I agree with your assessment of the three groups opinion of Ron Paul. Although I find it rather strange because he was by far the most conservative of the Republican presidential candidates. He’s Barry Goldwater’s, aka Mr. Conservative’s, twin.
The isolationist foreign policy label is a misnomer. He advocates non-intervention, that is not the same as isolationism. And non-intervention happens to be the most consistent with conservatism, although you’d never guess it in today’s political climate. Interventionist foreign policy does many things that are directly antithetical to conservatism: 1) Increases the scope and size of government through the increased power of the executive(throughout history government has always exponentially increased in size during a time of war), 2) Greatly increases financial burden upon the citizenry, 3) From a traditionalist viewpoint interventionism is in direct opposition with strong family values as the deaths of our young courageous soldiers on the battlefield potentially tear families apart, and the time soldiers spend away from their loved ones while on the battlefield generally causes great unwarranted stress on the family, 4) Christianity is in direct opposition with what would be considered an interventionist foreign policy.
My mother is a strict social conservative and both my parents are hardlined Republicans, and both would be very happy to see decriminalization of marijana. I don’t think it would be hard to pitch at all. From a economic perspective, 1/4 of the entire World’s prison population is solely attributable to our Nation’s prison population. That is right, we house 1/4 of World’s deemed criminals. Its more of an economic burden to detain these petty non-violent drug users than the social burden they might impose on society, especially since they do not pettle the drugs.
The drug issue is one of the least important topics in my opinion. Although his opinions on monetary policy and entitlements I think are extremely important topics of discussion as they directly effect EVERY single person’s wealth in this country. I am effectively poorer due to social security, medicaid/medicare, and to our extremely loose monetary policy. The Fed’s monetary policy is what creates inflationary bubbles, and recessionary corrections. The worst tax on the individual is not our current progressive income taxation system, it is the eroding of the value of the dollar in your pocket through inflationary measures taken by the Fed. Imagine if the value of the dollar in your pocket doubled over night. ALL commodity based products, food, gas, heating oil, building supplies, etc. would drastically fall in price. It would be much cheaper to live in this country. You and I will be much wealthier with Ron Paul’s monetary and entitlement reform policies put in place than the hyperinflationary road we are currently set on.
]]>I also agree with you on the importance of Ron Paul’s movement. I think the love/hate relationship the right, broadly speaking, has with it is interesting. There seem to be three camps–and you can pick up on which people belong to immediately. The first refers to Ron Paul as “Dr. Paul”; they’re the actual supporters. The second, in which I suppose I’d place myself, simply calls him Ron Paul. The last group trademarked the term “Paultard.” That should be sufficient indication of their feelings.
I’m not sure why there’s such animosity coming from the Paultard camp, though it does include groups like the Weekly Standard. I think Paul loses a majority voting bloc on foreign policy (we haven’t been that isolationist since Washington’s Farewell Address); monetary policy (I don’t necessarily disagree, I just think most people don’t care); and drug policy (I would love to watch y’all pitch that to social conservatives). But I do think the success he has found is incredibly instructive for any candidate and, if I may be so self-absorbed as to return to what I said in the post above, Paul demonstrates:
coherent message + solid resume –> excitement of supporters (–> action, like your post here)
clear principles + honesty + policy-focused debate –> political success (Paul was in primary debates, $4M money-bomb, etc.)
I don’t agree with Ron Paul on every issue, but I do like the perspective he brings to the conservative movement, broadly speaking.
And, as a personal note, I volunteered for B.J. Lawson’s campaign () this fall. B.J. was running for the House seat in NC-4, and he had–from my observation at least–a good deal of help from Ron Paul supporters nationally. So if you’re interested in the movement, keep an eye on him. He’s not in Congress this time around, but 2010 will come up quickly… 