What’s this — a Republican Congressman from Texas who is willing to buck the trend?
Mr. Paul has stood out from the Republican field for his opposition to the war in Iraq. In the speech he argues that the fight against terrorism is threatening American democracy. “The American Republic is in remnant status,” he says. “The stage is set for our country eventually devolving into military dictatorship, and few seem to care.”
Amazing. If there were more like him, I might even be persuaded to vote GOP.
Ron Paul is a bit of an “extremist in the defense of liberty”, to quote Goldwater, not necessarily in a bad sense. (Though of course, Goldwater was a hawk foreign-policy-wise.) Ron Paul is essentially an isolationist, so, by dint of how that fits into his Libertarian ideology, he’s against the Iraq war. He has some interesting ideas though, like most Libertarians. (He mostly became a Republican because its closer to his party affiliation than Democrats.) I don’t think I’d vote for Ron Paul, though I agree with him that Iraq’s a disaster. There’s plenty of other people running for office strongly against the Iraq war though that wouldn’t implement some of the other policies that Ron Paul’s in favor of and I’m not.
Though it certainly would be an interesting experience to have him as president, if he did half of what he wants to do the country’d get turned upside-down, and perhaps we need a little of that. 😉
Ah, that explains it… ideologically he’s NOT from the Republican Party. 🙂
Well, he always claims to be the only Real Republican, but he also has a twin party affiliation with the Libertarians. You’ll note that the Times article has a lot of his supporters claiming he’s not one, I saw an interview on PBS with him where he mentions that he is, while adding that he’s a “Taft Republican”.