Ron Paul, constitutionalist and patriot

My survey of presidential candidates' websites continues with Ron Paul. I had never heard of this individual until asked to investigate his website. Sorry. Please don't surf off somewhere else. I might be a newcomer to American politics, dear reader, but you're seeing the political pubescence of a foreign ingenue. Imagine you're watching your daughter bloom into sexual maturity.

Because your political discourse, far from being broken, reaches heights of wheedling, corruption, manipulation and spin that renders Europeans awestruck. It is a well-oiled machine. It is the discourse of the businessman-lothario, whispering sweet nothings in your ear, and presenting himself all intellectual and artistic-like so he can bed you.

However, Dr. Paul's political discourse isn't slick. (Unlike Mitt and Hillary, Ron prefers "Dr.") It's really embarassing: he tries to spin his campaign to pretend that it is picking up armies of supporters on the internet, bypassing advertising and TV news. This isn't working.

Ron Paul TV goes on the campaign trail in Iowa. The film focusses on the drummed-up hoo-hah for his arrival. Tens of people are there, jumping up and down, screaming, and waving placards. Some dude narrates over a shot of a helicopter that "the energy started early in the day" because some local news station, desperate for a story other than Cat Up Tree or Fire In House, flew overhead. Dr. Paul focusses on "the buzz" that his campaign is creating. He blogs that "a local TV station called "to tell him "'your campaign's really picking up steam!'" "Darn right," he agrees. But then he makes a plea for more people to sign up to his campaign because "the biased media" want to see "his campaign lose steam." Like an undergraduate essay, he doesn't follow through on his introductory claims for himself, empty rhetoric revealed by lack of evidence. He also favours the repeated-metaphor technique.

Clearly, he's finding it difficult to get much attention.


Like Romney, Paul tries to appeal to a broad conservative and small-state coalition. The three images above come from his biography, which tells you that he was a farmer, then a navy surgeon in the 1960's, then an obstetrician/gynaecologist, then a congressman. Farmer Paul learned all about midwestern values. Dr. Paul (OB/GYN) learned that abortion was wrong and always unnecessary. No pregnant woman's life is ever in danger. Congressman Paul fought for a "constitutionalist" ideology. All bases covered.

"Wait," I thought, when reading his "constitutionalist" musings. "I have never heard of that particular political ideology before. I wonder what it means?"

After a bit more perusing, I realised that Dr. Paul is like every single medical student you have ever met, who has done PolSci 101 and drones endlessly on about his banal ideology. He wants to return America to the 18th-century golden age, where the federal government knew its place and gentleman-farmers frolicked in arcadian evenings after a good day's dispensing justice down at the state house. One of his congressional cronies in the federal government says “Ron Paul personifies the Founding Fathers’ ideal of the citizen-statesman." He thinks returning powers to the states will end the Hanoverian tyranny of Washington, D.C. Government is too big, too top-heavy, and too engaged in international affairs. I think he might have been reading him some Thomas Jefferson.

Perhaps you can explain this philosophy to me. I don't understand why transferring power to states will mean less authority in government and more liberty? It's not as if states are little ex-colonies anymore, where the gentlemen naturally rose to the top and did their citizenly duty, defending their own liberty by active government. (Remember, Africans, natives, and women don't have liberty to defend.) They're populous, modern states, with large electorates and heavy law codes. Massachusetts, for example, tyrannises red-staters by making them buy health insurance and undermining the foundation of their marriages. South Dakota tyrannises women by staging a womb takeover. And doesn't federal government protect liberals and conservatives from each other, enforcing a small degree of fractious compromise, and preventing red and blue states from spiralling off into ideological purity?

Having said that, Joolya had an excellent plan to create a "United States of Happiness," in which the nice bits of the U.S. all got together and kicked out their errant cousins, leaving red states to get on with it. Perhaps Paul's scheme might bring this about, destroying the last vestiges of U.S. coherence.


He'd have my vote, if I had one.


9/10

[Thanks, Twisty.]