What is a good explanation for Ron Paul...
1 - Endorsing his supporters sending money to several Neo-conservative war mongering candidates on his Liberty PAC web site?
2 - Not endorsing a single Ron Paul Republican challenger to Neo-conservative war mongering Republican incumbents in the primaries?
3 - Giving a blanket endorsement of anyone but McBama, spreading his "clout" instead of focusing it on Baldwin or Barr to help them reach debate acceptance levels in the polls?
Putting aside my own love affair with Ron Paul the only answer I can come up with is that he plays party politics too, but that explanation doesn't sit well with me.
Put aside your love affair with Ron Paul for a few moments and tell me what do you honestly think?
You want a discourse on potential explanations for Dr. Paul's actions? Alright, here's mine:
1) Great Question. Hadn't noticed it before, would like how we could support someone who doesn't agree with at least the 4 basic tenants just agreed to the other day. I looked up one of them, Virgil Goode, and the claim checks out. See here:
http://www.libertypac.net/html/federal.html
http://vcnv.org/why-i-m-against-the-war-and-why-i-go-to-virgil-goode-s-office-to-say-so
2) Not quite sure I follow this one. Didn't B.J. Lawson go against an incumbent republican in the primary, and didn't he have RP's support for it. I know there were quite a few liberty candidates who RP supported, certainly some of them were running against Republican incumbants.
3) There is no such thing as a 'debate acceptance level'. It's like a unicorn, a mythical creation. The standards used to judge who is 'worthy' to be in a debate are amorphous and can be changed without explanation or reason. One example of it was the 1996 effort by Ross Perot.
So, Ron Paul's actions; reasonable or not?
I think he's looking at it from 1) a larger issues first perspective, 2) a ease of argument perspective, and 3) a numbers perspective. Not certain if I agree that those are the best way to view the situation, but they might be.
1) All four groups can agree that the current system is broken and leading us into a massive catastrophy which will enslave or destroy us all and everything we hold dear. The four groups disagree on what should replace it, but an open debate on that issue after the duopoly is brought down is preferable to remaining divided and perishing.
2) For us to be successful we must reach out to others and get them to stand with us. No other way around it, these are elections, they take numbers to win. How do we best reach out to the public, with an argument of well-developed nuanced positions about a dozen different topics...Or do we ask them if they are fed up with congress and with the two parties, and try to paint them as being one and the same, same crap different day? Which one is more dumbed down and easier for the average person to digest, understand, and agree with? Which one can be used to reach out to a wider base of public support?
3) Pure numbers game of growth. If I go out and speak to a 100 people, quite a few will think that Congress and politicians suck. (Congress = 9% favoribility rating right now). I could probably get quite a few of them to consider the option of saying screw the politicians, but only if I can give them something that they might find agreeable to them. Having more options at that point would be a good thing. But wait, you say, that's helping bad people like socialists and theocrats. To a point, yes, it's helping them and us. Hold your horses for one second though and look at this math:
Option A: I talk to a lot of people, 100 think Congress sucks.
I get 25 to agree with me that the LP is for them. Great.
75 don't agree with certain points of the LP and therefore knowing nothing about any other choice, they stick with the Republocrats.
End result: I've grown a little bit (25 new members), but the Rep/Dem are still too strong and I get smacked around and around. This has been the LP results for decades.
Option B: I talk to a lot of people, 100 think Congress sucks. A member of the Greens, Constitutionalists, and an Independant do the same.
I get 25 to agree with me that the LP is for them. Great.
75 don't agree, but then they check out the other third parties. 25 go Green, 25 go Constitutionalist, 25 go Independant. Same results for all the others.
End result: We grow a lot (100 new members), the Rep/Dems are cut in half and comparied to the large number of new third party members are now vulnerable in many areas. The political discourse changes. All the other third parties are also stronger. Now instead of trying to fight a monolith, we have debates about policy with the socialists, the theocrats and all the rest of them and the LP wins b/c then we can discuss and debate well-reasoned arguments of liberty and freedom on a nearly equal playing field.
Put all of it together and there is one strategy that has been tried before but hasn't worked, and then you've got a really out of the box idea by Dr. Paul that could actually do something if we could get this bickering to stop.
