Friends, please explain to me why it is so often said that

[knothead]

Ron Paul is not electable.

He has never voted to raise taxes.
He has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
He has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
He has never voted to raise congressional pay.
He has never taken a government-paid junket.
He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.
He voted against the Patriot Act.
He voted against regulating the Internet.
He voted against the Iraq war.
He does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program.
He returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.

I'm confused.

[gryff57]

That's a good list of what he hasn't done. What has he done?

[jackdale]

Originally Posted by knothead

Ron Paul is not electable.


He returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.

This will cost Warren Buffet

Still, he’s willing to take them up on it. “It restores my faith in human nature to think that there are people who have been around Washington all this time and are not yet so cynical as to think that [the deficit] can’t be solved by voluntary contributions,” he says with a chuckle. So Buffett has pledged to match 1 for 1 all such voluntary contributions made by Republican members of Congress. “And I’ll even go 3 for 1 for McConnell,” he says. That could be quite a bill if McConnell takes the challenge; after all, the Senator is worth at least $10 million.

Read more: Buffett Challenges McConnell, Republicans on Tax Policy | Swampland | TIME.com

[knothead]

Originally Posted by gryff57

That's a good list of what he hasn't done. What has he done?

From everything I can find, he's done a pretty good job of standing up for my liberty and saving money.
He has sponsored over 600 bills and only one has passed. That tells me that the bills were mostly ones that the congress, (the same congress that has brought about our current situation), opposed. Hmmm. His message has always been the same. Their message is always been the same. What conclusion can I draw?

Are you suggesting that getting bills passed is the only or best way to represent his constituents?

[killarney_sailor]

If we assume that he gets elected (a big assumption to be sure), how would he get much done with a legistlative branch (even his own party) that is at odds with him over just about everything? This is not to say that a major change in governance is not needed.

[knothead]

Originally Posted by killarney_sailor

If we assume that he gets elected (a big assumption to be sure), how would he get much done with a legistlative branch (even his own party) that is at odds with him over just about everything? This is not to say that a major change in governance is not needed.

Good question, but I sure hear a lot of fear about what Obama has or might accomplish.
Why wouldn't we assume that a president Paul could be just as effective as a president Obama. They are both at odds with the majority aren't they?

[knothead]

A couple of questions and answers from a 2008 interview.
I would like to hear if or how his views on climate change may have evolved over the last four years, but I can't find anything current.


Q. What are your expectations for the next four years under an Obama administration? How might President Obama’s interventionist economic policies impact our lives?

A. Unfortunately, I don’t expect many good things. I do expect a lot of spending and even more debt. To really cut spending and balance our budget, we need to change foreign policy. Obama’s rhetoric on foreign policy is better than what we have gotten recently, but don’t expect any real change.

He may be more likely to wind things down in Iraq, but he’s still planning on keeping troops there for a least 16 more months. He wants money for Georgia and more troops in Afghanistan. He isn’t going to bring home our 30,000 troops from Korea or our 50,000 soldiers in Germany, and he won’t close any of our 700 foreign bases. At the same time, he is planning even bigger spending here at home. I hope I’m wrong, but if this spending and debt continue, the dollar is going to crash and we will see the middle class in this country take a grave hit.

Q. Do you deny global warming? Is Obama right to invest money in green technology? If you don’t deny it, and don’t think Obama is right, what is your solution?

A. I try to look at global warming the same way I look at all other serious issues: as objectively and open-minded as possible. There is clear evidence that the temperatures in some parts of the globe are rising, but temperatures are cooling in other parts. The average surface temperature had risen for several decades, but it fell back substantially in the past few years.

Clearly there is something afoot. The question is: Is the upward fluctuation in temperature man-made or part of a natural phenomenon. Geological records indicate that in the 12th century, Earth experienced a warming period during which Greenland was literally green and served as rich farmland for Nordic peoples. There was then a mini ice age, the polar ice caps grew, and the once-thriving population of Greenland was virtually wiped out.

It is clear that the earth experiences natural cycles in temperature. However, science shows that human activity probably does play a role in stimulating the current fluctuations.

The question is: how much? Rather than taking a “sky is falling” approach, I think there are common-sense steps we can take to cut emissions and preserve our environment. I am, after all, a conservative and seek to conserve not just American traditions and our Constitution, but our natural resources as well.

We should start by ending subsidies for oil companies. And we should never, ever go to war to protect our perceived oil interests. If oil were allowed to rise to its natural price, there would be tremendous market incentives to find alternate sources of energy. At the same time, I can’t support government “investment” in alternative sources either, for this is not investment at all.

Government cannot invest, it can only redistribute resources. Just look at the mess government created with ethanol. Congress decided that we needed more biofuels, and the best choice was ethanol from corn. So we subsidized corn farmers at the expense of others, and investment in other types of renewables was crowded out.

Now it turns out that corn ethanol is inefficient, and it actually takes more energy to produce the fuel than you get when you burn it. The most efficient ethanol may come from hemp, but hemp production is illegal and there has been little progress on hemp ethanol*. And on top of that, corn is now going into our gas tanks instead of onto our tables or feeding our livestock or dairy cows; so food prices have been driven up. This is what happens when we allow government to make choices instead of the market; I hope we avoid those mistakes moving forward.

Freakonomics » Ron Paul Answers Questions From Freakonomics Readers (Encore)

He would end the war on drugs. (where's Brenda?)

[WouldaShoulda]

Originally Posted by knothead

Ron Paul is not electable.

He has never voted to raise taxes.
He has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
He has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
He has never voted to raise congressional pay.
He has never taken a government-paid junket.
He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.
He voted against the Patriot Act.
He voted against regulating the Internet.
He voted against the Iraq war.
He does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program.
He returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.

I'm confused.

He is no freind of Israel.
He is a borderline kook.

Don't be confused.

[Jeff_H]

From my standpoint, Ron Paul is not electable because:
He has never voted to raise taxes.
He has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
He has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
He voted against regulating the Internet.

And because:
"As President, Ron Paul will support a Liberty Amendment to the Constitution to abolish the income and death taxes. And he will be proud to be the one who finally turns off the lights at the IRS for good." (From the Ron Paul 2012 webpage)

To me, almost whaterver you think about government, there needs to be a fair way to fund the essential services of a government. We may disagree on what those services are and how much they should cost, but without a functioning government, there is not liberty, merely anarchy. And without a revenue service, there is no way to fund even a rudimentary government. To me there are far worse things than paying taxes.

So to me a statement like the Ron Paul's quoted above represents some mix of a grossly irresponsible belief system, pandering demogoguery, or what may more charitablty simply be considered poorly grounded campaign rhetoric. But any of these strike me as a pretty strong case against voting for Ron Paul.

I would be more open to Ron Paul if he actually had developed any kind of a nuanced plan to accomplish this or any of his other more extreme positions. But based on my research on Ron Paul, I have not been able to find anything that suggests that kind of sequential thought process.

We have spent the past 200 plus years methodically developing the way this country currently operates. While there may be a lot of things we do as a country, and way we do these things, that can be improved, to unravel something as complex as the IRS without a carefully considered and voiced sequence of steps, can only lead to disasterous results.

When I hear Ron Paul begin to outline even a broad stroke plan for how this idea might be implimented, I might consider him as a serious candidate. Until then, I see him as voicing overly simplistic cures, which in my mind suggests that he is not the kind of person who I personally would consider voting for.

But also, while this has less of an impact on my voting decision than the question of whether a Ron Paul Presidency would be good for the country as a whole, as someone who works hard for a living, falls in the middle of the middle class, and who owns a very small business, I see his proposals for the economy and taxes as making my financial future under a Ron Paul presidency seem impossibly bleak.

Then again, I am only merely one voter and I could be wrong.

[Alibaba]

Originally Posted by knothead

Ron Paul is not electable.


He has never taken a government-paid junket.

Ron PaUL Can make up for missing all those Govt junket`s if Elected and starts his travels on Air-Force-1.
I have been waiting for +30 years to salute Air-Force-1 as it flys over my house.. (I live a few miles from the flight path of the Pittsburgh, Air National guard and Air-Force reserve Base. Its usually announced when AF-1 is coming)