Who is Ron Paul?
Who is Ron Paul? Well, for starters he is the guy I’m voting for whether or not he runs with the Republicans or as an independent, or at all — if Ron Paul doesn’t run I will write him in anyway. He is refreshingly honest, hated by both parties (always a good sign), remarkably aware of his Constitutional responsibilities, and he is . . . interesting.
First, he is an O.B.Gyn and a Congressman from Surfside, Texas, and was a flight surgeon during Vietnam. Paul is neither liberal or conservative, but runs on a simple platform: He will honor his oath to the Constitution. Ron Paul does not participate in the Congressional pension or health care programs, does not go on political junkets, he returns part of his office budget and most of the money earmarked for his district every year, all because they are not part of the constitution. Paul has the smallest staff on the Hill even though he has served 20 years there.
When Clinton (and later Bush) wanted to invade Iraq Ron Paul tried to force Congress to declare war as they are supposed to do, that way they would be held responsible for sending troops there. Congress refused, voted to send troops without a declaration of war and now the blame is all on Bush so they can avoid responsibility for their actions, as shown in this YouTube video of Ron Paul vs. a Live Radio Caller.
Ron Paul is known on the Hill as “Dr. No” because if it is not in the Constitution, he will not vote for it — which means just about everything that is debated on the Hill these days. Paul was once asked how he finds time to actually read all the bills for constitutionality and he said, “My staff and I break the bill into parts and start reading until we find something unconstitutional. Usually we are done in time for lunch.” Lobbyists don’t bother to to stop at Paul’s office, he will not speak to them and he gets plenty of money from ordinary people, mostly in small (but frequent) amounts (source: Open Secrets.)
I’ve been sending him 25 bucks, four times a year, for 8 years, even though he is not in my district. Now that he is running for president I’m also buying Ron Paul baseball caps, T-shirts and bumper stickers (which I can’t keep — *everybody* wants one. Every truck stop I walk into somebody asks where he can get a shirt or whatever. I just take mine off and give it to them and think of it as an investment in freedom.) Contributions from members of the military to Republican 2008 presidential candidates break down as follows:
Ron Paul 52.53%
John McCain 35.4%
Mitt Romney 7.9%
Rudy Giuliani 5.2%
Duncan Hunter 2.2%
Others 2.6%
For verification of those numbers look here (their source is the Federal Election Commission, and they have a link to that source on their site at USA Election Polls.)
The Youtube video titled When in the Course of Human Events, made by a Ron Paul supporter, illustrates Paul’s popularity and compelling message (Ron Paul supporters on YouTube had made over 45,000 videos dedicated to Ron Paul by Christmas of 2007.)
Paul’s campaign is small because the republicans will not give him any money; yet, as shown by ABC News/Blogs, he has still amassed more money than John McCain, despite every attempt by the Republicans to marginalize him.
After each Republican debate Paul won the post debate poll by a huge margin, even though he was limited to one third the amount of time and frequently attacked by both the other candidates and the moderator. In Illinois things got a bit more physical: Google Video: Ron Paul Supporters vs. IL GOP Goons
When Iowa republicans refused to invite Ron Paul to the debate, he rented the hall next door, and after people figured out what was happening, over half of the audience left the debate to hear him speak: Google Video: Ron Paul vs. Iowa GOP.
Paul’s supporters are doing most of his campaign for him, designing and making their own signs, YouTube: How to Make a Giant Ron Paul Stencil Sign
Paul’s supporters are also making their own T-Shirts, and some made a profit at it: Google Video: T-Shirts
Paul’s supporters made their own songs:
Some of Paul’s supporters even made their own commercials for him:
YouTube: Ron Paul, What We Want
Google Video: Ron Paul 2008 Commercial
Waiting on the World to Change
Ron Paul is enormous on the web: “Ron” and “Paul” are the most frequently searched terms on digerati, and also on Google for much of this year. There are currently over 600 Meetup groups on the web for Paul, he has THE most active MySpace site (despite the fact that MySpace tried to censor his site or anyone else’s who used the words “Ron Paul” on their site.) He has even sparked a sort of freedom revolution internationally:
Ron Paul Revolution: Singapore (Going Home)
Belgians for Ron Paul (Cry for Ron Paul)
The Revolution has begun - the Ron Paul rEVOLution Worldwide
Even Las Vegas oddsmakers were saying Ron Paul was the only republican candidate who could have beaten Hillary Clinton, because the left began to distrust not only her, but the entire Democratic party, primarily because they promised to end the war and oppose the Patriot Act, yet supported both as soon as they won the Congress: Gambling911.com: Ron Paul Moves Into the Top Tier, Suggesting All His Support is Real.
In match up polls he stacked up against Hillary with 34% for him and 49% against, which is comparable to the other republican candidates until you consider the following two facts:
1) Half the country has yet to learn who he is
2) The more people learn about him the more they tend to support him.
Here are the actual numbers, followed by a link to an article that explained them:
Giuliani 43; Clinton 44
Romney 42; Clinton 46
McCain 38; Clinton 47
Paul 34; Clinton 49
Lew Rockwell.com: Picking Apart the Poll (Paul) Numbers
Followed by a conservative assessment: Todd Seavey
And by another conservative assessment: Ronald Reagan on Ron Paul
Here is what the liberals are saying about him:
Here are two YouTube videos, one by a conservative, one by a liberal:
Anti War Democrat? Vote for Ron Paul.
Lest you think he is too nice to lead, here is a video of Ron Paul waxing the floor — verbally — with the snotty nose of a reporter who brought his agenda to work.
Many people say he can’t win. If he can’t win, why do so many republicans — I no longer call them conservatives –attack him?
Laura Ingraham Disrespecting Ron Paul at the Iowa Straw Poll
Malkin attacks Paul on 911 questions
MySpace Censoring Ron Paul Supporters
Here are a few hints: MySpace was bought by Rupert Murdoch — the founder of Fox News — shortly before the MySpace account blocking started.
Michelle Malkin, the daughter of immigrants, made a career of attacking illegal aliens and demanding their deportation and/or confinement in “camps“, and the sealing of our borders by the military on Fox News. Oddly, she presents herself as a champion of personal liberty almost as often as she calls for roundups of undesirables, as she did in many of her articles, for example, Personal Freedom Going Up in Smoke, Pro-animal, pro-abortion, anti-speech?, and Gun Shows Under Fire.
Her second cause was attacking Ron Paul, the first candidate who actually means it when he says he wants to end illegal immigration and bring the military home so they can defend our borders rather than everyone else’s. Malkin claimed that Paul has no place in the Republican Party (Ronald Reagan would disagree) and loudly demanding that he be excluded from the debates.
Malkin also claimed that Paul was “in grassy knoll territory” because when asked by a truther about the events of 911, he said, “I never automatically trust anything the government does when they do an investigation because too often I think there’s an area that the government covered up, whether its the Kennedy assassination or whatever.”
Why is this a shocking statement? Do you believe everything the government tells you? Michelle Malkin certainly doesn’t, as she states clearly in her article, Just Wondering.
Oddly enough, there are many issues where I agree with Malkin and some of her writing asks some very tough and important questions; however, anyone who has been reading her stuff since the 1990s has to conclude she is one of the most fantastically hypocritical public personalities today.
Laura Ingraham (the M.C. who treated Paul with disrespect at the Iowa Straw Poll) is with James Woolsey (former director of the C.I.A.), on the board of advisors for Family Security Matters, a front group for the Center for Security Policy, which is in turn an umbrella organization for a host of groups who are closely allied with the Bush administration: The International Women’s Forum, the Anti-Defamation League, and the National Security Advisory Council, who count among their members Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams, and Donald Rumsfeld.
Here is what Family Security Matters said about the Iraq war until recently when their opponents caught wind of the article and they hurriedly took it down — thank goodness for Google Cache! — that Bush should be made president for life and that the U.S should practice genocide in Iraq: Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy
NeoCon uber agency Homeland Security has even illegally and unconstitutionally used religion to con people into blind submission, by bribing pastors into browbeating their flocks with Hitler’s favorite verse, Roman’s 13.
In short, the NeoCons who took over the republican party are even more crazy than we thought they were. Here is what Ron Paul had to say about them (Warning, this is a 56 min speech, but it is worth it. He knew how scary these people were long ago): Congressional Speach by Ron Paul: NeoConned
So, now that you have an idea who Ron Paul is, and just what kind of people it is who oppose him, here are the links you can use to support him, starting with his current project, the Campaign for Liberty.
Paul’s Congressional web site is one on the most substantive of any congressman.
Here is Ron Paul’s Wiki.
Here is Paul’s YouTube site.
Here is Paul’s MySpace site.
And of course, The Daily Paul.
OK that’s enough for now, but I will leave you with one last video that is brilliant. See ya as soon as I’m in town, Chris
NOTE: This video is one of many that have been taken down because of “copyright violations”. Some of the violation claims are legitimate, in my opinion, and this probably was as well; however, many violation claims seem pretty sketchy, and some are downright laughable. One thing that irks me is that the effect of these claims has been to censor a huge percentage of Ron Paul videos on YouTube and other venues. It is incredible how often I have to come back to this page and checks the YouTube links to see which Ron Paul videos are still up and which videos I can use to substitute those that are not.
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– The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and thus clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
—H. L. Mencken