The more I read/watch, the more I like Ron Paul. I think his ideas and positions are sensible and would help the USA get out of a lot of the messes it is in.
However, I don’t read a lot of criticism of Ron Paul. What is there not to like about this guy (other than maybe the fact he gets a little shrill during debates)?
You can read on his positions on various issues and decide for yourself:
The issues are fairly easy to read about, what I’m looking for are more general criticisms, past and present.
Like all the Democrats that ran for election on an anti-Iraq message that are now voting to keep us in Iraq and expand government surveillance powers. And Giuliani’s anti-gun record in NYC and his constant mentioning of 9/11.
I would think maybe Dopers from TX would know more than most about Paul.
He’s more of a libertarian than a Republican-- he ran for president on the Libertarian party’s ticket in the past. People criticize him for his wanting to return to the gold standard, but it’s not like the president can do that. In fact much of these presidential candidates pledge to do can only be done if they can get Congress to go along with them.
Hillary and Obama promise health care reform. Good luck with that. They might try and make it a priority, but the chances of either of their plans getting through Congress is pretty slim.
Well, Paul was the writer/editor of a newsletter called “Freedom Watch”, which said things like:
He’s said that he didn’t write the articles that contained those quotes, but they appeared in his newsletter under his byline.
Ron Paul is a pretty strong libertarian. If you like social spending, you won’t like Ron Paul.
Who’s Ron Paul? 
Okay, seriously, his name recognition over here is non-existent. The average Brit can place Hillary Clinton, Fred Thompson, and probably Barack Obama; they might remember Edwards. But Ron Paul will draw blank stares.
Jeez, looking at those links, the guy is all over the place on some important issues. I can’t figure out if he’s anti-gay or not - voted to ban adoptions by same-sex couples, but twice voted against banning same sex marriage.
He’ll never make it.
I’m pretty strong Libertarian and I can’t support Ron Paul because he’s anti-choice and because his goldbug nonsense makes him look like a loon. Mainly the anti-choice thing, though.
I’m pretty libertarian, but the gold standard thing is just bat shit insane. Anyone who advocates returning to a gold standard has proven they know nothing about basic economics, so that leaves Ron out in the cold in my book.
Why would returning to the gold standard be “bat shit insane”?
What’s the pros and cons?
I don’t know about his politics, but his “pocket fisherman” was a piece of crap.
Well, it would certainly stiffle the economy:
Pros: The government no longer controls the money supply and thus can’t create hyper-inflation situations seen in countries where the government prints money to pay its debt.
Cons: The government no longer controls the money supply and thus inflation is completely outside of its control(deflation, in fact, is also entirely possible). 15% inflation? 10% deflation? Who knows what’s going to happen – it all depends on what the economy does what the gold supply does. Interest rates will be a total roller coaster(nominal interest rates are just a premium on top of the inflation rate). People can’t plan for the future because they have no idea what prices are going to look like. Long-term loans at fixed interest rates will be impossible to get. You’ll see more labour unrest when the inflation rate is high because high inflation eats into people’s purchasing power.
I like Ron Paul. But my respect for him somewhat waned when he appeared as a guest speaker at an Alex Jones rally.
I dislike his pro-life stance, but I kind of think that I agree with him in most matters, and where I disagree with him, it won’t make any difference. He may be personally pro-life (and if I’m not mistaken, I believe every single candidate has said that they personally are against abortion) but he’s so rabidly anti-federal government that he would never pass any sort law on the matter.
He seems to vote against things he things should be handled by the states rather than the federal government, maybe that explains the inconsistency.
Yeah he’s gonna have to explain the gold standard thing a bit more. I think his main objection is that not being on the gold standard allows unbalanced budgets and printing more money to finance projects that seem important at the time. But is it really practical to go back?
I recommend watching Ron Paul speeches on youtube. His foreign policy is a little extreme, but it’s much closer to the way I feel compared to the entire American political establishment. He’s nearly heroic IMO for trying to move the debate on foreign policy back to a sane level, saying some of the things he’s said on national TV. You’ll notice that his popularity on the internet is huge. He even has liberals like me endorsing him just because of his foreign policy stances.
However, his whole shtick about (paraphrasing) “I think humans in the past were smart. They based their money on things which had value! Gold has value. Paper doesn’t” is just looney tunes. I don’t know much about economics, but I know enough to say that the currency of any economy only has value as long as people say it does. Gold or paper, it’s all arbitrary, and going back to gold now would be a Bad Idea.
Also, he pretty much wants to destroy most of the federal government. Although the GOP front runners still pretend to care about shrinking the government in public, even they were laughing at him when the list of everything he wanted to dismantle was read aloud at one of the debates. C’mon, the FBI, really?
Ya think? The Congress we have now would be favorable; the Congress we will have after November '08 even more so.