He is the only candidate that talks truth, which of course makes him unelectable.

No one ever wants to vote for reality.

Correct, but getting Ron Paul's follower's support is key #1 to the Republican strategy. If they don't get them, they'll lose to Obama. If they do get them, they'll win. Having a presence at the convention will just make that key even more important. The GOP is on a tight rope. What will they do?

No. He never has and will not run as a "third-party" candidate. And the LA Times quote, of course, entirely mischaracterizes the announcement.

Note that the media has stubbornly refused to cover ANY of his campaign in the last few weeks. He has been gaining delegates and winning states (at least 8 so far), enough to be officially on the ballot for the ACTUAL selection of the Republican nominee (which the mainstream media does NOT get to decide, even if they think they do). But of course when Paul announces some pull-back or strategy shift in his campaign, they use it to declare once and for all "Romney is the winner!" - which they have been trying to do all along.

Ron Paul has decided not to spend any campaign resources in the remaining primary states. He will, however, continue to amass "delegates" for the Republican National Convention, where the nominee is officially declared. And we still hope to see a brokered convention, which will be a lot of fun, because the Republican establishment wants it to be a show, not a real contest.

Randians and reality are utterly unacquainted with each other.

Yeah, it has nothing to do with Paul's extremely unpopular opinions on most topics and crazy old man demeanor. People "just can't handle the truth".

You misunderstood the purpose of the speech. It was intended to co-opt your support for Ron Paul. They didn't count on you actually paying attention.

He is the only candidate that talks truth, which of course makes him unelectable.

i am not familiar with this strange new kind of "truth: you are referring to. ron paul's ideas would bring great opportunity for a very select and small number of people and oppression and misery for many, many, more. on top of that, much of it requires him to do things that are not within the power granted to the president.

No one ever wants to vote for reality.

no paullower would recognize reality if it bit them in the ass.

and yes, that was my comment. but because i have pissed off the slashdot paullowers i am not allowed to post more than twice a day under my own name on slashdot..

Yes, I'm sure that all those delegates that are technically not bound by their constituents' votes will suddenly discover their deep and unabiding love for Paul, and will vote for him during the Republican Convention.

Man, I really wonder what will happen to all you Paul-fans when Romney gets the overwhelming number of delegates during the Convention. I'm sure there'll be something along the lines of him winning a write-in campaign during the actual election, because, let's face it, all the REAL Ron Paul fans haven't really voted yet.

Actually, I don't think he would consider it, or more importantly, wouldn't consider the real fix. Constitutional revision to improve our system of government's foundational principles would enable a lot of impediments to be fiedx, or at least foster some discussion on how we really want to run things.

Instead, we have people like Ron Paul who puffs out his tune, and closes of his ears.

He doesn't want discussion. He's not open to it. He puts up a flat wall of rhetoric that offers no opening.

Maybe to you he sounds principle, to me he seems dogmatic.

Except that he is currently retiring and not running for the House again this time around. So you won't have him anywhere.

Not that that's a bad thing. Someone up above said "he is the only candidate that talks truth"; this only applies where "truth" includes insane goldbuggery, hermitic levels of nativism and xenophobia, extreme isolationism, and a standard monologue that ought to begin with "ok, everyone put on your tinfoil hats now."

Ron Paul is to the Republicans what Lyndon LaRouche was to the Democrats - a weirdo who attached himself to their party for his own goals and who manages to get by on a cult-of-personality effect while never remotely breaking into the mainstream because when you get right down to it, his "fundamental principles" have been disproven by history time and again.

Your DHS whistleblower is insane. As is a significant fringe of Republicans, who seem to think that cooperation and democratic principles don't matter anymore, because the wrong guy is sitting in the White House.

" If they don't get any of them, they'll lose to Obama. If they do get the amount of them that they are likely to get, they'll still lose to Obama. "

FTFY

The problem is that for every truth he speaks, he also speaks a dozen absurdities. He's ignorant of history, economics and governance. He'd make the worst kind of leader; the kind that blindly pushes through on purely ideological grounds. Beware the fanatic.

No it doesn't.
How would you characterize as "a proper democratic election"? Do such things occur somewhere? What does that fantasy have to do with the internal party politics that determines reality?
I LOL in your general direction sir.

What is a caucus?
What is a district?
What is a precinct?
How do precinct chairs get to be chairs?
How do state/national party delegates get to be delegates?
How do party platform planks get to be platform planks?
How did Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed and Don Wildmon and James Dobson take over the Republican Party 30 years ago?
How do state legislatures get filled?
How do voting precincts/districts get carved up?

The reason the political process in the USA sucks is that people fetishize the act of casting a vote and think that's where the citizenry derive their power.
Every time you cast a vote you are simply hitting a toggle switch within a previously constructed system. You are just as free as a pigeon in a Skinner box presented with two levers to peck. No amount of pecking lever 1 over lever 2 will change the structure of the box nor the fact that its creators put you in it.

A true grassroots movement could easily sweep away the crap in the two major parties. But such things don't happen because people are too lazy to get that involved. They'd rather just show up three times a year to vote for whatever's put in front of them. The power goes to those who organize the most. If you show up as a single solitary Paulite to your precinct thinking you're gonna put your little slice of the GOP back on track to "true conservatism" (whatever that means) you will be blindsided by the well-entrenched career powermongers and heavily motivated christianists who have been doing this a lot longer than you and will be using their numerous leftover extra brain cycles to plan dinner and next week's cotillion while they reflexively and casually exploit Robert's Rules of Order style procedures to cut you right out of the process should you try to speak up or add agenda items or nominate yourself as delegate to the your party's larger conventions. They already know ahead of time who is going to be nominated for what positions, who is going to make motions, who is going to second the motions, who is going to call for votes, who is going to move to end the session.... This is settled well in advance. If you're not part of an existing clan, don't enter an advanced open PK-ing MMORPG, because all that happens is that YHBPKed YHL HTH HAND.

Your DHS whistleblower is insane. As is a significant fringe of Republicans, who seem to think that cooperation and democratic principles don't matter anymore, because the wrong guy is sitting in the White House.

The funny thing is, by the time the 2008 election was coming up, there were a number of liberals who were absolutely certain Bush would declare martial law or something and just keep on going.

When Obama was born, the marriage of his parents would have been illegal in a good chunk of the United States. The Supreme Court put a stop to that in 1967. The Fourteenth amendment gives the Federal Government a tremendous amount of power to overrule what local people desire, because so many local peoples desired that severely tanned individuals not be citizens. Ironically enough the very states that Obama would leave those decisions to were forced by the federal government to allow marriages like that of his parents within his lifetime. I wonder if the irony is lost on him. He's a constitutional scholar, so you'd think he'd be aware of that.

I'd like to see someone ask Romney how he feels about interracial marriage. And whether his great-grandfather was right to run off to Mexico to be a polygamist. I'm sure his response would be amusing.

Yeah that's right. Tell me, what has had value for thousands of years. I guess that preferring a metal that has had value for thousands of years and will have value as far as we can tell for thousands more, over a piece of paper that politicians can print pretty much at will, makes hima loon.

TY, I learned a new word. He thinks that we have laws for immigration that should be followed and that the current immigration process should be streamlined. I guess that's xenophobia? lol

So you walk around neighbourhood with a fully loaded M16, and occasionally march into random people's houses and order them around with a gun to their faces? No? well then you must be an extreme isolationist!

Anyone who says that ron paul has a cult of personality is just beyond eliousonal about him. He is uncharismatic, he runs on sentences, he jumps around in his statements. If there's a ron paul cult, it's because he's spent 30 years or so in public office, standing by his principles while everyone mocks him.

yeah, tell me how voting for the lesser of two evils thing has been working out?

People who 'vote for their party' aren't about to vote for the 'other party'... aka "the bad party, that's clearly what's wrong with this country".

Note: I'm not saying that specifically Democrats are far worse than Republicans with the above statement... I think both parties are equally corrupt and repulsive, and I'd pull off my fingernails with a pair of pliers than vote for either of them. I'm saying that voters loyal to any party are going to continue voting for their party, no matter what puppet is fronting it or how bad they are.

Um, Ron Paul wants smaller government, and wants to end entitlement programs.

There used to be democrats that wanted the same thing, but they got chased away. There is no chance that any democratic candidate today would ever want to shrink government.

I actually don't like Ron Paul.

I just don't like assholes, blowhards, and fanboys. Whether they are arguing from a position I agree with or not.

There is absolutely no objective measure by which spazdor's comment is insightful. You would have to already agree with it, not mention being totally okay with stereotyping an ill-defined group of people and insulting them, and in that case it's not truly insightful - you already accept it as fact.

Some people are stupidly invest in some things or people. Guess what: the both of you are too, the irony is that you put it on display while making fun of others for doing the same thing.

i am not familiar with this strange new kind of "truth: you are referring to. ron paul's ideas would bring great opportunity for a very select and small number of people and oppression and misery for many, many, more

Except that the country's current course, with the utterly corrupt people currently in charge, is already bringing great opportunity for a very select and small number of politically-connected people and big corporations, and misery for many, many more. I don't see how having Paul in charge would be any worse. Instead, it'd probably be better, though not ideal: at least we'd get: 1) an end to the War on Some Drugs, along with all the federal spending on that, plus all the destructive effects it's having (creating a whole class of people who can't work and are forced into a life of crime), 2) an end to most of the foreign wars and empire-building and military bases overseas, along with a huge reduction in military spending, 3) for the liberals, gay marriage in some form, or at least no federal prohibitions on it, and 4) no more totally useless and insanely costly "stimulus" packages which give $22k Cisco routers to every puny little school in West Virginia. With all these cutback of things that are really hurting the economy and nation, then after Paul's gone we could get back to restoring additional government services that actually help instead of hurt. Effectively, having Paul in office would be like hitting the "reset" button on the government, something it desperately needs at this point.

However, as is obvious now, he's not going to be elected, and we're either going to get Romney or Obama (most likely Romney, though in practice there won't be any real difference between the two). So our nation is going to continue to go out of control until the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.

Because all of our problems are caused by the fed and none of those racist newsletters with his name on it are his.

Seriously. We're in serious trouble. We need serious people. We need serious economists and policy wonks.

Tearing it all down because of ideological purity isn't serious. It isn't even close. It's childish and stupid.

that's your greatest problem? not the dire need of winding down the war machine, overreach of three-letter agencies and shit?

Yes but they were going on history; an executive branch that was breathtaking in its brazen power-grabs. They told transparent lies to get us into war, ignored the Geneva Convention and our own laws and refused to back down even once discovered, and eroded the liberty of the average American significantly with laws like the PATRIOT act. In Obama's case, he has done nothing to merit the hate of the Republicans. Far from it! We got a Republican plan for health care, Goldman Sachs still runs the economy, tax cuts were extended and never raised, and he never came for your guns. The criticism from the right for Obama is positively bewildering; he's been as good to them as a Democrat could possibly be.

Gold's value swung wildly throughout history, causing massive short-term inflation and deflation. That is far more damaging than long-term inflation, which is easily avoided by not sitting on a pile of cash, which should be treated like a barter stand-in and not a gold equivalent.

Further, the same limited quantities that give gold the value you desire also make it too scarce for a growing economy.

And then there is the inability to "print" money. Ron Paul would probably put this in the "plus" column, but I think that governments will spend recklessly whether they can print money or not. Most of modern Europe is evidence that governments will borrow heavily even if they have no ability to print money. World history is chock-full of "Greeces", well before the federal reserve system was invented. In the US, we had plenty of bank failures, financial panics, and major recessions while on the gold standard. The federal reserve system gives the government more tools than it had prior to it's invention.

So in short, the main thrust of the pro-gold argument is that people who stuff their mattresses full of cash would be better off in the long run. No argument there. Of course they could be buying gold and stuffing that in their mattresses right now, so I'm frankly at a loss as to why we should give up all the advantages of the federal reserve system for such people.

Which gets me to the reason we tend to dismiss Ron Paul as a crazy person. What I wrote isn't remotely controversial. Banking has been a mess since it was invented - one of the core issues of our young country involved banking. We tried several national models, all of which had at least one spectacular failure. I'm under no delusion that the current Federal Reserve is the ultimate solution, but it seems to work better than it's predesessors. Ron Paul seems like a really intelligent guy, and he's also pretty well educated. So it really seems... odd... that he comes to the conclusions that he does on this matter. My conclusion is that his mind works in a way that is very different from my own. I could be the crazy one, but from my perspective he is the one drawing irrational conclusions.

Why does gold have value, though? For the exact same reason the US Dollar, or any other currency has value. Because we say it does.

Well, in 2000, it would have meant that we'd probably have Gore and not Bush.

Read up the chain! spazdor's comment is flamey and probably more inciteful than insightful... but Jeng basically insults everyone who doesn't agree with Ron Paul, saying they won't vote for "reality". spazdor just turned the comment around on Jeng.

I obviously didn't mod his post up, and I probably wouldn't have since I don't think flame wars deserve mods - but I can understand why it got up-voted. He shut up someone who was preaching to all of us poor ignorant rabble, some of whom happen to have mod points.

When the government can print money or borrow without practical limit, we have a great depression or the morass we're in now.

Actually, at the time of the Great Depression the US was still on the gold standard [wikipedia.org].

Paulians: they never let facts get in the way of a good rant.

Well, this could quickly turn into a novel. (And and Ayn Rand has shown us, a novel is the "perfect" vehicle for a political manifesto!)

I'm multitasking at work at the moment but I promise to come back to this thread tonight and give you something more substantial. My claim is not, as you've characterized it below, that supporting Ron Paul is completely untenable without self-deception, but that the Randian-Libertarian philosophy taken as a whole is.

There are certainly individual issues on which Paul is totally correct, and that's why I suggested downthread that under some circumstances he might make a great VP. But those individual issues, to me, don't nearly outweigh the issues he's wrong about - and more pertinently, I don't think those issues are the real reason for his 'underground' popularity - even among many of the people who cite them. You might conceivably disagree with me on whether the good outweighs the bad, and on that basis you might indeed be a perfectly intellectually honest Paul supporter. But the Randian Libertarian movement in the USA is not predominantly made up of that kind of supporter. The reasons why I think that, are what could turn this comment into a novel.

If I come back to this article in a week, will the moderation make sense, or will it just be a case of whichever group mods last and in force, wins?

Same as it ever was. :)

You what now? [ronpaul.com]

If our money were backed by gold and silver, people couldn’t just sit in some fancy building and push a button to create new money. They would have to engage in honest trade with another party that already has some gold in their possession. Alternatively, they would have to risk their lives and assets to find a suitable spot to build a gold mine, then get dirty and sweaty and actually dig up the gold. Not something I can imagine our “money elves” at the Fed getting down to whenever they feel like playing God with the economy.

Paulians don't even know what they're talking about when they claim to be quoting Ron Paul. If that isn't evidence of a cult of personality disorder, I don't know what is.

That's only sort-of true. He actually just killed the Bretton Woods reincarnation of it, which wasn't really gold-backed currency but an agreement to hold the price of gold to $35 per ounce. Since much of the world was pegged to the dollar, this acted a lot like a gold standard.

Wait a minute... are you blaming wage stagnation on a single factor?

First of all, that is not true - we are back to the income disparity levels seen in the first half of the 20th century [wikipedia.org]. Second, no I don't consider it a mark of success. Care to explain how the gold standard will erase that disparity? Clearly we've seen that kind of disparity prior to the ending of the gold standard.

I'm an Alexander Hamilton fan myself... well, maybe not his politicians-for-life opinions :)

So don't try to hold large amounts of fiat currency. Use it as a barter replacement and move on. If gold is so great, buy gold.

Which is why I didn't suggest that. Short-term inflation and deflation is horrible and destructive. I was referring to long-term deflation.

Since you picked the 6-7% inflation number, you are obviously including energy and food. Care to explain how a gold standard will make oil less scarce or finite?

Europe is not printing - at least not like we did - that is the crux of the argument going on over there. Germany is terrified of inflation and will not print their way out of the crisis. Just this week, the elections changed the equation of power over there and I believe they have agreed to basically emulate the "quantitative easing" that the US did. Anyway, Greece can't print their own currency, which is forcing them to live within their means, which is killing their economy. This is what happens during a cash crunch under a gold standard as well, which is why I pointed to Greece as an example. True, QE will eventually cause inflation, but I maintain that long-term, predictable pain is better than the short-term shock the Greeks are going through.

So what is your proposal? I have a feeling it isn't "learn lessons from the last fiscal crises and tweak the central bank", but rather, return to some era you have decided is the golden age. Am I right? People 200 years ago were not happy with the banking system, which is why they changed it in the first place.

Please read up on the history of financial panics and recessions and the Great Depression and then re-read your reply. I'm not asking for a lot of your time - perhaps an hour. We had many really terrible financial situations in the US while on the gold standard. As usual, someone was nice enough to compile a list over at Wikipedia. [wikipedia.org]

>> In Obama's case, he has done nothing to merit the hate of the Republicans.
Or rather Americans hate that Obama has eroded their rights when he can indefinitely detain anyone deemed a "terrorist", American citizens included. What's bewildering is that Democrats don't see that their rights are being eroded away. Turning a blind eye to Obama's corruption doesn't make any of it go away.