Impossible dream? Not so sure. Wet dream? Definitely.
Lighnin’ raises a good point. Ron Paul is batty enough, but his supporters are like the Manson girls. They make Paul out to be some godlike prophet who can say or do no wrong. Want to talk about his theories? Fine, just lay off the hero worship. They sound a lot like Linus talking about the Great Pumpkin.
I hope it’s not too much to ask that we can find somebody to be president who doesn’t even talk about crazy shit. Are there that few competent people who want the job that we have to settle for someone who believes crazy shit and we have to bet it’s unlikely they’ll accomplish it?
Ross perot dropped out of the race before he got back in. Dropping out killed his candidacy. Who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t done that.
Yeah but doesn’t this year seem a bit different to you at all? Has Ron paul ever broken double digits never mind possibly winning a few primaries?
I think there are a lot of people out there that could gfet behind Ron Paul if only they thought he had a real chance at winning. I don’t know if he would win the nomination but I think he could win a few primaries.
And THAT is why we should all send a few bucks to his campaign.
Because there simply wouldn’t be enough adherents in congress.
Maybe we will get a chance to see if his support will in fact melt away. You think any of his current supporters are ignorant of his more outlandish views? He is relatively honest and frank, something you almost never see ina politician. He actually responds to questions even if the answer might lose him more voters than it gains him. That sort of honesty and integrity might be attractive to a Republican electorate.
I’m not a Ron Paul supporter, I just like the idea of him being the Republican nominee. I look forward to hearing Obama losing his cool and saying things like “what the fuck?” and “holy shit!” on national tv and have everyone in America say “I was thinking the same thing.”
There is likely to be at least one other candidate in the election besides the Republican nominee.
We’ve tried that, it’s boring.
Did you watch last night debate on Fox News?
If so, find me one thing that Ron Paul said last night - JUST ONE THING - that is loony or crazy or off the bat.
Let’s pick one subject last night - Iran warmongering.
I’m genuinely curious to find out - regardless if you’re R/D/I – whose position do you find most rational.
So, you wanted to talk issues – I’m all ears now.
Wait, they didn’t in 1996, did they? (I remember a dude named Bob Dole, but he weren’t exactly a candidate.)
I only watched a few minutes. I’m proud that I had to search for the channel and when I got there, I felt… dirty.
Show me a transcript and I’ll pick Paul apart. In general on foreign policy, there’s a reasonable middle between saber rattling and complete isolationism. Paul is stuck on the latter while his rivals are stuck on the former.
I didn’t watch last night’s entry in the Endless Republican Debate War. So let’s start with Ron Paul’s belief that we can totally eliminate federal income taxes via unspecified budget cutting.
“(Paul) would completely eliminate the income tax by shrinking the size and scope of government to what he considers its Constitutional limits…He has asserted that Congress had no power to impose a direct income tax”
God knows what those “Constitutional limits” are - but one suspects there are a lot of voters with benefits that would be whisked away under a (19th? 18th?) century Ron Paul America.
Civil Rights Act of '64? Voting Rights Act of '65? Get rid of 'em, Ron Paul says - they’re an affront to property rights (remember, Ron is not a racist, no matter what evil spirits published in his newsletter. Oh, and get rid of the EPA too, also a violator of sacred property rights. Let the states (which have such a wonderful record) handle environmental policy, which Ron apparently thinks is an overall joke anyway. Let the market decide.
And as noted, there’s the touching Ron Paul belief that we don’t need any regulation of drugs and whatever quack nostrums anyone wants to sell - let the market decide. Requirements for vaccination? Nonsense, it’s all about individual liberty and whatever the market decides. Epidemic disease will respect that.
*"What if a dangerous disease was spreading like wildfire? Would Paul cave and require immunization in such a dire situation?
“No, I wouldn’t do it, because the person who doesn’t take the shot is the one at risk…”*
This, from a physician who should understand concepts of contagion, less than universal vaccine effectiveness and herd immunity. Superbugs or introduced pathogens by terrorists? Ron Paul would not mandate immunization even in the face of mass death and suffering, because the Loony Libertarian Bible says no.
Let the media start paying close attention to all this good stuff and watch what happens to Paul’s poll numbers, even among right-wing Republicans.
Ron Paul has planned no such thing. In fact, in his Plan to Restore America, he leaves tax policy as it is for the most part, while lowering the top rate.
Voting rights are guaranteed by the 14th amendment. Has Ron Paul said he wouldn’t enforce this particular amendment? If not, you’re bullshitting.
More bullshitting?
Sure sounds like a racist to me. (Bullshitting)
His plan doesn’t abolish the EPA.
Yes because I’m sure with a deadly disease sweeping the country, everyone will need the government to mandate the vaccine before they choose to do it on their own volition. And the people who choose not to get the vaccine would be such a sizeable group of people that we would all be DOOMED.
Much better to have the national guard round up the neighborhood, take them to the local school, tie them down and inject them before the zombies take over. You want to get ridiculous we can get ridiculous.
Once again, I feel compelled to remind Paul supporters that the Iowa GOP is run by whack-a-doodle loonies who are whack-a-doodle loonies even by the standard of regular GOP whack-a-doodle looines. Ron Paul, or any candidate, doing well with the Iowa GOP is a sre sign that they are completely unelectable and will fail on a national level. Ask Huckabee, Pat Buchannon, Pat Robertson and a long trail of others. Bob VanderPlaats can’t even get himself elected here, let alone anyone else.
Ron Paul would disagree with you: Registrant WHOIS contact information verification | Namecheap.com
“Eliminate the ineffective EPA. Polluters should answer directly to property owners in court for the damages they create – not to Washington.”
And here is the quote from his website on taxation:
"While a Flat Tax or a Fair Tax would each be a better alternative to the income tax system, Congressman Paul believes we would have to guarantee the 16th Amendment is repealed to avoid having both the income tax and one of these systems as an additional tax.
But there is a better way. Restraining federal spending by enforcing the Constitution’s strict limits on the federal government’s power would help result in a 0% income tax rate for Americans."
He absolutely believes that we can cut the federal government enough to not need income taxation.
Here’s a summary of what happened - Ron Paul strongly defends anti-war policies | Reuters
However, please do note that this article quote:
may not be exactly what happened.
The moderator insisted on the specific “scenario” several times where "POTUS has proven intelligence that Iran has a nuclear weapon” but Ron rejected the scenarios as baseless as something that never happens in reality.
So, he wanted to manage reality and that reality is that you never can have a proof like that and he renounced the whole scenario as simply war mongering.
Therefore, the article is more an opinion piece that wants to pass as “reporting the facts” of what transpired. And now people are making their opinion based on that article.
Maybe you guys had difficulty in reading what i typed. I’ll let you go back and review it.
Look, Paul not only opposes the Fed, he opposes fractional-reverse banking (also known as “banking”) as such. That by itself should be enough to exclude him from serious consideration.
I don’t need to review anything - I quoted the part I was responding to. Ron Paul very clearly, on his own website under “the Issues”, calls for eliminating the EPA. This is in direct contradiction to your claim.
Now, perhaps you are wanting to limit yourself only to the “Plan to Restore America”? In that case he does retain a funding line for the EPA at roughly 50% of its current budget. The fact that he can’t be consistent on a single website is a bit odd.
Here is the “plan” for those that want a good chuckle: Registrant WHOIS contact information verification | Namecheap.com
I particularly like eliminating the Dept of Energy without re-allocating any of the money used for our nuclear weapons capability. Although “Ban Union Projects” is pretty funny too.
Paul defended Iran’s rationale for obtaining nuclear weapons last night. Regardless of what the merits of his argument may or may not be this is absolute death in the Republican party. There is simply no way he can get the nomination while making such statements.
Ron Paul is contradicting Ron Paul on a lot of things these days. If his current platform does in fact call for retaining the current tax system in large part, how does Paul explain this:
*"On November 20, 2008 Ron Paul said in a New York Times / Freakonomics interview:
“I want to abolish the income tax, but I don’t want to replace it with anything. About 45 percent of all federal revenue comes from the personal income tax. That means that about 55 percent — over half of all revenue — comes from other sources, like excise taxes, fees, and corporate taxes.
We could eliminate the income tax, replace it with nothing, and still fund the same level of big government we had in the late 1990s."*
Sure, Ron. Explain that one to us in detail.
Kimberly Strassel in today’s Wall St. Journal notes other areas which, if not precisely flip-flops constitute a marked softening of Ron Paul’s stated positions in order to gain mainstream support (including reassuring parents that he won’t eliminate student loans at least in the short term, and toning down calls to legalize drugs). What Strassel thinks makes his nomination as the GOP candidate impossible are his foreign policy views, including that doozy about how the U.S. has “provoked” Iran to develop nuclear weapons. That type of thing is a killer, especially among the right-wingers who dominate the GOP primaries.
Even more of a killer would be a perception of Ron as shifting positions to gain primary voter support, a la Mitt Romney. Once that happens, the gung-ho Ron Paul base will start drifting away.
"“The government should never have the power to require immunizations or vaccinations.” - Ron Paul
Also, with Ron Paul looking like he could do well in early caucus/primary contests, expect more of the spotlight on his gee-I-didn’t-pay-attention-to-what-was-going-out-under-my-name newsletters:
…the newsletters I saw all had one thing in common: They were published under a banner containing Paul’s name, and the articles (except for one special edition of a newsletter that contained the byline of another writer) seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him–and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing–but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics."
While the author of the above comments didn’t link Paul supporters to such views currently, others have a different take.