When is a Republican not a Republican?

I use to think John McCain was the Republican with integrity. Then he started showing his true colours, which were an unflattering blend of red, white, blue, and hypocritical warmongering power-mad douchebag. With Rudolph Giuliani’s chief qualification for the role of president being that he looked good on TV after a terrible thing happened to America and with Mitt Romney being, well, Mitt Romney, the Republican field was looking very same-old, same-old.

I had, of course, encountered the name Ron Paul before, but I’d never paid attention. His was just another name from that enormous field of people running for the top office who rightly believe they could do a better job than the current Criminal-in-Chief. So I didn’t pay him any attention. What with the Rosie-Trump feud, Anna Nicole Smith’s death, Anna Nicole Smith’s baby, Brangelina’s foreign baby brigade, and Paris Hilton being sent to jail, released from jail and sent to jail again, it was all the energy I could muster to keep track of the top two or three contenders from each party. And Ron Paul, polling a whopping 1% according to CNN, was barely even invited to the party.

Then I got an email from an American friend asking me what I thought of this Ron Paul guy.

“I don’t think anything about him,” I said out loud, “I don’t know anything about him. “

I googled him to find out what I thought, because perspectives abound on the internet and it is far less time consuming to find one to adopt than it is to filter through the infonoise and rationally deduce my own opinion. Because I am conditioned to be surprised when I agree with Republicans on almost any issue, I was floored to find the majority of my opinion was in favour of this ancient Congressman from Texas.

He sounds more Libertarian than Republican, and indeed I discover that he once ran for President under that banner. I have heard him describe himself as a “constitutionalist”, which is a noble thing to be in a country with so lovely a constitution as the US possesses. I take this to mean that he would not, as President, sign into law anything inconsistent with the liberties that the constitution guarantees. In that spirit, he was one of only three Republicans in the House who voted against the Patriot Act, when that freedom crushing bill was rushed through Congress before a fearful America in the heady days immediately following the attacks in 2001. Likewise, he opposed the war in Iraq and likewise put his politics where his mouth is, breaking with his fellow Republicans on the Congressional vote authorizing the war.

Ron Paul exudes integrity to me, and for that reason, he is alone among the list of Republican candidates and, also for that reason, he will never get the nomination. I saw him on the Colbert Report the other night, and Stephen Colbert asked him to put up his hand and take it down once he (Colbert) mentioned a government agency that Paul as Pres wouldn’t dismantle. Colbert then ran through a list of federal agencies as Ron Paul left his arm waving in the air – FEMA, Homeland Security, the Department of Education. At the mention of the IRS, Paul raised his arm still further. I take it he really hates the IRS.

My (so-far) sole reservation about Ron Paul has been what appears to me to be fierce “free market” advocacy. But then Charlene told me that she heard him explicitly draw attention to the critical distinction between true free market principles and the existing ideology of corporatism, which (if I can quote myself from a previous blog) is the “nefarious collusion between governments and corporations toward maximizing corporate profits.” Anybody who describes the existing system as corporatist instead of capitalist is a political breath of fresh mountain air.

He sounds a firm believer in the political hypothesis truth that governments govern best that govern least. He has this perspective in common with the framers of the constitution: he sounds Jeffersonian to me, whatever that might mean. When Thomas Jefferson ran for President in 1800, it was under the Democratic-Republican name, and his administration was comprised of political friends and foes alike.

Because he is the only candidate advocating the back-to-basics whole system overhaul the US so desperately needs, Ron Paul should run for President. But he’ll never be able to do so on the Republican dime. He’ll have to go independent or seek some other route if he wants his name on the ballot on election day. If Unity 08 can get and keep its act together, it might be just the ticket Paul is looking for. Unity 08 wants a ticket in 08 that is comprised of both a Republican and a Democrat. It is a political organization that seeks to combat the trend in divisive party politics by bringing US political discourse back toward the middle where, after all, most Americans actually are. And if that was good enough for Jefferson…