After reading about how McCain has not done so well in the raising cash arena and having lay off a bunch of campaign workers, I was wondering if Ron Paul had more than McCain. Well, my question is answered. Paul apparently has more than McCain.
Things don’t look good for McCain at the moment. Conservatives really didn’t like his immigration/amnesty bill, and I think more than a few have recognized that the Supreme Court didn’t like parts of his campaign finance reform law. Thus, McCain gets the shaft.
Continuing on, if I had to choose between just McCain and Paul for president, I’m not sure who I would choose. The war on terror and immigration are both issues that affect the very survival of this nation. Is immigration reform really impossible? Can we not kick out all the foreigners here that can’t show they have valid documentation? Can we not pull our troops out from their stations across the world and then focus on securing the border? Is it necessary for our troops to be fighting enemies across the world instead of protecting American land?
It seems like choosing Paul would mean forsaking the rest of the world in exchange for what I think would be substantial if not guaranteed effort to fix immigration and our borders. I would not put it past Paul to militarize the borders with the troops he pulls from combat. On the other hand, choosing McCain would mean continued policing of the world in exchange for not doing a whole bunch about the immediate problems posed by illegal immigration and the wide open border.
There’s laws against the Feds using the Federal military within state borders, so don’t fret about that. State National guard may be a different story, though. But fear not - President Paul would not endorse a policy of sticking our heads in the sand and building up walls, he would endorse a policy of TRADE and DIALOG and INTERACTION, real, free interaction, with peoples all over the planet. This honesty would benefit Americans as much as it would benefit the world.
Perhaps Paul would not be an isolationist, but it certainly seems that way when compared with all the other candidates. But still, as much as I like Paul’s other ideas, I still can’t see myself supporting a candidate that considers dialog with terrorist nations like Iran a good thing.
actually, bret - your commentary is misleading. the law you refer to is the posse comitatus act of 1878, which prevents the usfg from using the military for police actions. among the exceptions (read: loopholes for lunatics like ron paul) are the following:
1). the president may introduce federal troops when such an introduction is arguably pursuant to the duty of the usfg to prevent domestic violence (ie: the la riots of 92)
2). state troops activated by governors at the request of the president
3). troops deployed by the executive pursuant to the insurrection act
on a related note, if you are looking for a candidate who would approach the immigration problem by trying to impact domestic politics in mexico (ie: free trade), check out barack obama. extra kick: obama isnt out of his gourd. extra extra kick? hes not 473 years old.
The fundraising will be a great boost, no doubt. But until people who should know better stop mischaracterizing Ron Paul’s message as something different than it is, he really will continue to struggle.
First, he is not an isolationist. He simply believes, as most of our best presidents did, that we should not intervene in every regional conflict, and that “Peace through Strength” does not always entail invasion or bombing. Reagan had “dialog” with the Soviets. Dialog doesn’t mean compromising our values, and any fair reading of Dr. Paul would show that he isn’t a “wimp”. He simply agrees with 70% of Americans that Iraq was a wrong move at the wrong time with the wrong strategy. The world is a dangerous place, as it always has been, but that doesn’t suggest that our best strategy is to invade, invade, invade.
Secondly, while Dr. Paul will put great emphasis on controlling illegal immigration, we shouldn’t imagine that militarized borders would be a cornerstone of his techniques (although Bret is correct that we’d likely use far more National Guard resources on this effort). Instead, he advocates reducing the incentives for illegal immigration. He also believes that screening for criminals, and malefactors should be a part of our approach.
Ron Paul offers a good alternative, and one that can actually win, unlike the warmed-over “stay the course” philosophy that most of the Republicans are offering. I mean, really, do you expect to win with “stay the course” when the president and congress are polling barely above single digits?