, and I didn’t go about wailing he was a racist.
They don’t seem to mind conservatives trying to prevent amnesty, and I’m sure as hell NOT a part of that racist organization sharing the same goals they do.
I didn’t quote the group sponsering him only, I included the entire text supposedly stated by Paul himself. That is what I took issue with.
You know how fleet footed “they” can be and some such garbage. Does that make him a racist? Not necessarily, but it denotes prejudice. Just as suggesting we’re not above staging an attack to increase war support suggests he’s a nut.
But, that’s okay. Because Paul by his own admissions is NO conservative. he’s a Libertarian. And so long as libertarians allow guys like Paul to define them with this insanity, any decent ideas they have like small government are going to get lost. That’s part’s not good, but I’ll take the trade off if it keeps guys like Paul away.
I was responding to your claim that it was unthinkable to eliminate the FBI and the CIA. Judging by their complete failure to detect, anticipate and prevent 9-11, holding them to be sacronsect is inappropriate IMHO. For Rep. Paul’s views on the subject, try his campaign or House websites - would not want to put words in his mouth or misconstrue or misquote his positions.
Any hinge-jawed slopebrow genuinely of the belief that abolishing the Education department is one of "the real issues" in a post-9/11 world isn't baseline sentient enough to recognize a "fact," sans adult supervision.
A perfect demonstration as to why, precisely, your make-believe "candidate" is registering at 1% in the latest national polls. Well done. ;)
Woah! Not true whatsoever. Its a common custom in Arabian cultures for men to hold hands. Gen. Schwarzkopf wrote in detail about this in his autobiography “It Doesn’t Take A Hero” and how odd it was.
Wrong, age had nothing to do with it. The hand-holding was a symbolic gesture of "diplomacy" between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
I’m not a Ron Paul supporter but this article against him is pathetic.
Isn’t that the same pic you see on every mooron.org thread. Wonder why you have so many democRat cliches?? Too bad your little Ron Perot ruse isn’t happening HilaryCare.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Your naivete is almost mind-boggling. How many experimental drugs do not make it through FDA approval? Thousands and thousands. Why, you axe? Oh, that's right, because some of them have nasty side effects (like death and other pesky things like liver failure and heart attacks). I suppose you want hundreds of people to die trying out medicines-not-yet-ready-for-primetime. And surely no companies would try to profit from people desperate to have any sort of hope and offer an "experimental" compound to treat autism that is made of horse manure and owl feathers.
One of the foundational truths of capitalism is that the buyer must have perfect information. That simply is not the case in the complicated world of pharmaceutical compounds and medical conditions. Your argument has a number of holes in it, each big enough to drive a double-wide through.
The Department of Education? Why do we have a federal agency that is only noteworthy for watching it’s benchmark decline year after year?
The BATFE? Why should the government care what you drink, what you smoke, what you shoot, or what you blow up so long as it is your own? Totally unnecessary.
The FDA? This outfit has crooned about saving ten thousand lives by releasing a drug from testing. This actually means that in the year preceding that, when the drug was available, ten thousand people died from the problem it could cure. At the very least it needs serious reform.
The IRS? We need to abolish the sixteenth and seventeenth amendment and go back to a federalist proportional representation, proportional pay system. The federal government should create a budget then each of the states should pay the portion of the budget proportional to it’s representation in congress. Returning senators to state legislature control would result in more control on government spending.
I don’t like the drugs that are currently illegal, but the WOD has justified Gestapo tactics. No-knock raids using bad intel fit the bill for me. I love liberty more than I hate those drugs. I don’t think this is true of the DEA as an outfit.
The UN and these bad trade deals are a threat as well. They should be dealt with.
We do not need a government as large as we have today, further it has grown beyond the ability for one person or group of people to effectively control it. We have people that we call bureaucrats that are essentially Lords of private fiefs who have no accountability and yet tremendous authority.
Ron Paul is not wrong about all things.
Paul doesn't need the GOP establishment he's got folks from all walks of the political spectrum working for him.
My reference to the GOP was to avoid any confusion that might arise with respect to the DNC candidates. But, I'm not surprised you didn't catch that.
You might be accepting of the claims of one Ru Paul wanting to eliminate this or that part of the Federal Govt, but I'm a realist in knowing that he'd never be able to accomplish those feats even were they to be good things (which I do not believe they would be). Thowing out the baby with the bathwater has never been an intelligent response to a problem. But, hey, continue enjoying your delusions. Eventually your demential will completey take over.
Fair enough.
And I'll say this. I'm not above a credible candidate from a third party making waves on a small government, border enforcing platform. But Paul isn't that guy because he has all this other baggage he brings with him. Stuff that is far less easy to tolerate then how many divorces the other candidates have racked up between them.
Tancredo's not my favorite guy because of his bomb mecca comment, but I tolerate him. That's about as far off on the personality scale that I'm willing to go.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.