I started out this campaign season with a very simple premise: All politicians are self-serving, self aggrandizing, hold your nose when you vote for them, sellouts....except Hillary Clinton. She was the political Devil incarnate. So my goal was to support ANYONE who could beat Hillary Clinton in the general election. Better the Devil we know than the Devil herself.
Initially I was very critical of Ron Paul, seeing him as a spoiler with no chance of winning the Republican nomination, let alone the White House. But as I researched him and the other so-called candidates more, I found myself starting to like Dr. Paul. I didn't agree with all his policies and I doubted he would ever be gain enough congressional support to do away with the IRS. But he did have some real good ideas and a base philosophy I could understand and agree with. I found myself becoming a Ron Paul supporter and had planned to write an article this morning on the phenomenon that is Ron Paul and the dire condition the country is in which makes him not only viable, but electable.
Like most Ron Paul supporters, I lamented the mainstream presses attempts to ignore him. The internet is great, but Ron needs to be seen and heard on mainstream media sources if he's going to attract the number of voters he's going to need to win. This morning, I got my wish and it was a disaster.
I overslept so I hit DIGG knowing a video of his appearance would show up somewhere. And sure enough it did. The poster talked about Dr. Paul's "beautifully thought-out answers" and I could hardly wait to hit the play button. What started out as a DIGG comment to the poster has turned into this article.
Now no one hits a home run every time at bat. Dr. Paul is human and he's going to have good interviews and not so good interviews. That's the way it goes. And those of us that support Dr. Paul need to be honest enough with ourselves to acknowledge that. But how the poster of the video could call Meet the Press a win for Dr. Paul is absolutely beyond me. And all the Paul supporters who will slam me for heresy once this is posted need a reality check as well.
I actually was embarrassed for Ron Paul versus Tim Russert in this interview. Dr. Paul spoke in broad terms which may be appropriate for campaign speeches but showed a shocking lack of knowledge concerning numbers key to his primary positions.
For example, Dr Paul often uses the line of how we have X number of military bases in Y number of countries as he explains how much money we'll save when he brings them all home.But when Russert asked him how many total troops we had overseas, Paul had no idea. He couldn't even venture a guess. Russert had to tell him. Personally, I would have been OK if Dr. Paul could have given a real close estimate but he had absolutely no idea! How can that be when the savings he talks about directly corresponds to the size of the force we have overseas?
There were a couple of other times when he had no idea on numbers as well. I don't want another Hillary-style policy wonk in the White House, but the questions he couldn't answer were directly related to his position of reducing the government by one half. Did he just make up the "reduce by one half" number? Did he or his staff actually compute how much Dr. Paul's policies, if enacted, would save?
Dr Paul's answer to the probing by Russert on earmarks for his congressional district was also weak, made little sense, and WAS akin to, as Russert put it, "I voted for it before I voted against it". Dr. Paul's response was nonsensical: there's no other way to put it.
Having pictures of himself with Ronald Reagan in his campaign literature on the screen while Russert detailed how Paul came to distance himself from Reagan: one quote said Dr. Paul called Reagan a traitor (which Paul denied) is at best hypocritical. Paul's answer to the charges was, again, weak. He was starting to look like a............ politician.
Russert showed a video of Dr. Paul's response to a Huckabee campaign commercial which positioned the camera in such a way as to make the bookcase behind Huckabee look like a cross. Dr. Paul in the video had a very strident retort; using words like fascism.
Yet when pressed by Russert, Paul admitted he had never seen the commercial, was caught off-guard, and tried to defend his remarks by saying he never accused Romney by name of being a fascist. Ronald Reagan....even Barack Obama, would have just told the interviewer "I've never seen the commercial so I'm not prepared to comment on it." Now the smell of a ...........politician.
Russert pounded him on other statements from the past, especially those made during Paul's 1988 run for the Presidency. Paul's responses were weak, if not at times incoherent.
When Russert hit him with " you broke with Ronald Reagan, you called Bush 41 "a bum" (picture of article with quote on screen), you admit to not voting for Bush 43 in either election, you mailed your resignation to the Republican Party and your membership card back to the RNC (picture of letter and card on screen), and you ran as a Libertarian. So how can you call yourself a Republican and run for the Republican nomination", Paul's response was that he was running as a "Taft Republican". Anyone remember President Taft? Of course not...he didn't do anything.
And it left Dr. Paul wide open for Russert's question "So you think we never should have fought the Civil War to end Slavery?" Paul's reply that Lincoln was wrong, the 600,000 Americans died (at least he had the number for that one) and we should have just bought all the slaves from the South and given them their freedom.......as if the Civil War was only about slavery and if we hadn't had slavery, there would have been no Civil War. And then Paul followed up with a "some of my best supporters are black" type of statement which just made me cringe. By this time, Dr. Paul was looking a lot more Libertarian than Republican, Taft or not. But the best (worse) was to come.
This I must have missed in my research of Dr. Paul and might help explain all the college-age support: Legalize all drugs? Philosophically, I see where he's coming from but philosophy doesn't often work in the real world. I freely admit that in my youth, I experimented with drugs. I know first hand what it's like to be high and drive. How I survived my youth is only through the grace of God, but Dr. Paul wants to legalize all drugs "for adults"? And not because he believes in drug use or freedom, but because the Constitution doesn't allow for it? He went on to quote (without any numbers, unfortunately) how alcohol causes so many deaths and tragedies in this country, but he was OK with Prohibition because at least we amended the Constitution.
Like Dr. Paul, I do not believe that the Constitution is a living document, subject to the whims of the times. But I also don't believe that it's a strait-jacket binding us to the 18th century.
Congress does have the right to enact laws, and so long as they don't conflict with the Constitution and are signed by the President, to enforce them. To keep falling back on the refrain "those powers not specifically granted shall remain the rights of the people" is naive and impractical....and not in keeping with the Founder's intent..not down to that micro a level.
I agree we must constantly be on-guard against fascism. As Ben Franklin said, "those who would trade liberty for security shall enjoy neither". I think Dr. Paul made some great points about the Patriot Act and if you don't support the war, you don't support the troops rhetoric.
But when he started talking about the evil Military-Industrial Complex controlling Government, I thought I was watching a colorized version of a 1950's interview.
I've seen Ron Paul in other venues and in other interviews and I think by far this was his worst showing. He came off as uninformed and sometimes befuddled......and not as a serious Republican candidate, but as a half-baked Libertarian. Obama would eat his lunch in a one-on-one debate, let alone Hillary.
I for one, was very disappointed in Dr. Paul and while I'll still vote for him, it's now motivated more by the "lesser of evils" concept than the "he's the best man". We do need to turn inward as a nation and stop policing the rest of the world and Dr. Paul is the only one I would trust on that account.
And before I start getting slammed by the other Ron Paul supporters, remember that only one perfect man ever walked this earth. That was Jesus Christ. So lets admit our guy took one to the chin, hopes he learns from it, and move on. But lets not live in denial. There is no way any serious Ron Paul supporter can call this Meet the Press interview a "win".
Technorati Tags:2008 election, meet the press, tim russert, anyone but hillary in 2008, digg, election 2008, mitt romney, ron paul
Generated By Technorati Tag Generator
del.icio.us:2008 election, meet the press, tim russert, anyone but hillary in 2008, digg, election 2008, mitt romney, ron paul
Generated By del.icio.us Tag Generator
