Posted by
Andrews on Thursday, January 19, 2012 4:14:45 PM
I doubt that anything I say in this post will come as much of a surprise, it is all material I have covered many times before. The only novelty here is that I happened to find that rarity, the perfect example. In this case, a Ron Paul supporter who say exactly what I have been claiming for quite some time.
I have said before ("
Why Ron Paul Scares Me", "
Stupid Quote of the Day (January 5, 2012)", "
Stupid Quotes of the Day (January 8, 2012)") that Ron Paul's candidacy troubles me. There are a number of reasons. First, his foreign policy troubles me, as I explained in many posts. ("
Rational National Defense", "
Rights Versus Laws", "
Last Word on Defense", "
Foreign Policy", "
My
(Informal) Nobel Peace Prize Nomination", "
Inconsistencies in Historical Perspectives", "
Knights and Bandits") Then there are his tied to rather troubling groups such as Stormfront, Lew Rockwell's various groups and others. But, I think the biggest problem is with his followers, as many of them seem to be following him mostly for his "bring the boys back home" positions while ignoring all the small government positions that are his only sane contributions.
If you doubt this, read comments on various news sites. For example, I found this on
Yahoo News:
Actually the FEMA camps started being built all over during the Bush
Administration. Ron Paul has some good ideas and many old worn out and
just plain crazy ideas. I certainly agree with some of them that make
sense but he will not be elected for two reasons: He's too old and old
fashioned looking back to the past 100 years and He doesn't face up to
the reality of our enormous poverty situation here in our country. I
can't understand how a doctor would allow millions of people to starve,
live on the streets, die of diseases and basically without help or
compassion. He hates big government but wants to be the head of it?
What? So he can eliminate more jobs and destroy more lives? Like I
said...I agree with bringing all our military home and some other things
but our country needs real solutions for the reality we live in now;
not way back during his generation. We need to carefully move forward;
not backwards.
Now, this voter said she wouldn't support Paul, but I found plenty of others who basically said the same but came down in favor of Ron Paul. In other words, there are pretty much ex-Obamaniacs who found Obama too uninterested in disarming the US and so switched to Ron Paul.
That being the case, even if Paul won, how much real support do you think he would have in congress for his reduction of the scope of government? If he won only on peacenik votes, will congress want to throw their lot in with him on government downsizing? Of course not! And so, a vote for Paul will amount to a vote for the peace movement and little else. So much for all those claiming he is some great exemplar of constitutionalism.
POSTSCRIPT
The FEMA camps, by the way, are apparently where Obama is going to inter us all, and where Bush was as well. I have ehard about them a few times while pursuing my love of nutty conspiracy theories.
I actually have to laugh here. Back in the mid-90's, I worked for social services and we had some bad floods. One thing that happened was that FEMA drafted a few social service workers to help at a temporary office to process claims for food stamps and cash assistance, as well as help process claims for FEMA assistance. I worked at two such centers and have to say FEMA was as organized in those efforts as they later proved to be in New Orleans after Katrina.
So, if they truly are going to be the American version of the Totenkopfverbaende in Germany, we can all rest easy. They probably will forget to requisition bullets, and will argue so long over who is responsible for locking the gates that we can all just walk home.
POSTSCRIPT II
I have said it before, but I was once a Ron Paul fan, back in the 80's. I even dismissed his loony claims about Reagan making us less safe in the late 80's and continued to hold out hope that he would be a force for reducing the size of government. However, as I said elsewhere, just as the pro-gold Alan Greenspan of the 1970's became the apologist for the Federal; Reserve, weak Keynesianism (which is all monetarism is), and managed currency, so too Ron Paul who wrote "The Case for Gold" has become an extreme isolationist who also has allowed his love of ego stroking to prevent him from denouncing actual antisemites and other lunatic fringe groups. So, much as it saddens me that a once admirable man is no longer so, or actually two, I have to call them as I see them, and Ron Paul does not deserve the praise he gets from real constitutionalist, federalists and conservatives.