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To be fair, Ron Paul is not a terrible candidate and many who support him or view him in a positive light certainly focus on his willingness to proactively pursue his own agendas, his straight shooter persona, his willingness to be detached from the GOP machine and is, for all intents and purposes, not a Republican at all but a Libertarian.
Winning elections is about currying favor from the voters, big donors, the "establishment", lobbyists and many other varied interests. Paul carries with him a populist message that has not fallen on deaf ears, especially in light of the financial meltdown, the resulting congressional miasma and our world powers being unable to appropriately respond to the resulting economic strains. Yet populism doesn't always garner word of mouth endorsements from the powers that be, for even the Tea Party has lost the corporate or Super-PAC support it effectively wielded in 2010.
Economically speaking, Paul presents alternative methods based in Austrian Economic theory which includes a focus on the Gold Standard and removing the FED. Both ideas are not only popular among his followers, but also among those in the Occupy Movement and many in the Tea Party movement. For these reasons he has become a popular candidate among America's youngest voters who like Paul's idealism, anti-bank rhetoric and isolationist foreign policy.
In many ways I agree with these parts of his platform, yet at the same time, for some reason, it's rare that I have a discussion with a Paul supporter on facebook without it becoming a full-on, flame-bomb fight. Yes, I have friends that are Ron Paul supporters that are very nice people, but we are amicable and understand each other's perspectives on why each of us choose, for instance, between candidates like Paul or Obama.
On the other hand, I once met a couple here in Portland while at a bar across the street from a record store on Record Store Day. Even though we had similar tastes in music, after becoming friends on facebook things went South fast. These avid Paul supporters started cursing at me and at the policies of Obama with their terrible facebook/texting grammar which made it a very easy decision to de-friend them in short order. I felt bad about it at first yet if we can't be civil about these sorts of things, then what's the point in going out of our way in trying to have healthy constructive discussions who are unwilling to find answers collectively?
Having Ron Paul part of the political discourse in the country is important because he represents a wide swath of the country that is fed up with regulations, political posturing, government intervention and demand side economics (Keynesian). Conversely though, in my opinion, he complicates a political environment that is particularly bad right now by giving voice to policies and pursuits that simply aren't realistic. His platform includes effectively ending the Federal Reserve, the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Department of Heath and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA and the IRS, which to me are not the solutions to our problems. If he had his way, his initiatives would see us returning to the Gold Standard and ending the income tax, thus effectively isolating and to some extent alienating our economy from our Western allies.
The one good reason Ron Paul should not be president would be his inability to bring balance to the office. I really don't see him being able to bring competing factions together, for his stances on many ideas and policies in regard to how D.C. does things are pretty radical. So, we'd either have a president who has to compromise all the far-fetched goals of his candidacy to get things done and would thus be portrayed as weak or, if he's successful in implementing his radical positions, he'd make huge changes to our government that would be unpopular with the majority of Americans and/or cause our economy to tailspin after 2 years of a hard fought, slow recovery.
I see Paul staying in the Republican primaries until the big states vote in March or maybe as late as April, which is when I'd predict his numbers to trend downward. There is the potential for him running as an independent, but who knows at this point. Were he to run as an independent, it's difficult to tell at this point who would be damaged the most (being that Paul has so far cornered the youth vote - the group Obama solidly captured in 2008), yet all signs point to him garnering more evangelical and conservative voters, so for Paul to potentially run as an independent would likely hurt the Republican nominee.
Any presidential candidate who focuses more on the needs of the individual (no taxes, "liberty") than on the needs of the country as a whole apparently doesn't understand the purpose of government. His policies would further enable a free-market economy that brought us to where we are today and simultaneously turn a blind eye to those needing government the most: the underpaid, under educated and our poorest citizens. For these reasons and more, a leader like Ron Paul, who doesn't believe in the benefits of a federal government, should never be the president of the United States.
Resources:
Ron Paul Wikipedia
Presidential Campaign 2012
Sponsored Legislation
Political Positions
Five Reasons Ron Paul Should Never Become President
12 Damaging Quotes From Paul's Past
Austrian School
On a side note...
I haven't read it yet, but Thomas Frank's new book "Pity the Billionaire: The Unlikely Resurgence of the American Right" very much addresses this conundrum of those on the right demanding less regulation when it has been less regulation that got us here in the first place. NPR had a great interview with him on Friday.
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