Patrick Henry
06-04-2007, 02:52 PM
http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/column/wineke/index.php?ntid=149962
Wineke: Paul is an interesting candidate
The most interesting presidential candidate of either party this year seems to be Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.
Opinion polls suggest Paul "won" the recent Republican candidates' debate. He was cheered last week by the audience of the left-of-liberal "Real Time With Bill Maher" cable television show. Rudy Giuliani appears outraged by Paul, which can't be an altogether bad endorsement.
Paul is not yet a bipartisan rock star, but the more people see of him, the more they seem to like him -- and, when you think about it, that's pretty bizarre.
It's pretty bizarre because Paul is kind of a bizarre character politically. He serves as a Republican, but he's an unabashed Libertarian whose views are to the right of not only George W. Bush but of almost every other Republican on the scene.
Paul has never voted for a tax increase. He doesn't like the United Nations. He is anti-abortion. He not only opposes the war in Iraq, he wants to bring our troops home from the other 130 countries in which they're stationed.
This is what he says about Iraq:
"The war in Iraq was sold to us with false information. The area is more dangerous now than when we entered it. We destroyed a regime hated by our direct enemies, the jihadists, and created thousands of new recruits for them. This war has cost more than 3,000 American lives, thousands of seriously wounded and hundreds of billions of dollars. We must have new leadership in the White House to ensure this never happens again."
It's the kind of comment that makes liberal Democrats salivate.
Here's the kind of position that doesn't make them salivate: Paul is dead set against the U.S. taking any position on the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, because he doesn't think we should be involved in this kind of foreign entanglement.
So, how does a somewhat strange Texas physician who is out of step with his own party, and the dominant attitude of the country at large, become so appealing?
I think it might be that Paul embodies authenticity. We know who he is. He doesn't need spinners to tell us that he's a "compassionate conservative" or that he is a Ronald Reagan Republican. (In 1975, he was one of four Congressmen to endorse Reagan for president; he has no need to prove that credential.)
We know John McCain is no longer as straight-talking as he once professed to be. We've never even thought Hillary Clinton was straight-talking. Mitt Romney has talked straight on every side of every issue. We kind of hope Barack Obama has the authenticity that his books suggest, but we're not all that comfortable with his rock star image and, let's face it, Ron Paul doesn't get $400 haircuts on his way to talk about the "Two Americas."
The other reason I think so many are intrigued by Paul is that, agree or disagree, we have a nagging little feeling that what he says actually makes sense. We might not like what he says, but it's a little hard to reject his ideas out of hand, partially because he has been thinking about them for so many years and because he honestly seems to believe them. That makes him more than a little unusual.
Wineke: Paul is an interesting candidate
The most interesting presidential candidate of either party this year seems to be Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.
Opinion polls suggest Paul "won" the recent Republican candidates' debate. He was cheered last week by the audience of the left-of-liberal "Real Time With Bill Maher" cable television show. Rudy Giuliani appears outraged by Paul, which can't be an altogether bad endorsement.
Paul is not yet a bipartisan rock star, but the more people see of him, the more they seem to like him -- and, when you think about it, that's pretty bizarre.
It's pretty bizarre because Paul is kind of a bizarre character politically. He serves as a Republican, but he's an unabashed Libertarian whose views are to the right of not only George W. Bush but of almost every other Republican on the scene.
Paul has never voted for a tax increase. He doesn't like the United Nations. He is anti-abortion. He not only opposes the war in Iraq, he wants to bring our troops home from the other 130 countries in which they're stationed.
This is what he says about Iraq:
"The war in Iraq was sold to us with false information. The area is more dangerous now than when we entered it. We destroyed a regime hated by our direct enemies, the jihadists, and created thousands of new recruits for them. This war has cost more than 3,000 American lives, thousands of seriously wounded and hundreds of billions of dollars. We must have new leadership in the White House to ensure this never happens again."
It's the kind of comment that makes liberal Democrats salivate.
Here's the kind of position that doesn't make them salivate: Paul is dead set against the U.S. taking any position on the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, because he doesn't think we should be involved in this kind of foreign entanglement.
So, how does a somewhat strange Texas physician who is out of step with his own party, and the dominant attitude of the country at large, become so appealing?
I think it might be that Paul embodies authenticity. We know who he is. He doesn't need spinners to tell us that he's a "compassionate conservative" or that he is a Ronald Reagan Republican. (In 1975, he was one of four Congressmen to endorse Reagan for president; he has no need to prove that credential.)
We know John McCain is no longer as straight-talking as he once professed to be. We've never even thought Hillary Clinton was straight-talking. Mitt Romney has talked straight on every side of every issue. We kind of hope Barack Obama has the authenticity that his books suggest, but we're not all that comfortable with his rock star image and, let's face it, Ron Paul doesn't get $400 haircuts on his way to talk about the "Two Americas."
The other reason I think so many are intrigued by Paul is that, agree or disagree, we have a nagging little feeling that what he says actually makes sense. We might not like what he says, but it's a little hard to reject his ideas out of hand, partially because he has been thinking about them for so many years and because he honestly seems to believe them. That makes him more than a little unusual.