Conservative Thoughts on Ron Paul

"SOME of what Ron Paul says he wants to do, I want to do too. But I want to do it over a generation, because it absolutely will never get done if it is not done over a generation. The nature of society will not allow for the blowback that would exist by the unthoughtful radicalism of what Paul says he would do (and of course even he knows it would never, ever happen, but you can’t get those $10 donations without it). It took us over 100 years to become this progressive and nanny-dependent as a society. It took over 100 years for the citizen to beg the government to do as much as it does for the citizen, and for the government to oblige said citizen. It will not be undone in 100 minutes. It will take a lot of work. Political change will take a lot of work. Cultural change will take a lot of work. It is work I have dedicated my life to. I work as a senior vice president at a company with 62,000 employees, serve on four or five boards of non-profits and political groups, am raising three children under the age of six, manage the financial well-being of 150 high net worth individuals, families, and institutions, and am beyond passionate about the direction of my country. And frankly, I feel like I am not doing enough! I know that my life’s aspirations can not come true overnight, but I work and I work and I work. And when I die, I hope there will be some change as a result of what I am doing (should God see fit to smile upon my efforts). Where is a vision from the nucleus of Ron Paul cheerleaders? Where is the commitment to multi-generational and incremental change? I understand that the task at hand is going to be HARD, but I find their selection of “Door #3″ to be perverse. Yes, in door #3 you never have to worry about winning an election. You get to comfort yourself with platitudes and self-righteous cliches about being the only one really fighting the good fight. You can protest every candidate, or every bill, but you never get your own candidate elected, or get your own bill passed. You are the quintessential man outside the ring, looking at the two boxers fighting, telling the other bystanders around you how bad the two men fighting are."

--David Bahnsen

"[Ron] Paul routinely says that he's the only candidate who promises real change. For instance, he proposes cutting $1 trillion from the budget in the first year of his presidency. Now, show of hands: Who thinks Ron Paul could get those kinds of cuts through Congress? Anyone? OK, anyone who also believes the Council on Foreign Relations is a secret cabal determined to create a North American super-state?

I thought so.

I like, even love, many of Paul's proposals: turning Medicaid into block grants, getting rid of the Department of Education, etc. But he's not the man to get them accomplished, largely because the president doesn't have unilateral authority.

Presidential power is the power to persuade — Congress, the media and ultimately and most important, the American people. The power of the purse, meanwhile, resides on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Paul has been in Congress, off and on, for nearly 30 years. In that time, he will rightly tell you, Congress has spent money with reckless abandon, expanded the state's police powers, launched numerous wars without a declaration of war and further embraced fiat money (he got into politics when Richard Nixon took us fully off the gold standard). During all of that, he took to the floor and delivered passionate speeches in protest convincing … nobody.
Paul's supporters love to talk about how he was a lone voice of dissent. They never explain why he was alone in his dissent. Why couldn't he convince even his ideologically sympathetic colleagues? Why is there no Ron Paul caucus?

Now he insists that everyone in Washington will suddenly do what he wants once he's in the White House. That's almost painfully naïve. And it's ironic that the only way the libertarian-pure-constitutionalist in the race could do the things he's promising is by using powers not in the Constitution.

--Jonah Goldberg