Eva-Marie, whom Art and Yorkshire and Eric and I have “known” for the better part of a decade, from the old New York Times bulletin boards on America Online, and later from e-mail circles, asked:
A question for my buddies Dana and Art
I see that Dana and Art, two of my cyberspace buddies, are still undecided as to which of the right-wingers they will vote for.
Soooooo, here comes a suggestion: How about Ron Paul?
Actually, Art has taken a position, and endorsed former Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN), even though he has wondered about Mr Thompson‘s campaign efficiency. I haven’t decided for certain yet; if I had to vote tomorrow, I’d vote for former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA), because he has shown the ability to get things done. But why not Representative Ron Paul (R-TX)?
If you read Dr Paul’s issue positions, they all sound like things I could support. But there’s more to a candidate than simply reading his positions, and that is where Dr Paul fails for me.
In a statement reminiscent of Ward Churchill, in the second Republican debate Dr Paul virtually said that al Qaeda was justified in the September 11th attacks. And now he’s trying to blame the United States for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and claiming that we ought not to be involved in supporting the government of Pakistan, even though Pakistan is facing the possibility of takeover by Islamist militants and is armed with nuclear weapons.
He has, in effect, taken principle (his 1920s-1930s isolationism) to the point of inanity; he is simply not realistic.
Pakistan has been striving for nuclear weapons since 1972, after its bitter enemy, India, went nuclear; this isn’t exactly something new. In May of 1998, in response to several nuclear weapons tests by India, Pakistan test detonated six nuclear weapons of its own. Whether the United States was particularly engaged with the rest of the world didn’t particularly matter; in 1972, President Richard Nixon was still trying to disengage the United States from the war in Vietnam, and India was trying to assert leadership of the so-called “non-aligned” nations. President Bill Clinton’s appeasement-to-the-Muslims policies apparently had no bearing on Pakistan’s decision to fire off its test blasts.
When I peruse far-left sites like OpEdNews, I see plenty of support for Dr Paul, mostly from people who don’t really know much about him. Our friends on the far left like his disengagement-from-the-world, anti-NAFTA and CAFTA policies, and his opposition to the PATRIOT Act, but I have to wonder if they’ve really read what he has said about Social Security, socialized medicine and abortion? Dr Paul would have made the perfect Republican nominee — in 1924.
Isolationism as a coherent policy can make sense, if it is uniformly applied: the United States would not have troops abroad, nor engage in police actions or other ventures to help other countries, but neither would the US contribute when Indonesia gets swamped by a tsunami or Iran or Turkey or Mexico get devastated by an earthquake. However, even that has its limits: we cannot start over, with a tabula rasa, but have to formulate our policies based on what has already happened; we cannot uninvade Iraq, nor take back our participation in two World Wars, and even if we decided upon an complete disengagement from the Middle East, we cannot undo our past support for Israel nor our support for the Saudi kings, nor can we just flip a switch and cease being dependent upon imported petroleum.
Sister Toldjah has a good round-up of reasons why conservatives are, for the most part, not supporting Dr Paul. She quotes Rob Port, who wrote:
but I think a lot of Paul’s support is coming from people who have never, and would never, vote Republican.
So much of Dr Paul’s support seems to come in the form of internet spam. As Walter Mondale asked of Gary Hart, in 1984, “Where’s the beef?”
And here I thought he was just a nut job. I can envision a Paul-Kucinich ticket of no particular order. Maybe a Kucinich-Paul ticket, or just the all Galaxy Ticket.
One cannot juxtapose Paul and Kucinich.
Kucinich is a leftist who has found a narrow niche of success in the political arena. He was a flop as a mayor when he had to deal with real-world problems. There are some constituencies that will elect a Dennis Kuchinich or Vito Marcantonio or William Jefferson. Nothing is too outrageous.
Ron Paul is a man whose true success and skills outside of the political arena are undeniable. He is motivated by an ideology that is noble but can be dangerous when taken to extremes. The Polish ‘Librum Veto’ was pure libertarianism in concept but proved deadly for the Nation.
There are some ideas that provide guideposts (as with the magnetic poles of the earth) but are questionable destinations.