Ron Paul On The Record

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
121

[quote]Mick28 wrote:
One more problem with the Ron Paul supporters.

The 18 to 25 age group votes less than any other block of voters. And that’s the only place that Paul has any serious support.

Understand yet?
[/quote]
Yeah, I see a lot of 18 to 25 year olds lamenting the inflationary money policy and advocating a return to the gold standard. Wait a minute - I’m the only 18 to 25 year old I know of who is even aware of these issues. Once again, you are wrong. If you want to get a sense of who supports Ron Paul, simply read LewRockwell.com It is a prominent libertarian/conservative editorial site which has been running for years and has an extensive archive of Ron Paul’s speeches. The people who contribute to that site mostly reside in the southern US and belong to the “country-club” crowd. Neither they nor their children watch MTV. For years, Ron Paul has financed his Congressional campaigns in Texas with donations from out-of-state supporters. That money obviously isn’t being sent by college kids.

At this point, most of the young, urban crowd still supports Obama or some other wacky liberal who isn’t going to win in 08 (read: Hillary) - go check Myspace. On the other hand, Ron Paul has a lot of appeal to this voting population (watch his appearances on Bill Maher and The Daily Show - the former remarked that Paul recieved “the biggest reception of any Republican who’s ever been on the program”)

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
It is too bad he is so isolationist on foreign policy.

We could use more congressmen like him but he seems a bit one dimensional to be president.[/quote]

Yeah well, it’s “too bad” that every other politician is a neocon on foreign policy. Tisk, tisk, what can you do? It’s time to seriously question the policy of perpetual war for perpetual peace. 2008 will be the year.

In other news, the Republican base is extremely pissed at GWB for his stance on immigration. This is all over FreeRepublic. Neocons are actually calling him unfit to be president. This is a MAJOR turn-around from several years ago and counts as another feather in Ron Paul’s cap.

Quick question: Which candidate’s stance on immigration is absolutely iron-clad and rock solid?

Only Ron Paul, without question. He would put the military on the border to fulfill it’s Constitutionally-ordained role and get the U.S. out of every international trade agreement. No amnesty, no pussy-footing around the issue, unlike every other politician in both parties.

As awareness of his positions spreads, he will become further distinguished from every other candidate in the race and eventually emerge at the front. That even Bush’s loyal base is breaking ranks with the current administration is a good sign. There has not been a better time for a non-interventionist president since the Coolidge and Hoover admins.

Informative links:
Read about the “Old Right” in America:

The political positions of Ron Paul, a comprehensive listing from Wikipedia:

Watch the enthusiastic reception he gets from a liberal audience on Bill Maher’s show:

122

[quote]gendou57 wrote:
… and marriage shouldn’t even BE an issue.
-Gendou[/quote]

(Please pardon the following digression from the main topic of this thread, based on the statement above.)

If “spouse” has a legal status different from “domestic partner” or “friend”, with differences in any of the following –

  • taxes (penalty or advantage)
  • inheritance (disallowing complete disinheritance of spouse, default heir if none specified)
  • obligation or lack of obligation to testify against someone in court
  • medical decision-making in the absence of written instructions
  • custody or decision-making for children

– then the legal definition of “marriage” IS potentially an issue. Even absent any of the above, and absent any legal penalty for non-married persons who partake of actions traditionally thought to be reserved to married couples: a change in the legal definition of marriage would be significant insofar as it makes an implicit statement about what society considers to be legitimate behavior and what it does not so consider, and therefore would still potentially be an issue.

If we want to avoid having the federal government entangled in (the material or the symbolic side of) that particular issue: we would probably need to minimize the amount of federal legal distinctions based on who is a spouse vs. who is not; or else the parts of the federal laws that pertain to marriage would need to be written with some kind of reference or deference to state laws (e.g. obligation to testify against someone in federal court could hypothetically be waived for anyone who is a spouse of that person according to the laws of his or her own state of residence).

It might still be difficult to avoid a federal issue over what constitutes “marriage” on an overseas military base, or in a U.S. Territory, or in Washington D.C.

123

Here’s what’s going to happen:

The Dems are going to bet on the highly unlikely and run a woman and a minority. After all, if they expect Hillary to get elected, they wouldn’t be doing any more damage by tacking on Obama. It makes sense. Watch it happen. Expect a Hillary/Obama ticket from the Left. Edwards could potentially replace Obama, but I don’t see it happening. He already lost in 2004. There’s nothing special about him. He’s done, if you ask me.

The Democrats are NOT going to win in 08 – yes, I’ve said it. They’ve screwed themselves over by failing to take advantage of numerous opportunities to distance themselves from the Republican administration on key issues. They are the party of no viable alternatives. Just like 04 – they still haven’t learned.

The establishment Republicans will try to run Thompson and Romney together. Thompson will appeal to the base, Romney will help attract moderates. Together, they can attract more conservative support than Ron Paul, BUT Ron Paul can attract more liberal and moderate support.

So the entire election, as far as I’m concerned, is a toss-up between Thompson/Romney and Ron Paul.

Romney and Paul will go head to head in the New Hampshire primaries and the winner of that matchup will pretty much determine the final outcome.

There you have it. Ron Paul has a 50% chance of being the next president. I don’t see how anyone could possibly disagree, since I’m obviously right…

124

[quote]NealRaymond2 wrote:
A lot of interesting material.
[/quote]

Wow, there were some points in there that I had thought about, but this is obviously something I’ve only been approaching from one angle and ignoring a lot of the others. To me it was always just a religious thing.

Crap! You made me think!

I’m going to think about what you said and look some things up.

-Gendou

126

[quote]Mick28 wrote:
MrRezister wrote:
He did well for himself on Colbert as well:

http://dailypaul.com/node/332#comments

“The war on poverty, the war on drugs and all wars are there just to scare the people.”

Ron Paul

LOL

What a nut bag.[/quote]

Really?

Please tell us how well the “war on drugs” has gone? or the “war on poverty” ?
Or better yet, WHY they opted for the “war on …” slogan?

The only people the war on drugs has really helped is the drug dealers, nothing like a big raid to drive prices and profits up.

127

[quote]
Really?

Please tell us how well the “war on drugs” has gone? or the “war on poverty” ?
Or better yet, WHY they opted for the “war on …” slogan?

The only people the war on drugs has really helped is the drug dealers, nothing like a big raid to drive prices and profits up.[/quote]

I’m more interested in knowing why he thinks those efforts are legitimate uses of federal tax dollars. I know I’d want my money back. Mick, help us out here.

129

[quote]Mick28 wrote:
Why don’t you two show me some proof that those “wars” were begun to “scare people.” That is what he said.

Go ahead…I’ll wait patiently.
[/quote]

Why don’t you show us some proof that these “wars” have accomplished their purported goals.

130

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Mick28 wrote:
Why don’t you two show me some proof that those “wars” were begun to “scare people.” That is what he said.

Go ahead…I’ll wait patiently.

Why don’t you show us some proof that these “wars” have accomplished their purported goals.[/quote]

That was not Ron Pauls quote. He said the wars were just to scare people. This is the talk of conspiracy kooks.

131

[quote]Mick28 wrote:
MrRezister wrote:
He did well for himself on Colbert as well:

http://dailypaul.com/node/332#comments

“The war on poverty, the war on drugs and all wars are there just to scare the people.”

Ron Paul

LOL

What a nut bag.[/quote]

See, up until this point, you presented yourself as a Ron Paul supporter, albeit one who supposedly had a more “realistic” and “informed” view of his odds of winning than the rest of us poor saps.

I had my suspicions about this from the start, and a few posts ago it became clear to me that this wasn’t the case, that you obviously weren’t “down” with the cause judging by your responses to several issues. But now you’ve gone and blown your cover definitively. The cat’s out of the bag and he’s not coming back.

Generally the, “Trust me, I’m an expert,” tactic doesn’t go over too well on the net. Now we know you weren’t being honest from the start when you professed some degree of support for Ron Paul.

From this point on I will address you as I would a typical neocon or establishment liberal.

132

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Mick28 wrote:
Why don’t you two show me some proof that those “wars” were begun to “scare people.” That is what he said.

Go ahead…I’ll wait patiently.

Why don’t you show us some proof that these “wars” have accomplished their purported goals.

That was not Ron Pauls quote. He said the wars were just to scare people. This is the talk of conspiracy kooks.[/quote]

Conspiracy kooks or…libertarians, who believe that government programs NECESSARILY fail as a matter of socio-economic principle. And who have constructed a formal political doctrine around this notion. If you believe that all government programs are doomed to fail, it does not require a big leap to hypothesize that they are only there to scare and/or rob the populace.

133

[quote]Mick28 wrote:
Why don’t you two show me some proof that those “wars” were begun to “scare people.” That is what he said.

Go ahead…I’ll wait patiently.[/quote]

Checkmate. You win. I can’t support such a ridiculous claim whatsoever. The best I can do is provide evidence that these “programs” have proven themselves to be well-intentioned, expensive, and largely ineffective in bringing about the results they were designed to.

Drugs:

Poverty:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/poverty05/pov05fig04.pdf

135

[quote]Nominal Prospect wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Mick28 wrote:
Why don’t you two show me some proof that those “wars” were begun to “scare people.” That is what he said.

Go ahead…I’ll wait patiently.

Why don’t you show us some proof that these “wars” have accomplished their purported goals.

That was not Ron Pauls quote. He said the wars were just to scare people. This is the talk of conspiracy kooks.

Conspiracy kooks or…libertarians, who believe that government programs NECESSARILY fail as a matter of socio-economic principle. And who have constructed a formal political doctrine around this notion. If you believe that all government programs are doomed to fail, it does not require a big leap to hypothesize that they are only there to scare and/or rob the populace.[/quote]

And this is where I part ways with the libertarians. All government programs are not doomed to fail. Many are very very successful.

Government programs have built a good road system, supplied clean drinking water and on and on.

Our federal military has been used to liberate millions from tyranny.

The libertarian ideals are appealing but unrealistic. We cannot retreat from the world. If we leave the world alone it will not leave us alone.

It is dominate or be dominated.

139

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
That was not Ron Pauls quote. He said the wars were just to scare people. This is the talk of conspiracy kooks.[/quote]

Yes, well people often confuse correlation with cause. The fact is that these policies have been very effective at scaring people though they may not have been designed with that intent.

So he uses a little rhetoric for dramatic affect? Is it any worse than Guliani’s mock indignation anytime someone dissents with his opinion on terrorism?