I never in my wildest dayz would've thought of many of my friends as Green Party supporters, nor have I ever considered myself one. I think Ralph Nader is an environmental loon hellbent on the destruction of our way of life in regards to environmental policy.
No, John much of that money that Ron Paul raised comes from people like me the disgruntled voter which sees no difference in the mainstream republican and democrat parties or politicians. You can try a spin machine as much as you like, but you'll find money comes from everyday working class Americans that believe in baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet's just as our fathers and their fathers did.
I'm a working class businessman that is tired of government taxation, nationalization of many industries through government subsidies, a burdening welfare class, and politicians that just don't get it.
Could Ron Paul Be the Ralph Nader of 2008?
John Podhoretz - 11.06.2007 - 10:38
Rep. Ron Paul, the maverick Texas Republican who is running as an anti-war libertarian in the Republican primary, has come charging out of nowhere to become the leading fundraiser in the brief history of the Internet. Yesterday, his campaign reported a one day take of around $3.8 million, with an average donation of $98.
In one respect, Paul deserves his success. He is a far more articulate and coherent critic of administration policy in Iraq than any candidate on the Democratic side, speaking as he does the frank and plain language of the isolationist. “The fundamental question remains,” he said in 2004, “Why should young Americans be hurt or killed to liberate foreign nations? I have never heard a convincing answer to this question.”
What distinguishes Paul from the anti-war gadfly Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic Party is that Kucinich speaks alternately the language of the brainless pacifist — he would form a Department of Peace to replace the Pentagon — and the language of the far from brainless New Left, according to which the sins of the United States are sufficiently grave to deny it any kind of moral legitimacy abroad. Paul’s isolationism is rooted in the age-old American fear that we will be morally compromised by the sins of other nations who do not breathe the same sweet air of American exceptionalism.
At the same time, it seems to surprise many that Paul’s undeniable grassroots effectiveness hasn’t translated to a showing either in national or state polls. That’s surely due to the fact that many if not most of those who are sending money to Paul are not, in fact, Republicans. They are more plausibly among the 3 million or so who voted for Ralph Nader on the Green Party line in 2000, or even among those who rained money down on Howard Dean in the summer of 2003.
Which brings to mind an interesting scenario for 2008: Could Ron Paul run an independent candidacy for president in 2008 on a libertarian/anti-war/anti-monetarist platform? At this moment, it seems plausible, especially if the Democratic party nominates Hillary Clinton, who is bizarrely considered a neocon hawk by the Left netroots.
And despite Paul’s nominal standing as a Republican — and it is nominal — wouldn’t his candidacy draw more from disaffected Democrats, as liberal Republican John Anderson’s 1980 third-party candidacy pulled voters away from Jimmy Carter and not from Ronald Reagan?
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4 comments:
My question is:
Why is it that if one decides that we need to stop speaking to other nations, using our guns, they become an isolationist? Ok, so maybe Ron Paul also wants to stop paying off countries, weening them from the money we do not have, but his biggest and loudest issue has been that we need to have more diplomacy and not bring out our guns every time we try to get others to see our point of view.
Just as a parent, at some point (or at least hopefully at some point), must cut their children off and send them into the world equipped with all the knowledge and guidance the parent could give, we must now cut off countries that have been dependent on the U.S. for survival.
I have never met one parent, after sending off their children, that was not there for them or loved their children any less. Isolation does not occur, but a dependency is ended.
This view point is not isolationism. Just as the family returns during each holiday to come together and celebrate, we can also still celebrate with the other nations of the world.
The view point is more correctly called a non-interventionist view. Again, just like parents, feel free to give advice and guidance, but a young adult will not learn even the most simple of lessons if the parent steps in at each and every problem that arises.
If anything, the rest of the world regards us as overly abusive parents or its personal sugar daddy. Our success, as a country, did not occur because we worked to be dependent on another. Our success grew because we worked to be independent and self-reliant. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to allow others to grow as well.
Mr Paul can say it much better than I, but when you have a large percentage of the population scared to death they might be attacked in their sleep then I think it is politically motivated.
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2007/tst102107.htm
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul375.html
Even better is the conspiracy that the Hannity bots push: all that money is coming from George Soros, according to them!
I'm in awe of being placed in the same sentence as such a successful businessman, his politics not withstanding.
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