I Like Paul

It should be no suprise to anybody who has followed me or my blog for awhile… for instance this post from February this year, but I am liking Ron Paul more and more as the campaign continues and I see more of him. Sure he has some views I disagree with, but so do all the candidates, and the percentage I disagree with seems by far the smallest with Paul.

The New York Times has a detailed profile (free login may be required) in this weekend’s magazine:

The Antiwar, Anti-Abortion, Anti-Drug-Enforcement-Administration, Anti-Medicare Candidacy of Dr. Ron Paul
(Chirstopher Caldwell, New York Times)

Paul represents a different Republican Party from the one that Iraq, deficits and corruption have soured the country on. In late June, despite a life of antitax agitation and churchgoing, he was excluded from a Republican forum sponsored by Iowa antitax and Christian groups. His school of Republicanism, which had its last serious national airing in the Goldwater campaign of 1964, stands for a certain idea of the Constitution — the idea that much of the power asserted by modern presidents has been usurped from Congress, and that much of the power asserted by Congress has been usurped from the states. Though Paul acknowledges flaws in both the Constitution (it included slavery) and the Bill of Rights (it doesn’t go far enough), he still thinks a comprehensive array of positions can be drawn from them: Against gun control. For the sovereignty of states. And against foreign-policy adventures. Paul was the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate in 1988. But his is a less exuberant libertarianism than you find, say, in the pages of Reason magazine.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

He has no chance of winning the Republican nomination of course. That is unfortunate, but true. Despite all the hoopla on the Internet, his support remains solidly in the single digits amongst potential Republican Primary voters (see pollster.com down in the “others” section). But I still like him.

My normal view toward primaries is that I am not a member of any party, because I dislike them all equally, and a Primary is the time for a party to choose its candidate, and therefore out of principal I do not participate in primaries even if the state I am in allows one to do so without registering with a particular party. I am now seriously considering the possibility of voting in the Republican primaries when they come along, just so I can vote for Ron Paul.

As the time gets closer, I may even decide to donate something (small) to his campaign.

Would I put up a poster in my window or on my lawn? Nahhh… that would be going too far.

Depending on who the major candidates are in November 2008 though, I might consider voting for Paul anyway, even if I have to write him in. If he runs as a third party (Lib or otherwise) after he loses the Republican nomination, I’d be thrilled, and would almost certainly vote for him.

I just signed up for his mailing list on his website. He better send me real stuff and not spam stuff though, or I’m out! :-)