Just curious what the vanishingly small number of board Republicans think of Ron Paul as a candidate. To be honest I don’t know that much about him. A Republican friend of mine says he is the best candidate out there, but because of his stance on campaign contributions and the fact that the ‘media’ is deliberately shunning him (these are his theories, not mine), he says Ron Paul will never get elected.
I was wondering what board Republicans views on Paul are.
-XT
I do not have a high opinion of Ron Paul.
If you don’t mind my asking, why? What about him don’t you like? As I say, I actually don’t know much about the man. My friend is pretty much a rabid supporter, but it’s hard to pin him down on why Paul is so great.
-XT
As a libertarian Republican, it probably goes without saying that Ron Paul is getting my vote in the primary. I’m attracted to his views on reducing government spending and the size of government, his concern for individual privacy, and his opposition to the war in Iraq.
However, he’s a little strange. His stress on returning to the gold standard and undoing the Federal Reserve may be good ideas (I’m not sure) but they are pretty far out of the mainstream. He attracts a fair number of kooks, too. His campaign gives me the kind of unease I’ve always felt around Libertarians – they are people with good ideas but are just a little “off” in some way. It’s hard to describe, but if you’ve spent time in Libertarian circles you probably know what I’m talking about (and if you don’t, then you are probably one of the people who is a bit “off”).
I don’t like him. Many of his policies strike me as borderline tinhat crazy.
Starting with his insistence on “never voting for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution.”
He advocates withdrawal from the UN and NATO for reasons of maintaining strong national sovereignty.
Paul regularly votes against almost all proposals for new government spending, initiatives, or taxes. He has pledged never to raise taxes.
There are others, but that is a good short list lifted from a wiki article on him.
Overall, I find him to much of a libertarian for my taste.
Jim
Not unless you consider Alan Greenspan to be on the lunatic fringe.
Sounds like my kind of guy then. I’m surprised…my friend is definitely not what I would call a libertarian type. He’s very conservative.
-XT
Kind of like being at a Star Trek convention? 
I know exactly what you mean, btw.
I hear he’s surging in the polls, relatively speaking. IANAR, but I think that’s a good thing. They need to shift (back) towards the libertarian position if they want to get my vote. Not that I think Paul would make a good president, but if he makes some Pubbies get back to their more libertarian roots, so much the better. This libertarian leaning guy used to identify more the Republicans than the Democrats 20 years ago*, but not any more. There are plenty of Democrats I wouldn’t vote for, but there are more Republicans that fall in that category these days.
*And even then it was more of a “hold your nose and vote” type of identifying.
Just because he endorses it doesn’t make it “mainstream”. I mean, what are the chances of it happening in our lifetimes? If it were “mainstream”, those chances would be at least 50/50.
A candidate may be forgiven for having one or two nutty ideas, but Ron Paul has tons of them. He wants us out of the UN and NATO, wants us back on the gold standard, he hates the Federal Reserve System. He has some published writings from awhile back that look vaguely racist.
The Republican field has some unorthodox candidates this time around, it is true, but those include a business leader and former governor, a former federal prosecutor and mayor, a war hero turned long term Senator, a lawyer and actor turned Senator and a Baptist preacher who managed to lead a state government without ramming his faith down anyone’s throat.
Some of these guys would make good presidents, in my view. Some probably wouldn’t. But they’re all better than Ron Paul, who would be a disaster - chasing ideological purity and unable to abide either party to craft policy.
Mr. Moto: You make some excellent points. And lets not forget that a president has to work with Congress. I don’t see Paul being able to do that. Even if I agreed with all his ideas (which I don’t), I wouldn’t want someone in the Oval Office who can’t work with Congress. He’d be worse than Bush in that respect.
Of course, we don’t want him to work too well with Congress. That’s what got us into Iraq.
Mr. Moto has the floor and I agree with him completely. Look, wanting to shrink the federal budget and cut taxes is good, but Ron Paul gives me the impression of being a thin-boned nutcase loosely held together by a fanatic belief in his own infallibility. He’s a raving lunatic who can sometimes manage to keep it together in public. He does not care about of like the Repblican party, does not understand who is in it and why, or what other people’s agendas and idea might be, and has the diplomatic and political ability of a rotting dead badger.
The man would be a running disaster as President; totally incapable of ever accomodating or agreeing with anyone, prone to wild flights of fancy (Hey, let’s stop all border inspections at all! Terrorists will leave us alone if we leave the U.N.! We can just ignore the entire rest of the world!) that I’d be honestly afraid if he became President. I don’t like some other canidates: Mitt Romney, Clinton, Obama - but I wouldn’t feel like we’d be jumping off a cliff by electing them. Ron Paul? He’s a wingnut. He gets fanatic support from a few loons.
That article is 40 years old. Do we know if Greenspan still agrees with it?
Of course Ron Paul would be a scary President. But if he receives enough votes in the primaries, it will show other GOP candidates that there is a sizable libertarian contingent out there and that they need to appeal to our votes.
That type of thinking guides my votes for Libertarian Party candidates. Most are pretty nuts, but if they receive a large number of votes it illustrates the market for libertarian ideas.
I’m not a Republican, but would it be fair to consider him to be the Ralph Nader of the Republican party?
Prior to the Nader debacle in 2000, Nader was a man who I respected for some of his works, but thought his entire ideology as well as his personality made him unsuitable for the presidency. Seems like from the comments in this thread that many conservatives/Republicans feel the same way about Ron Paul. Interesting that both candidates attract a small, but fiercely loyal, group of supporters among voters.
I could see myself voting for Ron Paul in the primary, except I can’t because I’m a Democrat. I like a lot of what he says*, disagree violently with him about Iraq, and actually think there is a place in politics for wacky ideas that will never get past congress-getting them out there shakes up the status quo.
*He’s dead on on taxes, immigration, privacy, property rights and health care. He’s on the right track WRT education, social security and racial policies. His foreign policy ideas are a mess, in my opinion many of them are great in theory, but not practical in the real world.
I think he’s a loon. The fact that stormfront . org is running banner ads for him doesn’t bode well either. Cite.
I’m voting for Huckabee in the primary.
Interesting, I voted for Nader in 2000 as I was planning to vote McCain and he got Roved-over and I would not vote for Bush and did not like Gore at the time. I like him better now that he develop a personality.
I knew many people that voted for Nader simply as a protest vote or to give a vote to the Green party. I have yet to meet a fervent Nader for President person.
Weirddave: Curiosity, what are Paul’s racial policies?
Don’t like him. Too much like Pat Buchanan.
Yes. That’s pretty much what we would call him. In fact, that is exactly what we’ve called him.