We all have our little cheap tricks for driving traffic to our blogs. One local blogger posts cheesecake pictures and claims to have had sex with a candidate for governor. I occasionally put “Ron Paul” in a headline. The Paulistas come running in droves from across the country, for items such as this:
Last month’s trip to Iowa was his third to the state since November 2009, so it begs the question: Is Paul trying to lay the groundwork for a 2012 White House run?“I am very serious about thinking about it all the time,” Paul said about his possible presidential aspirations. “My answer is always the same thing: You know I haven’t ruled it out, but I have no plans to do it.”For now, Paul will continue to travel the country to promote his philosophy, while his 2008 presidential campaign operation has morphed into the Campaign for Liberty, a 500,000-member organization that promotes libertarian views.
Apparently he’s thinking of running as a Republican again this time. Don’t know why he doesn’t go back to running as a Libertarian. It was a closer fit (despite the GOP’s moves in that direction), and his chances would have been just as good. If I were a Libertarian, I’d feel abandoned — soon as the guy gets some notoriety, he leaves. Perhaps the emergence of Sanfordistas such as Nikki Haley encourages him that he’s making progress. Of course, I wouldn’t call it progress, but he would.
Related Posts
He’ll be too old in 2012…
Too bad nobody listened to him about the economy in 2007.
He’s the one guy who has a deep understanding of economics and how to prevent all the bubbles that the government creates. He will also be proven correct on the pain that will come from the deficits created by Bush and Obama. It’s not going to be pretty.
Ron Paul is an adherent of the Austrian School of economics. This approach persuasively argues that human economic decisions are far too complex to be modeled mathematically. So far so good. But the following tenant of this philosophy leaves me cold. This is an excerpt form the Wiki article:
“In particular, they argue for an extremely limited role for government and the smallest possible amount of government intervention in the economy, especially in the area of money production (advocating instead a commodity money system).”
Seriously folks, an extremely limited role for government. That’s just exactly what we had with both the financial crisis and the Gulf oil spill. In both cases government got out of the way and let market forces decide what to do. And where did we end up? Massive layoffs and messy beaches. Ron Paul needs to stick with social issues and leave economic matters to people that have a tiny bit of understanding of just how corrupt and greedy the corporate world is. Leaving government out of the equation will only lead to more big time disasters.
I absolutely hope he runs, if for no other reason than to light the fuse that might fatally split the Republican party wide open once and for all between its two major factions, which for simplicity’s sake we can call conservative vs. neoconservatives. We’ve seen signs of this bubbling tension all around, most recently with the dustup over Michael Steele’s remarks. Ron Paul might find something to be encouraged by in Nikki Haley, but it is certainly NOT the latter’s embrace by Sarah Palin, whose foreign policy “position paper” on Facebook sounds, well, I hate to say it, Brad, but kind of close to your views if I understand them:
http://www.facebook.com/notes/sarah-palin/peace-through-strength-and-american-pride-vs-enemy-centric-policy/403777543434
The divisions are real in the GOP and having Ron Paul run would force a lot of people in the GOP to confront the inherent inconsistencies and incoherence of their brand of “conservatism.”
@bud
Ron Paul would be the only President who would implement the policies you would like to see for the military. He believes (as I do) that the U.S. does not have to be the world’s policeman and that the nation-building/war mongering is unacceptable.
Also, something I read today made sense – the $1 trillion in deficit that was spent on the stimulus may have temporarily slowed the economic collapse but it hasn’t exactly done what was proposed. Unemployment hasn’t been impacted which is the key. The non-Keynsian theories would say that it would have been better to let the economy find its true bottom so that $1 trillion could have been spent more efficiently based on the true value.
I agree with Paul on the military stuff. All the trillions we will end up spending on the wanton slaughter of brown people would go a long way toward easing the debt burden.
Brad, Why would Paul want to run as a Libertarian, even if the party does fit his beliefs? There are so many institutional barriers for third-party candidates. Look how much Bob Barr had to struggle to get on ballots when running as a libertarian. Same for Nader and anyone else that doesn’t put the D or R next to their name. People call it a two party system for a reason.
@bud, this “bud link” if for you:
http://www.alternet.org/story/147428/america%27s_tragic_descent_into_empire?page=entire
It’s an excerpt from Tom Engelhart’s new book, The American Way of War, a look at our transformation into a global military empire. One interesting fact, we account for 70.1% of the market in sales to “developing nations” of weapons agreements. That amounts to around 29.6 billion dollars, people. As he says, “there’s no money in peace”.
I hate typos: should say “…is for you”
And that 29.6 billion total is JUST for 1 year!!!
Ron Paul and Barney Frank make a joint plea for cutting military spending:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-barney-frank/why-we-must-reduce-milita_b_636051.html
“wanton slaughter of brown people”? A true example of hyperbole.
And, how does the “wanton slaughter of 3,000 mostly white people” on 9/11 compare?
Maybe 9/11 is justified now since we have become a nation afraid of publically acknowledging the fact that the 19 terrorists were, gasp, of Middle Eastern origin, Muslim fanatics, and yes, brown skinned.
Guess the Evil Satan, America, got what was rightfully deserved.
Oh, I apologize. That comment will most likely be construed as racist, won’t it?
@Bart–the difference is whether or not the slaughter is seen as the legitimate action of a government or the actions of individuals. We all (or mostly all) condemn 9/11. So far, i have seen no smoking gun that this was the action of a sovereign nation. The issue here is how we feel about a country intentionally or negligently killing civilians.
Bart, no rational person denies who the 19 9/11 terrorists were. The problem is that only the second of your three groupings is really relevant, and even there the most important word is “fanatics.” But America and Americans sometimes have a difficult time discerning differences among the “other,” and so we’ve witnessed thousands of Iraqis (who are also Middle Eastern and brown-skinned) dying when they had nothing to do with 9/11. The Iranian government may be noxious and threatening, but we must not demonize Iranians themselves (who may be Middle Eastern, dark-skinned, but are not Arab, for example). Then there are the Palestinians, whose plight is generally ignored by most Americans, and who are also sometimes demonized by certain elements in this country, perhaps also for the sin of being Middle Eastern and dark-skinned, but many of them are not Muslim, but Christian.
Then there’s the general anxiety we’re seeing in some places around this country where some Muslims have the temerity to want to—gasp—build a mosque. (and I’m not talking about the 9/11 site which is obviously a special case, but elsewhere in middle America.)
So there’s no reason to fear saying that the hijackers were Middle Eastern, brown-skinned, and Muslim fanatics. But it’s also right, and just, and the American Way—to acknowledge that being Middle Eastern, brown-skinned, or Muslim does not predispose you to being a terrorist. We must oppose any foreign policies that fail to make that distinction.
And Phillip, unless I missed something, no one here — NO ONE — has suggested that being “Middle Eastern, brown-skinned, and Muslim fanatics” makes one a terrorist.
But that kind of liberal hypersensitivity is often used to distract us from real issues. For instance, you say “we must not demonize Iranians themselves.” Who is doing so? Who even SUGGESTS that we do so? What on Earth does that have to do with the fact that the Iranian government is damned close to developing The Bomb, and implies at every opportunity that it would love to see Israel not exist?
That’s a real-world problem that has nothing to do with ethnic sensitivities.
It is just enormously offensive to the intellect to get all bent out of shape when an actual threat is identified, and you suggest that it is being singled out BECAUSE it is “Middle Eastern, brown-skinned, and Muslim.” People who are “Middle Eastern, brown-skinned, and Muslim” and who actually ARE a threat shouldn’t get a free pass that we wouldn’t grant to terrorists who are European, blond, and blue-eyed.
If Ahmadinejad were a Nordic member of the Baader-Meinhof gang, would it then be permissible to be concerned by the fact that this Holocaust denier is pursuing nuclear capability?
We heard all about “an actual threat” being identified back in 2002 with Iraq. Turned out to be a false threat. How many times do we have to hear the boy shout wolf.
Whoa, hold on; screeching halt here…
Bud, are you saying you ACTUALLY BELIEVE that Iran is not avidly pursuing nuclear capability?
We keep hearing about these dire threats to our security. In Vietnam iT was all about the dominoes falling. Did the dominoes fall after South Vietnam collapsed? NO.
Then we had to station troops in Lebanon to prevent problems there. After the barracks were blown up and we withdrew our troops did we get invaded? NO.
Then it was Iran the first time. We had to provide weapons to Sadam in order to prevent Iran from invading our ally Iraq. What did Saddam do? He gassed his own people.
Then as justification for yet another middle east war we cited the gassing of the Kurds by Saddam and presented these fancy charts and graphs by so-called reputable “experts” like Colin Powell to make the case that we were in dire trouble. Was the danger real? NO.
Now we come to Iran in 2010. All the so-called experts now are saying Iran is a huge threat to our survival. Why should I believe the claims now? Seems like it may just be another ruse by the military industrial complex to start yet another war. Maybe this one is real. But given the history of these hyped threats it could just be another fictional threat.
Brad: “unless I missed something”…afraid you did miss my point. You must have read my comment WAY too quickly (I know you’ve been posting a lot lately!). I was merely responding to Bart’s specific claim that we as a nation are somehow afraid to say the 19 hijackers were “Middle Eastern, Muslim fanatics, and brown skinned.” And where did I imply that the nuclear program of Iran was not a threat that must be taken with utmost seriousness? In fact, you might be interested to see this from a top-ranking diplomat of the United Arab Emirates:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/6/uae-ambassador-endorses-bombing-irans-nuclear-prog/
Be careful about tossing that “hypersensitivity” word around too passionately, it has a tendency to boomerang!
Yeah, I probably did read it too quickly. Eight posts today, including at least one that broke news — which, considering that I’m also trying to earn a living, is probably a bit too ambitious…