The Case For Ron Paul

Ron Paul! Ron Paul! Ron Paul!

Sorry. Just trying to drive traffic here. Actually there was a post over at Red State making the case for Ron Paul. The core of his argument is:

I would say that his [Paul's] candidacy is about fundamental principles with regard to the Constitution and the proper role of government in peoples' everyday lives. Other candidates are by and large talking about saving government programs and tweaking errors. Paul is the only one focusing on the constitutional limitations imposed on the federal government and the proper role of government, i.e. securing our liberties, not paying for them.

This is a debate that our country needs to have. When Republicans came to power in 1994, they pledged to fundamentally change the role of government. Since then, they have expanded the federal government, including by passing the largest federal entitlement program since the Johnson administration. Suffice it to say, the Gingrich Revolution has been a miserable failure.

What I have seen of Ron Paul supporters is that they believe that their guy is the lone voice in the wilderness. The problem is that is just isn't so. Ron Paul discusses spending on his website. In short, he spends the entire article talking about excess spending and then in the last paragraph he writes:

We cannot continue to allow private banks, wasteful agencies, lobbyists, corporations on welfare, and governments collecting foreign aid to dictate the size of our ballooning budget. We need a new method to prioritize our spending. It’s called the Constitution of the United States.

So in the last sentence he does bring the Constitution into the discussion. But the core of his argument is regarding the excessive spending of the government (a valid argument). Fred, on the other hand, has made his fundamental issue Federalism which is an extended discussion of the overreaching of Federal government programs. So I don't think he is the only candidate talking about spending and the Constitution as a part of that discussion.

But let's face it. The primary appeal of Paul is that he is the anti-War conservative. He has voted and published articles against the Iraq war. Basically, Ron Paul is an isolationist. He may have some valid points, but his general position is one that would return us to pre-World War 2 policies which did not serve us well then and they will not serve us well now. There is something about learning from history that Paul is forgetting.