Who do YOU need to support for 2008? The Republican, Ron Paul!
by shii
Wed Apr 18, 2007 at 10:01:08 AM PDT
Dear Daily Kos: I have never made a political contribution in my life. Sure, I've done things like tell my parents to vote for Kucinich for me when I was 17 (they obliged), but I haven't seen any reason to throw time or money on the pile. Well, all that's changing in two weeks. 2008 is the most promising election in a long time, and I've discovered something I can fight for.
The title of this diary might be a little confusing, but jump into There's-Moresville and I'll explain exactly what I'm going to do and why.
shii's diary :: ::
What I want my government to do is relatively simple. I want it to protect free speech, keep us alive, and otherwise leave us to our own devices to pursue our happiness. I wanted Kucinich because he would repeal the Patriot Act, legalize marijuana, and take us out of NAFTA and the WTO. However, I can't support him in this election because there are other candidates that are both mainstream and palatable, namely, Obama and Edwards.
On the Republican side, though... things are looking bad. This is quite a rogues' gallery, and if you read Daily Kos often you know all about how awful the mainstream candidates are. For example, McCain, Giuliani, Brownback all have an Iraq policy based on Fox News phantasms. They will cause much pain in the world if they are elected. Romney doesn't even mention Iraq on his website. These aren't conservatives, they're delusional, and they would make the general election a grudging, groaning vote for whoever the Democrat is, even Hillary, just to try to keep them out of office.
There is one candidate, though, who would present a real challenge. There is one man who would test even the Democrats to prove the integrity of their positions. He voted against the war in Iraq. He is against capital punishment, and voted against the anti-gay marriage amendment. He would legalize marijuana. He votes against all bills that raise taxes or spend federal money in a way not explicitly authorized by the Constitution, even for the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor. His name is Ron Paul, and barring Al Gore being drafted he is the only candidate I will feel good about giving my money to.
What the hell, right? Why give money to a Republican? The thing is, I don't want the primaries or the general election to be a battle of dirty tricks and money getting sleazily pushed around everywhere. I never want to see a repeat of the 2004 election in my life. Both Kerry and Bush harvested enormous sums of cash, the GOP slandered Kerry, Kerry waffled, and by the time I sat down to watch the results come in I felt dirty.
I'd like to call your attention to previous Daily Kos stories about Ron Paul. This is probably the most shocking thing I've seen on our enjoyably one-sided website. He's a Republican, so we'd expect to see people annoyed with him, right? Nope! One diarist respects him. So does another. Another quotes his columns, not even to show "bipartisan" support but just because he has good ideas. Even MissLaura had to admit that compared to every other Republican candidate this election cycle, Ron Paul is spending his campaign money slowly and precisely.
So, over the course of the next six months I will donate $100 to Ron Paul. I'm a college student but I think I can afford it.
What can I hope to see from this? Is this just a moral move? No, there's quite an amazing thing that could happen if my money gets spent well. Currently, Ron Paul is being desperately shoved aside by the Right as a crazy libertarian who could never get the vote. Despite the fact that he gets a supermajority in many online polls such as the Pajamas Media poll, neoconservatives are scared by him and trying their hardest to diminish his weight. Some even exclude him from the polls and label him a spammer, as Pajamas Media did earlier-- a patent lie, because there is no central campaign website for Ron Paul and nobody is passing around a list of polls to spam. So, why are they scared? Well, imagine this: his platform is that he actually supports the Constitution and the policies of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. They can't attack him for the fact that he wants to legalize marijuana, because he's just following the Constitution. They can't attack him for the fact that he voted against the MySpace-blocking bill, because the Constitution doesn't let Congress make bills about that. They can't even attack him for the fact that he wouldn't vote to outlaw abortion, because he doesn't believe the federal government has the authority to do that.
This is big. They've got a problem on their hands, and they know it.
They know what they're up against.
We don't know what they're up against.
We need to stop marginalizing Ron Paul as MissLaura did and start supporting him. I see no reason to fight the principles of conservatism in general: I don't think the general public has even had a dialogue about conservatism versus liberalism in decades! No, what I want to do is fight the unprincipled, and the way to do that is to undermine the neoconservatives from the inside.
Even if Ron Paul doesn't win, if he makes it big as a result of the netroots, the media will be forced to talk about his policies. Will he get a chance to explain himself and discuss his often surprising support for the Constitution, or will the neocons get to him first and get him shoved out of the race?
A Presidential race fought by strength of opinion rather than fear, without swift-boating or sound bites. Can you even imagine it? If I were watching a debate between Obama and Ron Paul, my stomach would not be churning inside me. I would not be nervously cheering on one of the candidates and booing the other, as if the last and only hope for our country was that one of them would "win" the debate. Rather, I would actually be listening to the debate and making up my mind. We can make this happen, but not by donating to Obama, or Edwards, or Kucinich. We have to get the word out, to everyone, about the good Republican candidate.
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