Why Ron Paul Still Matters Now and For the Future
by Luke Welch
I have my own strong opinions in this blog entry. I am not insinuating in any way that other people, other loyal Americans, or other Christians should necessarily agree with me. I do know that many people vote with MANY DIFFERENT conscientious reasons.
Some vote for Democrats because they feel that Democrats represent general opposition to the war and help for the poor.
Some vote for Republicans because they feel that Republicans represent opposition to abortion and support for good economic policies.
Some vote for independent thinkers, like Ron Paul, because they feel he represents the most preferable combination of policies and views.
This is my opinion, and each person’s feelings are often based on very real, very valid grounds. But my opinions put me in category three.
I hope I can say the things that I say so strongly below with the caveat that I want to rely on not judging and not being judged by those who disagree.
I want to write about two major reasons that I have found that people who don’t support Ron Paul don’t agree with what should happen at this point in the campaign:
1) Misinformation – There is still misinformation about the process, the delegates, and the reporting about Paul’s campaign that originated a long time ago. Yes, of course, this means that things are going much more poorly now than ever. I have no intention of denying that an uphill battle is what we face. BUT – it has been forced that way by the MSM’s refusal to give equal time and treatment to Paul, especially at times when he was doing as well or better than other candidates.
2) Philosophy – I am sure that people are saying “WHAT?” about my comment that it is an uphill battle – but WE AREN’T battling for the White House. While the presidency has been a hopeful goal of the “campaign,” the real fight – as stated early on by the campaign – has always been to change the political system in a way that past third party candidates have been unable to do.
This campaign HAS been different from other independent thinking or third party elections in the past.
* A ten term winning congressman, for whom Ronald Reagan campaigned
* raised LARGE amounts of cash that is perceived as ethical cash – no lobbies, basically small amounts from MANY supporters to gain
* victories as big as 19% of the vote in some states – 10% in others (NOT a nobody in the election)
* frequently beating out former favorites in the election
* even though his campaign positions are SO DIFFERENT from the other candidates.
But, it won’t happen. There won’t be a brokered convention. So were Ron’s supporters wrong to give, to volunteer themselves tirelessly, to dream, to hope, to believe that there was something better than they had ever experienced in politics?
That can only be determined by whether they feel that they failed morally. We know that one objective has failed. However, we ought not to judge our personal success in this fight by whether we fixed the world, but by whether we cared about the world.
Well, what about the future? Is all actually for naught?
Will Paul’s popularity amongst the contrarian youth population remain strong in the future? Will a Paul or a Paul-like campaign have the fuel in 4 years to receive anywhere close to the same numbers? Some of the energy in this election came from broad reaction against the Bush administration for damage that many are seeking to remedy. So, what about next time? Will the Paulunteers have a burning reason to push for change especially when current administration hasn’t been in office in 4 years? What if a Republican wins this time? Will Paul’s people be willing to create a campaign AGAINST an incumbent in 4 years? Will there be any of Paul’s people left over who are still willing to vote in the historically unelectable 3rd party place?
YES.
Why? Because it is an ideological battle. One which hopes, through increase of converts, to overwhelm the status quo. No matter how long it takes.
Is the classy thing to do “to bow out and pledge the rest of his money to the eventual nominee rather than simply waste it”?
If in the national election there were a Democrat with 80 percent popular support, and a Republican with 20 percent – should the Republicans bow out and pledge the rest of their money to the inevitable democratic winner rather than simply waste it?
Why would they give up? — Why wouldn’t they give up?
People who stay in the race are trying to say – I am still a voter. They are hoping to let people know that there is STILL at least 20% support in the future, with the hope that the support grows.
Many say right now, that Paul should throw his support to the Republican Nominee, so that the Democrats don’t win.
In some elections, this might seem like the only pragmatic action to take. IF one side seemed more righteous.
But Ron Paul and his supporters believe that there IS no Republican running except for Ron Paul. None of the other candidates support truly historical Republican values.
So both sides are equally intollerable. I am used to being sad about executive decisions. I will endure more of it. And I will vote with my conscience, in order to say – I am still a voter, and I will not be silent about wrongdoing!
Abortion is wrong. This bloodbath in an illegal war is wrong. The inaccurate and malfunctioning death penalty is wrong. The incessant borrowing of money from the elderly, without intention to pay them back, and the incessant printing of empty money to pay for unlawful projects, only to pass the consequences on to the public is wrong.
The ignoring of the constitution is wrong.
Ron Paul would NEVER pledge his money to any other candidate, because he doesn’t want any other Democrat OR Republican to win, because their ideologies are equally poor. He certainly won’t throw money at McCain to support more years of unlawful killing in Iraq. Or to Obama who will vote for unlawful killing of babies.
I won’t throw my vote to any of them either. And keeping my vote is not a waste – it is the only voice I have in the election.
If I didn’t think that there was anyone worth voting for, I wouldn’t vote. If I thought that one was clearly better than the other, even if they were both unpleasant, then I would chose a side. But I don’t feel like there is a good choice left.
But I DO feel like there is a good choice left.
No one is perfect. Not me, not my friends, not my candidates, not my church, not my heart or my mind. But until I have a reason to flee from my choice and recant – I feel pretty good about sticking where I’m stuck. I will go to this election in clean conscience and in exercise of a choice.
And it’s my goal to make sure that I continue to have a worthy choice by declaring that a worthy choice will always get my vote. If I call it quits when I know the election is over for my candidate, then I will create the self-fulfilling prophecy that a non-mainstream idea is not even worth working on, because even the non-mainstream voters won’t actually support you.
I know a lot of people who are not about to drop support or shut down or bow out. They stand with a cause. And I stand with them.
And we stand with Ron Paul.
saintluke.wordpress.com 
It never fails to amuse how a guy (Mc Cain) who traded his patriotism against America while his fellow soldiers languished, was involved in the Keating 5 Savings & Loan scandal, is friendly towards Ted Kennedy could possibly get so many delegates in Super Tuesday.
And why is it hardly ever brought up?
America evidently is full of under educated worker bee drones who think they are somehow not having to pay for their ‘FREE” tax rebate check.
Well maybe they won’t, but their children & grandchildren will.
Instead of that tax rebate check….why don’t we get some of the big chunks of money we all spent overpaying at the pump this year?
Oil company record profits a coincidence? I doubt it as our government approves oil company mergers as fast as possible creating a monopoly situation & then prices go up, up, up !!!
The people in power in this country are in control of the mainstream media as well.
You are currently living under the illusion of freedom.
If you think you don’t, you are a inexperienced fool.
In my business in Las Vegas…. i constantly see Saudi’s & Chinese coming here on vacation, mostly in big groups & all wearing $3,000 dollar tailored Armani suits & the women wearing all couture designer fashions.
Spending money like it is going out of style.
You work your a** off & never see your family, can barely pay your bills & then you vote for Hillary, Obama or Mc Cain hoping for ‘Change’. lol
Good luck with that. You are living in a dream world.
Our politicians are bought & paid for.
It is important for conservatives and Dr. Paul supporters to shake off their depression and go to the polling booth.
Personally, I have been a Republican for 30 years and am coming to feel it is not the right place for me. The main reasons are:
1. It is a big shock that my two votes for GW have helped to grow the government and erode civil liberties. I have decided to vote my conscience and never again for a RINO. Conservatives have been betrayed by George Bush.
2. Why are we invading other countries while leaving our southern border open? How can the threat of terrorism be so great if Al Queda can hire a coyote and come on in anytime? I have come to the conclusion that erosion of civil liberties is a greater national security risk than Islamic extremists, and that much of the drum beat is to cover government growth, wasting money on cronies, and likely many other things we don’t know about. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent with no records in Iraq. Why is there so little accounting for 700 billion dollars?
3. Our men and women in uniform need to be called out to win a declared war. It is unfair and silly to send them out by other means and lose. The Soviet Union is gone and Marxism is dead outside university campuses. Jihadists can be deterred by force, but not destroyed. Nation building and foreign bases need to be phased out as unconstitutional and expensive.
4. The Republican party has a long history with the abolitionists and the NAACP, which is much better than the Democrats’ long history of slavery and the KKK. However, I have never been able to find any Constitutional basis for the union cause. Chief Justice Salmon Chase’s advice not to prosecute Jeff Davis for treason leads me to feel confident that Lincoln started the terrible precedent of the federal government ignoring legal parameters and doing as it pleases.
“If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion…His (Jeff Davis’) capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason.” (from “The Long Surrender” by Burke Davis, page 204.) As a Republican, that is not a history to be proud of.
Dr. Paul’s views need a showman/salesman/politician to gain votes. Or a serious economic downturn. The politicians running the show at present look like a big high class party on the Titanic as the ship runs inexorably towards the iceberg.
Luke, you’ve always been somewhat the Plato to my Aristotle and I wouldn’t ask you to change that. You lean to idealism and I lean to realism and it is difficult to tell, in the end, which is more unhappy.
Axaday,
Thank you for your kindness. I hate the feeling that we have such painfully different expressions of fairly similar ideals. At least we are nice to each other offline.
Luke
I have realized later that I was wrong to accept an idealist label for my Ron Paul attitudes.
Let me use an extreme, but helpful analogy.
What if the election were between Hitler, Stalin, and Mr. Luther King. Granted: none of them is perfect, but you feel more comfortable with Mr. King.
Now, let’s say that Mr. King is getting a relatively low voting poll. Low enough that he can’t win. Should you move your support to Hitler or Stalin? Which one?
Since you think both are equally bad, and because your one vote has already been demonstrated to be useless to prevent one or the other from office, then what do you do?
If my vote for Hitler or my vote for Stalin can only result in electing a murderous tyrant – one just as bad as the other – then my vote no longer matters. Then, in this case, my vote ONLY matters if I cast it to speak out against the tyrants.
Now, PLEASE don’t say I called any candidate a Hitler or a Stalin.
If I don’t vote for Ron Paul, I will have to accept that I am putting one of these people into office: McCain, Huckabee, Obama or Clinton.
I don’t think any of them is better than the others, then to pick one of them is not only pointless, but non-realist, because it is unrealistic for me to think a vote for one of those candidates will change anything.
I don’t want abortion; I don’t want war. I don’t want taxes, and I don’t want national ID cards. I don’t want NAFTA, and I don’t want CAFTA, and I don’t want biometric scanning, and I don’t want to lose the Dollar for the international Amero. In short: I want the CFR out of our presidency and congress.
If I don’t vote for one of those people, the ones who are characterized by the description above… then I am left with Ron Paul.
What I mean above is that some people (idealists) are going to seek the most perfect candidate and tend to see realists as sellouts. That’s fine. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Other people (realists) are going to seek an opportunity to affect the outcome with their vote and they’re going to see the idealists as wasting their votes. Who’s right? Everyone’s right. Realists ARE sellouts and Idealists ARE throwing away their votes. But that’s okay. That’s life in a Republic.
“If I don’t vote for Ron Paul, I will have to accept that I am putting one of these people into office: McCain, Huckabee, Obama or Clinton.”
One of those people is going to go into office whether you vote for Ron Paul or not. If not voting for them makes you feel better, suit yourself. But voting for Ron Paul and not voting at all will have the same outcome.
From the realist perspective (or maybe I should be saying “pragmatist”? I don’t know if the implication of being a non-realist might sound insulting} From the pragmatist perspective, it is difficult for me to believe that it really makes no difference to you which of those 4 people wins. You don’t have to like any of them a lot. If there is one you hate more or less than the others, a pragmatic vote can go toward affecting who will actually get the job.
Axy,
Once again, most of what you say I agree to 100 percent. In fact, I tried to say above that I usually vote quite pragmatically. But, Since I feel my voiced opinion, in this election is more important to me than the difference between McCain and Huckabee, or McCain and Obama, then MY only choice is to write in Paul.
And I say it is more important not emotionally, but pragmatically in this election. The candidate who wins will inevitably lead us to CFR policy. No way around it. They are all members.
My desire is to stop that.
The only pragmatic thing I can do to stop that, is to vote for Paul. So that people will be encouraged that they are not alone in wanting a sea change.
Tonight, Washington State is saying that 1/5 of their people still want Ron Paul as President. That doesn’t win an election, but it is a contingent worth remembering. That there are people out there, and that in time it could grow.
BUT YOU ARE SO CLOSE TO MY OWN FEELINGS in what you said above. I just have a SPECIFIC goal to which my pragmatic aims take me.
The differences between Ron Paul and the other candidates just simply aren’t great enough to make the others all look the same.
What makes it look like he is is a non-pragmatic focus on philosophy. You hate abortion. Great. So do I. And so does W. But there wasn’t anything he could do about it, even with 6 years of friendly Congress. There’s nothing McCain, Huckabee, or Ron Paul can do about it either. And I don’t think Obama or Clinton are likely to make it worse.
You hate the occupation in Iraq. Great. So do I. Ron Paul’s policy on that is not all that different from Clinton and Obama. It’s different from McCain and Huckabee, true. But that’s not because either of them loves the occupation. It’s because they don’t think it is realistic to just abandon it where it sits.
I wish I was able to edit my replies here.
The point I’m driving at is that it isn’t Ron Paul’s ideas that matter. The only thing that matters are the actually policies that he would be able to enact.
He COULD bring the troops home from Iraq all by himself if he were President. Most of the rest of his platform would never get through Congress. He might not even be able to balance the budget. He could refuse to sign a budget that wasn’t balanced and it is possible he could get Congress to back down. He won’t get rid of abortion, he won’t get rid of the IRS and income tax, he won’t get rid of the Federal Reserve, he won’t pay down the national debt without raising taxes.
I can see what you are saying about how it could be pragmatic in the long term to vote for a niche candidate in order to show everyone that there is support out there for it. But what is accomplished when what is shown is that there isn’t enough support out there to make a difference?
Will 4 years of percolation allow Ron Paul to come back stronger? Perot got 19% of the popular vote in 1992 (including over a quarter of the vote in 2 states). At the time, people and media outlets said it proved there was a niche for a 3rd party and it was something to watch for in the future. So Perot established the Reform Party and made a run in 1996. After 4 years of percolation, he got only 8% in 1996. By 2000, he wasn’t interested in running anymore and his party nominated Pat Buchanan who came in with 0.4% of the vote. They ran Ralph Nader in 2004 who only managed to bring in 0.38% of the vote. Most people didn’t even know Nadar RAN in 2004. To date the Reform Party is not running anyone in 2008, though it wouldn’t be a big surprise if they asked Ron Paul. His platform has a great deal of congruence with theirs. But his outcome would be at worst a tiny minority of the vote and at best a large minority of the vote that would guarantee a Democratic win.
And I would really question (though in ignorance) if Ron Paul agrees with you that it doesn’t matter whether it is McCain, Obama, or Hillary that wins. I think he will vote for one of them in November.