We Can’t Afford to Vote for Anyone but Ron Paul
My official endorsement of Ron Paul for president in the Charleston City Paper:
With a $15 trillion national debt, high unemployment, a bad economy, and the biggest-spending president in American history in office, we face serious and unprecedented problems in this country. We know we can count on the Democrats to keep making these problems worse.
The question is: Can we count on Republicans to stop them?
The short answer is no. Despite their limited-government rhetoric, the majority of “conservative” Republicans have exhibited neither the intention nor the political will of changing the status quo in Washington. How do we know this? Because no matter which party holds power, the federal government and our national debt grow larger. Before Obama, George W. Bush was the biggest-spending president in American history. Various frontrunners in the 2012 presidential election — Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry — all largely supported Bush’s agenda and today offer nothing more than various versions of the same big-government Republicanism.
For politics-as-usual to change in Washington, it only makes sense that such change would come from a candidate some consider to be an unusual politician. As Ron Paul’s critics never tire of pointing out, he is not a conventional Republican. They’re right. He’s a conservative. A real one. Paul’s budget plan — the only budget plan with specific cuts, not just rhetorical ones — would save $1 trillion in the first year by eliminating five federal departments and addressing wasteful Pentagon spending, while still protecting Medicare and Social Security and strengthening veterans’ benefits. After eliminating the departments of education, energy, commerce, interior, and housing and urban development, Paul’s Pentagon cuts would still allow for a military four times the size of China’s and greater than what Bush was spending on defense in 2005.
Paul’s critics laughably call this “gutting” the military, but that these Pentagon cuts would simply take us back to 2005 numbers is indicative of just how out of control Obama’s spending has become. It is also indicative of just how wedded to big government most Republican presidential candidates are that they will not even consider such cuts — even though we spend more on our military now than at any time since World War II and almost as much as every other nation on earth.
Still, said Gingrich of Paul’s plan: “It’s a non-starter.” Not surprisingly, Newt offers no cuts of his own. None of them do. Santorum says he does, but then offers no specifics. The campaign season is when politicians are supposed to lie to us. Imagine what these guys would do in office?
Heading into 2012, the question for Republican voters is not whether they can afford to vote for Ron Paul — it’s whether they can afford not to.
