Working the field, part VIII - Paul

Ronald Ernest Paul, Sr.

Ron Paul is a very interesting character. Since I make no secret of the fact that I am a Huckabee fan, it might come as a surprise that I admire Ron Paul tremendously. He is a true believer. He means what he says, and says what he means. He is not beholden to his party before his principles, and he doesn’t say what he thinks he needs to say in order to win votes.

Rather, he says what he needs to say to show his positions, and to try to convince people that they should believe what he believes. This, by the way, is what politicians should be doing.

Ron Paul is a physician, a ten-term Congressman from Texas, and a former Air Force officer — drafted during the Vietnam war.  He was also the Libertarian Party’s candidate for President in 1988, and I can’t help but wonder if he wouldn’t have been a better choice than Bush or Dukakis in that race.

Ron Paul is a unique figure in the Republican field as it is. For one thing, he’s written and spoken extensively about everything he believes and thinks about the government, politics, and more. For another, he is the only serious Republican candidate who’s against the war in Iraq and who is willing to do something about it.

This, of course, led to the famous exchange between Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul in the GOP debate in New Hampshire. Perhaps it’s not surprising, but I guess it’s worth mentioning — Paul supporters and others who oppose the war think that Ron Paul won that exchange, while war supporters and Huckabee supporters (such as I am) think that Huckabee won it.

In truth, it comes down to which principles are involved. The two did well, and exchanged their ideas and reasons. Not empty slogans, but real ideas.  This, by the way, is why Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul are cleaning up in debate results, straw polls, etc.. Ron Paul came in second in the Values Voter Debate results and the Palmetto Family Council straw poll. He has done amazingly well in debate polls, winning nearly all of them.

At this point, I have to point out yet another reason why I loathe Sean Hannity — his claim that Ron Paul’s supporters faked results in the debate voting. Hannity dislikes some of the Republican candidates, but doesn’t have the integrity to say so. So, he ignores them and puts down their chances of success.

Paul’s supporters argue that their candidate deserves more press time because of his connection with voters and the breadth of his support. He’s right.

The major media outlets chose front-runners early this year, and they chose Newt Gingrich, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and John McCain. The fact that Thompson couldn’t be bothered to enter the race until this month, and Gingrich still hasn’t (and probably won’t) doesn’t matter. They had the name-recognition, so they got the coverage. Doesn’t that sound nice and responsible?

I think that it’s a perfectly-valid complaint among the “second-tier” candidates. I have thought the same thing about my candidate.

Ron Paul has a good collection of positions on issues, ones that conservatives have to respect. He really stands on small government, and he is a real strict constructionist when it comes to the Constitution.

Unlike most Libertarians, Paul is pro-life and does believe in the authority of government to prohibit abortion. He did vote for the partial-birth abortion ban, and against most expansions of stem cell research. His web site makes a case against Roe v. Wade as a bad reading of the Constitution, regardless of positions on abortion. While I differ with him on certain aspects of this, where I might wish he would be more aggressive, I look at Ron Paul’s rating from NARAL – they gave him a 0% in 2003, and generally identify him as having an “anti-choice” voting record.

You have got to admire that.

Ron Paul supports returning to gold-backed currency, and stands solidly on reducing the role of government so that it’s not involved in the market more than it should be. He wants to overhaul income taxes (and reduce them greatly, gradually to eliminate them) and eliminate the IRS. I’m not entirely certain what he proposes to collect revenue based on the site, but there are streams other than the income tax. His plan is to save so much money that we don’t need to collect income taxes.

He stands against the North American Union, the NAFTA superhighway, and the abuse of eminent domain. He supports the Second Amendment and opposes gun control strongly. I believe that he does a good job of honoring his commitment not to vote for anything that gives power to the government not explicitly granted by the Constitution. For those who still remember the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, this is a nice change.

In that spirit, he voted against the USAPATRIOT Act.

Ron Paul believes what he stands for. I admire him. While he is not my candidate, he is one of the few that I trust. He is a man of good character, and he stands on his principles.

Ultimately, the biggest problem I would have voting for Paul is Iraq. Oddly, he and I agree on much of that issue, but I can’t join him where he is.

The neoconservative agenda of aggressive action got us where we are in Iraq. We probably never should have gone into the country. And he’s right, we should have declared war if we were going to go.

The problem is, we’re there now. We removed the government that used to keep local forces in check. To leave now is simply to let chaos reign, which isn’t fair to the local Iraqis. Paul would have us leave because we never should have gone in.  That’s fine, if we can travel in time and fix the errors of 2003. But since we can’t do that, we have to deal with the reality of today.