Currently viewing the tag: "Ron Paul"

Ron Paul: Crank To The Last

by Lev on 14 July 2011
I know Gherald’s a big fan of Ron Paul, and the guy has some admirable positions and has had his moments for sure. I’ll give him credit for putting his money where his mouth is by voting for repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. But the truth is that his essence has always been crankish, and that his last big crusade in office is to try hard to tank a deal to raise the debt ceiling really ought to cement “fiscal crank” as the lasting impression of him.
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So Barney Frank and Ron Paul walk into Congress…

by Lev on 22 June 2011
…and propose a bill to legalize marijuana. I think the bill is doomed to failure, but I give credit for bringing it up, and it’ll be interesting to see if there’s any meaningful Republican support for rolling this particular policy back.
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The Tragedy of Gary Johnson

by Lev on 13 June 2011

I noticed that a few libertarians are upset that Gary Johnson did not get invited to today’s first Republican presidential debate. Here’s Will Wilkinson:

Is there an objective way to determine who among those not, or not yet, running must be included in the relevant polls? Mr Giuliani, has not announced his candidacy, nor has he been seen hitting the hustings in Iowa and New Hampshire in clear anticipation of a run for the nomination. The whimsical choice to exclude from consideration the polls that would qualify Mr Johnson for participation in the debate hardly seems objective, or fair. In any case, the 2% threshold seems wrongheaded once you consider that Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, and Bill Clinton all polled at 1% around this time in nomination campaigns they went on to win. Or so says Mr Johnson’s campaign in a video protesting his exclusion from tonight’s debate.

Of course Johnson will not win. But neither will Herman Cain. The basic story is that CNN excluded Johnson on a technicality, and they deserve to take some flak for that. If you’re going to come up with objective criteria for being in a debate and then throw up a bunch of new conditions later to justify your own decisions, then why bother with the pretense of objectivity? But the reason why not Johnson is obvious to me. Johnson is a mild-mannered, normal-seeming dude. Such people generally don’t lead to the hothouse nutty atmosphere that leads people to tune into cable news. It’s assuredly in CNN’s interest to get as many Michele Bachmanns and Herman Cains onto the stage as possible, because it’s just more interesting television. Yes, this is a cynical interpretation of CNN’s action, but it’s cable news, and I generally don’t give them the benefit of the doubt.

For some reason I feel like being a dick about this, but I just can’t. Johnson has some worthy ideas (and some awful ones), but he actually has a fairly accomplished record of achievement in an executive capacity. He has more principles than the other Republicans running for president. But if CNN wanted a reason to shut him out that didn’t involve splitting hairs on who was included in what poll, here’s a pretty simple one: Johnson identifies as pro-choice. He can never win a GOP primary for that very reason. If he somehow won the nomination, it’s very likely that he’d trigger a party split on an immediate basis, and you’d almost certainly see a third-party pro-life candidacy gain steam. Take the pro-life movement out of the party, and you lose basically the entire enduring Republican activist base and a good chunk of the party’s electorate as well. Notice how quickly those tea party rallies turned into ghost events this year? Without the pro-lifers pounding the pavement, the GOP has a lot of money and nobody on the ground. If Johnson won the GOP nomination, he’d probably finish third in the general election and the Republicans know it. Of course, the increasingly popular line for blue-state Republicans these days is to identify as pro-life while saying that you don’t want to impose your own beliefs etc., and just be functionally pro-choice, which is a stance that has worked well for Chris Christie and Vermont gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie, among others. Dubie lost anyway, but Christie won and is regarded as a very serious contender for the GOP nomination. More proof, I suppose, that affect is the most important element in finding success in Republican politics. But Johnson isn’t doing that so far as I can tell. Much like movie ratings and many concepts of “genre”, pro-life/pro-choice is basically just a marketing distinction at this point that blurs more than it reveals, and Johnson’s attributes don’t fit the support he wants.

It’s actually sort of a shame that Johnson is not likely to get any attention at all. I’d much rather him be the underdog than the execrable Tim Pawlenty, for example. But the real culprit behind that status seems to me to be Ron Paul, who in lieu of designating a successor and endorsing Johnson (or even his own son) has mounted yet another pointless presidential bid even after being rejected in 2008 because, much like Ralph Nader on the left, Paul might have some values but the biggest one of those is self-promotion, and he’s perfectly willing to see his ideas marginalized to gain more attention. The other problem here is ironically that Johnson actually has too much integrity–he says the things that most Republicans say, like talking about personal responsibility and freedom, but he actually has a record and issue positions that apply these principles even-handedly, such as with the drug war and the military (and abortion, for that matter). I personally think there are other values that matter as well as those two, and freedom is much more complicated than just scaling back government across the board, but it can’t really be denied that Johnson is more or less the embodiment of what Republicans say they believe, and he’s completely unacceptable because of it.

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The Right and Gold Standard Weirdness: A Theory

by Lev on 11 February 2011

Mexican Gold

Let's see what the wingnuts do with this!

In case any of you were under the impression that Paul Ryan is anything but a nutty kook, DougJ finds him backing the gold standard. He asks the question of when all the currency craziness on the right started, but that’s a fairly easy question so far as I can tell: it began with Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential bid, which featured these very positions. Before him, the only murmurs I ever heard about this stuff were from very fringe right-wingers. But within three years, it’s suddenly a mainstream Republican position! We’ve gone from the tax-based Keynesianism of Bush to something even more radical than Friedmanite monetarism, to something that could literally be called Hoovernomics! What a crazy world.

I think the problem with gold standard nostalgia is that, like people’s deceptive longings for “smaller government” while opposing almost nothing the government does (aside from foreign aid, a piddling expenditure in the grand spirit of things), it’s a cultural complaint wrapped up in a political argument. We’ve all seen a million polls showing that the public believes firmly in slashing spending, but when asked about specific cuts, nobody wants to cut anything. But the notion of “smaller government, like it was back before all this mess happened” will have a certain appeal to people who want to turn back the clock on society anyway. When you get down to it, very few people want to get rid of Medicare or the FDA. But there are a fair amount of people (let’s just call them the Republican base) who are very comfortable with the idea of going back to the social mores of, say the early 1900s. So, you have a scenario where a lot of people argue vociferously for smaller government when they’re really just unhappy with the directions modernity has taken. Or so goes the theory, anyway, but it does happen to fit the facts. The gold standard stuff is trickier to easily diagnose, but I suspect it’s growth has been driven on the right over the past few years by a deep mistrust of the financial system and how debt has been commodified and sold, as well as a sense that lavish spending by the government is going to lead to hyperinflation, and from there to Weimar Republic, and Hitler, of course! You can see it in the grilling Republicans gave Ben Bernanke on inflation the other day. Inflation is so low it’s hardly worth even worrying about, but Republicans are worried about it. They have their Glenn Beck-driven theories floating around in their heads! If only we could have some guarantee that our money won’t be worthless. Alas. That theory most definitely does not fit the facts, indeed, it’s a silly and hysterical one propagated by professional shriekers. But I can see how the notion of “backing up our currency” could take hold if you share the Beckian assumptions about things.

So, therefore, the Gold Standard is making a comeback. I don’t expect it to be long-lived, since it’s basically a populist, truthy reaction to the Wall Street collapse and the crummy economy. As an economic idea, it’s pure garbage. Paul Krugman has often written about how it constrained economic recovery efforts until Franklin Roosevelt finally ditched it (though remnants of it hung on until Nixon’s presidency). But if you should happen to be a proponent of this dubious theory, if you think a Gold Standard would somehow keep the economy running more smoothly, I would think the list of terrible panics and often nonexistent economic growth during the “sound money” era would at least make you wonder if it’s the silver bullet you’ve been promised. Also, this is a bit off the topic, I’ve often wondered why the business community doesn’t push harder for internationalist, Keynesian political candidates. I mean, the Chamber shilled for the stimulus package, but they also ran ads for Rand Paul, who is against regulation, but unless you consider that and taxes to be the only determinants of a good business environment it’s a poor choice. Isn’t it in business’s interest to have people with sensible policies on this stuff? They used to play this role–they were behind giving Eisenhower the Republican nomination over isolationist/”sound money” type Robert Taft–but I guess it’s yet another data point to show you that these days, businesses really don’t care about anything other than tax cuts and less regulations.

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Libertarianism jumps the shark

by Lev on 11 February 2011
I know that Gherald is a Ron Paul fan, and I admit that he seems like a well-intentioned and decent guy in many respects. But this is maybe the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard a political figure utter:
“Look, we are not doing such a good job being government these days,” Paul explained. “We make promises and we don’t know about the future.” “Would you consider opting out of the whole system under one condition?” Paul then asked, introducing his plan. “You pay 10% of your income, but you take care of yourself. Don’t asked the government for anything.”
Leaving aside the cryptic argument of the first two sentences–that make absolutely no sense whatsoever in the combination they’re in–this is just fucking nuts. What, does taking the deal mean you forfeit the ability to use sewage systems? Does that mean the police can’t help you when you’re getting mugged? What about national defense? I mean, maybe that’s what the 10% is for (though there’s not much ambiguity when he says the whole system), but this is so very, very stupid. It’s libertarianism taken to the N-th degree, and it’s insane. (No joke: I’m seriously wondering if the guy is starting to lose his marbles. These remarks read like someone about to have a stroke.) So, naturally, the response was that “the crowd of libertarian youth packing the CPAC hall for his speech went wild.” At this level, libertarianism goes from being a logical (if extreme, in my opinion) way of viewing the world to being something you have to turn off your brain to get into. Not unlike a Star Wars prequel (and I promise I’ll stop using that comparison). Sheesh.
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