If Ron Paul can somehow win the presidential nomination of the Republican Party, he will have an excellent chance of beating President Barack Obama in November 2012. He will, of course, face great obstacles in the Republican primaries, but if he can overcome them, it ought to be all downhill after that.
Why will the congressman from Texas have a good shot at beating a sitting president during wartime?
Paul can out-left Obama on foreign policy and personal liberties, thus making gigantic inroads on the latter’s base while at the same time maintaining his right-wing credentials on economics.
Not only has Obama not withdrawn the U.S. from Iraq (as promised), he has involved us in yet another undeclared war in Libya. He has expanded the hostilities from Afghanistan to Pakistan by utilizing drone strikes. He has presided over the murder of dozens of Yemenis, none of whom posed any threat to our shores. He has allowed torture for the “wiki-leaker” on U.S. territory.
Obama is responsible for the biggest military spending in our history, has bailed out fat cats from Wall Street to Detroit and still has not closed down our torture chamber in Cuba — again, as he promised.
Paul, in contrast, opposes corporate welfare and would not only exit troops from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, but also from hundreds of other nations, ranging from Germany to Japan to vast parts of South America, Asia and Africa. “What on earth are we still doing in all these faraway places?” the left wing of the Democratic Party might well ask.
A Paul Administration would hack away heavily at the previously hallowed military budget, radically tackling our financial crisis without any need to raise our debt ceiling once again. In contrast, it will be the same old thing from Obama. The deficits will continue to be monetized by the Fed, creating inflation and thus exacerbating poverty (isn’t the left supposed to be against poverty?) and further decreasing the value of the sinking dollar.
Another area in which Obama’s base will actually prefer Paulian policy is drug legalization. Disproportionate numbers of young black men are now in jail for engaging in this victimless crime, and all too many others have perished from violence due to drug prohibition (aren’t “progressives” supposed to favor the black community?). Have we learned nothing from our dire experience with the prohibition of alcohol? Mexico is unraveling at a ferocious pace due to these same drug laws, and we ourselves cannot much longer remain immune from this whirlwind these laws have created.
Of course, Paul’s policies on Social security, a sacred cow among the Republicans, may be controversial — so much for their adherence to the philosophy of free enterprise. This is actually a vast left-wing conspiracy, inaugurated by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Bernie Madoff just went to prison for something very much along these lines.
The idea behind this “third rail” of American politics is that people are too stupid to save for their old ages and that the state must force them to do so for their own good. But if the electorate is that deranged, how can we allow them to vote at all, let alone to expect them to mark their ballot boxes wisely? And how is it that they are so wise so as to elect politicians who will then correct these errors of theirs?
No, this policy rends asunder family ties between the younger and older generations and is not needed. Just because some few will act in a silly manner is no reason to forcibly victimize all of us with a Ponzi scheme. Ron will end this sacred cow, but the Republicans, to say nothing of the Democrats, will not like it one bit.
At least this statesman from Texas is not a socialist like Romney, with his medical plan for Massachusetts anticipating Obama’s compulsory support for the health insurance industry. Paul would rely, instead, on a truly free market in medicine to drive prices down to reasonable levels, as this system has done in all other industries that have been left relatively free. Capitalism works for everything else, why not healthcare?
Nor is Congressman Paul a theocratic imperialist as is Mike Huckabee, nor is he a lightweight of the order of Sarah Palin, nor is he a flake like Donald Trump, whose main accomplishment in politics is to force Obama to release his birth certificate.
So, will Ron win the Republican nomination and then go on to victory in the next election?
All we can say for sure is that if Paul gets the Repulican nod, the next political cycle is likely to be fought over ideas and philosophies, and not personalities as in the past.
Walter Block is an economics professor. He can be reached at [email protected]
