Ron Paul Can’t Win

Opining in the Wall Street Journal, Kimberly Strassel delivers a hard punch at Ron Paul. Let’s see here, Strassel writes that Paul is “in many ways ‘the ideal candidate for a conservative electorate hungry for a principled GOP nominee.” This is certainly the case. I do not know what conservative means politically speaking. Are we talking social issues? Are we talking the economy or national defense? I do not believe most social issues belong in the discussion, nor does Dr. Paul or did the Founders, as I read the specific enumerated powers of the Constitution as relates to the duties of Congress and the president.

Ron Paul proposes slashing $1 trillion from the budget and eliminating five federal cabinet agencies. Paul proposes cutting the corporate tax rate (I would cut it to zero) and cutting the tax on capital gains and dividends. Absolute musts in my book. Paul wants to dump Obamacare (most Americans want this) as well as Sarbanes-Oxley, both absolute musts. Strassel writes that Dr. Paul is neither timid nor inconsistent, and it OUGHT TO make him a star. Nope, no ought to. Dr. Paul is clearly a star with any American who believes in the Constitution as written, as opposed to tortured.

So where is the real rub for Kimberley? It is Paul’s “non-interventionist” approach. With historical perspective, no one in her right mind would have put American troops on the ground in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, so I am unsure why having a noninterventionist view casts Dr. Paul’s foreign-policy views as unpopular. Sure the foreign-policy hawks (see Project For A New American Century for the players) and military/industrial complex crowd hate Paul. And I would guess that K Street, Wall Street and the public sector unions won’t be hosting any Ron Paul fundraisers. No problem here as these are the folk largely responsible for getting us into the mess we are in today.

Securing The City by Christopher Dickey is the most informative book I have read on homeland security and counterterrorism. It explains what national defense is all about, and it has nothing to with invasions, nation building and counter insurgency, to the contrary. The book by former Newsweek Paris Bureau Chief and Middle East Regional Editor Christopher Dickey concerns NYPD and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. Dickey refers to “the dangerously ill-conceived, mismanaged, and highly militarized global war on terror” that has taken the United States into the gruesome occupation of Iraq and inspired a violent loathing of America. Pretty much as Ron Paul has called it, no? Dickey continues, “Invading far away lands is the worst and should be the last option when fighting to make ourselves safe at home.” Dickey recommends more pragmatic responses: effective diplomacy and espionage abroad, including covert action and reliable real-time intelligence on every front. In the excellent Ghost Wars, Steve Coll writes, “The United States needs a new counterterrorism strategy—one that is vigilant, creative, sustainable, and aligned with the country’s constitutional values.”

To me, all of the above sounds on the money and pretty much travels in the direction of Ron Paul’s views. Yet Dr. Paul’s foreign policy views for Kimberly Strassel and many others make for a can’t win proposition for Ron Paul. Nonsense. Read Kevin A. Williamson’s illuminating Repo Man essay in National Review. A clip follows here.

“Here’s what Wall Street doesn’t want: It doesn’t want to hear from Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann or even Newt Gingrich, or suffer any sort of tea-party populism. It wants you rubes to shut up about Jesus and please pay your mortgages. It doesn’t want to hear from such traditional Republican constituencies as Christian conservatives, moral traditionalists, pro-lifers, or friends of the Second Amendment. It doesn’t even want to hear much from the Chamber of Commerce crowd, because those guys are used-car dealers and grocery stores and for the most part strictly from hick, so far as Wall Street is concerned. Wall Street wants an administration and a Congress—and a country—that believes what is good for Wall Street is good for America, whether that is true or isn’t. Wall Street doesn’t want free markets—it wants friends, favors, and fealty.”

Then read the excellent Wikipedia summary of Ron Paul’s views. When you have finished and considered all of the information I have outlined earlier, it should be clear to you that, exactly as I have been writing for so long, the only candidate running for president who offers any hope for a return to a true constitutionally strong Federal Republic form of government defined by our Founders is Ron Paul.

Wikipedia summary of Ron Paul:

“Paul has been described as conservative, Constitutionalist, and libertarian. He has been nicknamed ‘Dr. No’, representing both his medical degree and his insistence that he will ‘never vote for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution’, and ‘Mr. Republican’. One scoring method published in the American Journal of Political Science found Paul the most conservative of all 3,320 members of Congress from 1937 to 2002. Paul’s foreign policy of nonintervention made him the only 2008 Republican presidential candidate to have voted against the Iraq War Resolution during 2002. He advocates withdrawal from the United Nations, and from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for reasons of maintaining strong national sovereignty. He endorses free trade, rejecting membership in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization as ‘managed trade’. He endorses increased border security and opposes welfare for illegal aliens, birthright citizenship and amnesty; he voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. He voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists in response to the September 11 attacks, but suggested war alternatives such as authorizing the president to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal targeting specific terrorists. An opponent of the Iraq War and potential war with Iran, he has also criticized neoconservatism and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, arguing that both inadvertently cause terrorist reprisals against Americans. Paul has stated that ‘Israel is our close friend’ and that it is not the place of the United States to ‘dictate how Israel runs her affairs’.

Paul is a proponent of Austrian school economics; he has authored six books on the subject, and displays pictures of Austrian school economists Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Ludwig von Mises (as well as of Grover Cleveland) on his office wall. He regularly votes against almost all proposals for new government spending, initiatives, or taxes; he cast two thirds of all the lone negative votes in the House during a 1995–1997 period. He has pledged never to raise taxes and states he has never voted to approve a budget deficit. Paul believes that the country could abolish the individual income tax by scaling back federal spending to its fiscal year 2000 levels; financing government operations would be primarily by excise taxes and non-protectionist tariffs. He endorses eliminating most federal government agencies, terming them unnecessary bureaucracies. Paul has a consistent record as an inflation hawk, having warned of the threat of hyperinflation as far back as 1981. While Paul believes the longterm decrease of the U.S. dollar’s purchasing power by inflation is attributable to its lack of any commodity backing, he does not endorse a ‘return’ to a gold standard – as the U.S. government has established during the past – but instead prefers to eliminate legal tender laws and to remove the sales tax on gold and silver, so that the market may freely decide what type of monetary standard(s) there shall be. He also advocates gradual elimination of the Federal Reserve System.”