Ron Paul wins presidential straw poll at CPAC

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Ron Paul wins CPAC straw poll

Well that's interesting and come out of no where. I know a lot of folks here like Ron Paul, so I'm just wondering you're guys reaction is to this. The Tea Party activists and Ron Paul's group had a large contingency so I imagine they had something to do with it.

Hmm... I wouldn't mind this too much. They'd probably call him "president veto stamp", but I am somewhat cynical towards the benefits of a lot of government actions. I would really bet that his presidency would actually decrease the size of government, while having limited long-term effects other than that. (presidents can't unilaterally implement the Gold Standard, after all)

At least he is against war and the drug war and all of that.

That said, I still wonder why it is that the same heartland that brought forth William Jennings Bryan who spoke of crucifixion "on a cross of gold" is now producing the opposite movement for a gold standard. The gold standard was murder for farmers. In Canada, the prairies is from where came the Social Credit movement - to print fiat money...

He is influenced by Murray Rothbard. You are right though, his strong anti-war stance and his social libertarianism are reliefs. He is likely further left on a lot of these issues than some democrats, and I think congress will hamper many of his economic initiatives anyway.(I don't think congress does a great job picking the regulations in the first place, they'll play favorites, and at least Ron Paul will take a more disciplined stand I would think)

Hm. Ron Paul still is not going to be nominated (and certainly CPAC is not really a representative grouping of anyone) but it would be interesting. If he did get nominated, it would likely be another 1964. IIRC, last election cycle he said he would end the war on drugs even if Congress refused to legalize drugs by just not enforcing those laws.

xenon13: The reason some populists are talking about a gold standard now is because of the bad reputation anything connected to the banking system and financial industry has right now.

Hmm, Palin's poor showing is heartening, I'm glad to see that her attempts to co-opt the Tea Party demographic are not going over well.

While I don't quite like Paul's propertarian version of libertarianism, the prospect of war in the Republican Party between the ultranationalist militarists and libertarian-isolationist enrages brings glee to me.

There is still a bias among many for a kind of money with something "real" behind it. Chartalists of course will say that there is something behind fiat money - but since a lot of the gold people hate taxation they would not like the idea of a currency whose strength is based on the amount of taxation a government does. Chartalism, despite its most realistic depiction of the way the fiat currency system works, is not used to explain these things and as a result there is a lot of ignorance out there about how the currency system works. One reason I think is because Chartalism, if accepted, removes many of the clubs the upper classes use to force the lower classes to "tighten their belts" so that they can take more.

Severe hypocrisy has a lovely way of trickling down to your level of popular support. Honestly, demanding the firing of Rahm for using the "r-ward" than standing by and doing nothing as Rush Limbaugh - through his "satire" - called a meeting of people with intellectual disabilities "the r...[word] summit" is spinelessness at its core.

I could see this given Paul's economic comments. As it stands though, he'd divide the left on the social and foreign policy issues significantly I think. An issue with Goldwater is that he was accused of likely dropping the bomb and ending civilization, however with Paul, I could see things like "Don't you think education is important for children? Republican Candidate Ron Paul not only does not support education, but he hates it so much that he wants to abolish the department of education". Paul's only hope is splitting people on the issues, and getting enough populism on his side to support his dislike of many programs.

I just want to say I loved LBJ's campaign commercials. That was some incredibly brilliant political maneuvering from a politician who knew every dirty trick in the book, and then some.

I don't know how much Paul would divide the left, though. I mean, serious liberals would look at Paul's record and say, "This guy's a pro-life, anti-gay creationist, how can I vote for him?" Plus, there have been accusations of racism in a newsletter he used to publish—he claims not to have been active in editing the newsletter at the time, but it will still hurt him among the left. Add to that the fact that he wants to get rid of welfare and basically all government programs, and the only things he has going for him from a liberal's perspective is his foreign policy and his stance on drugs.


Maybe, but his stances make it such that significant portions of the Republican base will not support him, and the Democrats are not angry enough at Obama to jump ship and vote for a hard-core libertarian.

One the one hand, Orwell, Paul will certainly receive the GATTACA vote.

But - to address Orwell's points about his support among US progrssive liberals - I see a lot of (I hate to use a Lenninist term, but it seems so approperiate) infantile leftists who support him, oblivious to some of his more absurd ideas. I mean, I recall a left-liberal on another web forum who was militantly pro-choice who evangelically anti-abortion candidate Ron Paul. There's a disgusting amount of cognitive dissonance among certain segments of the single-issue anti-imperialist left that I just can't stand.

The anti-war left would be hard to find a more anti-war candidate. The people who think that the government is invading civil liberties too much would also be threatened.

You are right though, the racism, and economic issues would hurt him. That's why I said foreign policy and social liberties.


Very true. He'd have to de-emphasize that a *LOT*.

Left progressives would certainly be mad at Paul's refusal to vote in favour of a Rosa Parks medal, especially if they knew he's okay with using taxpayer money to fund the Boy Scouts or his frivolous football votes.

Ironic that three Tea Partisans are running against Paul, isn't it?

One of the things that a friend said - who is a Ron Paul fan, he admitted that Ron Paul wishes to pull up our bases around the world (or at least many of them?), my friend said that while he agreed with most of Ron Paul's ideas that this was one that he worried about potential secondary and tertiary consequences of. My thought - its quite obvious what those consequences would be.