Ron Paul's candidacy

ThomasT

Just FYI, a lot of (maybe most) Americans, at least wrt my limited experience, have no idea who Ralph Nader is. And we can thank the corporate media for that, imo.

Yes, I agree with you that he's a 'character'. And, imho, a really admirable one. He's a person who has committed his entire life to civic responsibility, which is a concept/idea which seems to be totally foreign, indeed condemnable, to most Americans.

Somebody is going to get elected to the presidency of the US. And this will be, imo, a function of appealing soundbites, media exposure, and, ultimately, pandering to the status quo.

A really strong candidate whose message and goal is returning power to the people has virtually no chance of being elected.

The US is a functioning oligarchy. And as long as that's the status quo, then committed people like Nader (and yes, Paul) will be marginalized and riduculed by the mainstream press. And most Americans couldn't care less.

But, to be fair, I do think that Paul is too old to be president. We, not that long ago, elected a really old person to the presidency (Reagan), and he spent his entire second term eating jellybeans and letting somebody else run things, because he was, in fact, senile for most of that time.

mheslep

I do not see where Romney has changed his position on this one..

ThomasT

I don't know for sure. Did he change his mind or not? Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, as I've noted. It might suggest that Romney's learning, and not afraid to publicly reveal his changing ideas based on that learning. Or, it might reveal that Romney's just changing his public statements based on polls.

Personally, I think that he's a slimey political opportunist whose primary goal is getting elected. That is, I don't think he has any particular message or vision wrt improving America. I think he wants to be president, and, basically, that's it.

In my view, he's one of the least desirable, but probably one of the most electable, of the GOP candidates. Because he represents the oligarchical status quo. The corporate media isn't likely to marginalize him no matter how silly or slimily opportunistic he might seem to a lot of people. Which means that his gaffs will be glossed over, and most potential voters, not caring to do any real research, will simply go with his obviously 'normal' look and statements -- and vote for him.

As you might surmise. Imho, he's much worse than Paul.

ThomasT

Apparently Paul is leading in some polls now. But there might be a problem, at least down the road, with his old newsletters. My personal opinion on that is that he should just be honest about it. He's a WASP. No secret there, and it appeals to LOTS of Americans.

We're, all of us, predjudiced and racist to certain extents. If you deny it, then you're just lying to yourself. But now Paul is caught in an interestingly ironic dilemma. He's running for president in the most transparently racist and predjudiced party, and yet he's forced by currently politically correct dialogue to deny his biases.

Personally, I would just rather have him say that he doesn't want blacks or hispanics or Jews, whatever, to run things. I don't think that most Americans want that either -- because MOST Americans are still of European/English descent. But that's changing -- at least it was, perhaps also somewhat ironically, until the more strict enforcement of immigration by the Obama administration. If America goes back to the pre-Obama status quo wrt immigration, then projections indicate that the US will be a Spanish speaking country by about 2070 -- with the WASP population only about 25% to 30% of the total population of the US.

It appears that neither Paul nor Obama would let that happen.

mheslep

There's little evidence that Paul believes as you suggest, though his campaign staff does appear to have attracted a few who do. Paul categorically denies any association with the racist views written by another in his newsletter.
Remind me, how did the current guy get in the White House again? How did Herman Cain manage to lead in the GOP polls for weeks?

ThomasT

Apparently my idle conjectures are inconsistent with empirical reality. But maybe not. Regarding the newsletter, of course Paul denies the biased views printed in it. And I don't want to believe that he ever held those sorts of views. But the problem is that it was his newsletter. It went out to the public bearing his name ... supposedly following his perusal and consent. So it seems a bit lame for him to deny that he was aware of its contents.

Regarding the biases of WASP (and WASC) Americans in general, yes, Obama did get elected. Maybe the biases of those groups have been affected by a few generations of increasingly more egalitarian modes of thinking in contrast to what I experienced growing up.

AlephZero

Most probably, the same way as other "successful" politicians: get your message across to the 50% of the electorate who are below average intelligence and you are most of the way there already.

Some people have a natural instinct about doing that, others work hard at it. I couldn't possibly comment about where Obama and Cain fit on that sliding scale.

The rise and fall of New Labour in the UK, from Michael Foot through Kinnock, Blair, Brown, and the "two Eds are better than one" (Balls and Millipede) would make an excellent case study.

Dotini

What would constitute success for Dr. Paul? Neither his most ardent supporters, we here at PF, the mainstream media, nor Paul himself actually anticipates a President Ron Paul, I'm sure. Yet here he is threatening to win the Iowa caucuses, now less than a week away.

If it comes pass that Paul does well enough to get the consideration of Austrian economics and other libertarian ideas into open, legitimate public discourse, then likely he will have already won.

"End the Fed" (central bank) is now well-accepted among the Republican candidates. So that is early evidence that Paul is making history.

Many of his most ardent supporters are the college kids and others who are internet savvy. So his movement can only grow. To be a survivor after New Hampshire will tell us a lot.

Respectfully submitted,
Steve

D H

If that's true, that is yet another reason the Republicans may well get squashed 10 months from now.

We are often taught that George Washington was the first president of the United States. That depends on what you mean by President and what you mean by the United States. In a very real sense, Washington was the eighth president, preceded by John Hanson, Elias Boudinot, Thomas Mifflin, Richard Henry Lee, Nathan Gorman, Arthur St. Clair, and Cyrus Griffin. So why don't we here of Washington's predecessors? The answer is simple: The US under the Articles of Confederation was a failed experiment. We're seeing a repeat of that failure right now in western Europe.

Repeating those failed experiments a third time (at least a third time) would be insane. "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

That insanity is exactly the path along which Paul and the Tea Party want to lead us.

Dotini

I should have said "audit the Fed".

mheslep

It's not; they won't.

Yes. However, there is no little evidence the USA has realized many of the objections raised by the anti federalists. They might argue that the USA is a failed experiment: over large and over extended military, over large and mounting debt, taxation grown far beyond anything announced or intended at the founding or even the 1916 income tax, federal programs run by an aristocracy of sorts, state police powers assumed by the federal government.

The separate European nations did not fail prior to 1992 and Maastricht. The failure is now in the Union and in particular the adoption of a common currency across sovereign nations, which was predicted to fail by many at its inception. They should have stopped at free trade among the several nations and left well enough alone.

Paul does not call for the end of the Union; one existed for some time prior to the creation of the Fed. The insanity here is to look abroad at the consequences of debt and overspending, see our own debt and overspending and continue business as usual. Paul has some nutty ideas about the Fed and currency. But his clearly announced spending cuts, or something like them, is the only sane path forward.

JonDE

No it is not the only sane path forward. His spending cuts are dramatic. In the current weak economy, the only thing that laying off 2M military personel would do is cause another recession. Almost any cut at all in government spending would effect real people. Real people getting laid off further weakens the economy.
By far the most important factor to reducing the deficit is to grow the economy. The projected future deficits are around 600B per year, meaning 900B of the current deficits are because of the weak economy. While I agree that cuts will have to be made, and we can start with them now, drastic cutting will only make our situation worse.

Vanadium 50

Ah, but which part of the economy? Harry Reid, for example, has said that the private sector part is doing just fine, and that it's the public sector that needs the jobs. Clearly the two parties have two different viewpoints.

mheslep

It is the spending increases that have been dramatic. Returning spending to the levels of 3-5 years ago is not.

JonDE

Fine is obviously an overstatement. Its doing "ok", but not good. The private sector will probably finish the year adding around 300k jobs more then population growth, while the governments (federal, state and local) will probably shed around that same number. So from that perspective its doing ok. I think I read that normally the "governments" add around 12k jobs per month just to keep up with population growth. So the government is one of the weak sectors of the economy, but by no means is it the only problem plaguing us, as I think Reid was insinuating.

Woopy

ron paul is awesome, that is all. He's such a lunatic that he wants to end a war that has been running on for 10 years, hell if Ron Paul was president in 2008 we would of been out of Iraq in 2008. He's so loony that he doesn't want to dictate people's personal behavior...oh yeah. He's so loony he wants to follow the document that gives very specific details to what the federal government can and cannot do. He wants to end a federal reserve that isn't even in the constitution, and get rid of agencies that aren't in the constitution. He's such a lunatic man.

JonDE

2008 federal budget was 2.9 trillion. 2012 is set to be around 3.7T. If you adjust 2008's budget for inflation and population growth at a fairly conservative method of 4% per year you end up in 2012 with 3.39T. So from your perspective, increased government spending is only about 300B of the problem, which doesn't differ too far from my previous post, when I said 900B was because of the recession. Which would leave about 300B to being the problem of taxatation.