Ron Paul is No Progressive

Within the past week or two, I've been getting the full court press on Facebook from several Ron Paul supporters ("Paul-eys" for short). Said press included a link to this article by a Paul-ey named Robin Koerner, who incidentally is a British citizen and can't vote in the U.S. presidential election, but that's neither here nor there. Mr. Koerner and the other Paul-eys argue as follows: "Progressives should vote for Ron Paul for President, because he'll end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Libya, although that one looks to be ending with an outstanding result on its own, and U.S. involvement there was limited), and Obama won't." And as for issues of... everything else except the wars (health care, taxes, the debt, social security, medicare... unimportant stuff like that), the Paul-eys claim that all of those are determined by Congress and not the President. So go vote for Democrats to control the House and Senate if that's your pleasure, say the Paul-eys.

Sounds nice, doesn't it? I wanted us out of Iraq years ago and Afghanistan yesterday. I am frustrated by Obama's slow pace of withdrawal from these quagmires. However, in reality-- a concept that Paul-eys often struggle to grasp-- the military industrial complex and its attendant political agendas and public attitudes run far deeper than any president or than either major political party. I am entirely unconvinced that Paul would actually bring all American troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, even if he were to somehow overcome the Herculean odds against him and win election as president. And even if he were able to end the wars on his first day in office, thinking of what President Paul would do in every other area of governance should make any real progressive shudder.


1. No magic bullet

Politicians lie. Few truths in life are more certain than that. Just because Paul says he opposes the wars and will end them doesn't mean he will. Obama promised to have us out of both Iraq and Afghanistan by now. Obviously, that did not happen. But, the factors that caused Obama to break his peacenik promises would affect Paul as well.

Defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman, A.K.A. the Military-Industrial Complex (M-I-C), employ thousands of people in the U.S. They deliberately divide their operations across many states to maximize their Congressional influence. They also spend millions of dollars per year on lobbying and public relations campaigns.

Members of Congress and Presidents cross the M-I-C at their peril, because American voters scare more easily than a newborn kitten. Few accusations are more damning to a President or a member of Congress than "he's weak on defense" or "he wants to cut and run." Opinion poll respondents may say they want the wars to end, but they also are opposed to "cutting and running" or "making America less safe." If President Paul tried to unilaterally withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan on a fast time table, he would face a full-strength public relations assault from both Democratic and Republican members of Congress, from all sorts of pundits and Tea Party style astroturf outrage groups, and from M-I-C funded think tanks. The message: "President Paul is making America less safe and endangering our troops!" Regardless of the truth (or lack thereof) of that message, it has worked for decades. It's the lowest of low hanging fruit for Paul's opponents, and he'd have plenty on both sides of the aisle. And if heaven forbid a terrorist attack were to occur on American soil after Paul's withdrawal started, kiss every last bit of Paul's political capital goodbye, as well as the career of every member of Congress who supported him.

Let's say President Paul likes his new-found powers and privileges and wants 4 more years of them. If he decided to stop or slow down his move to end the war in the face of the aforementioned opposition, he'd neither be the first nor the last president to bend or break his campaign pledges in the name of political expediency. Maybe Paul really is different and would say "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" and bring everyone home, regardless of the opposition he faced. But history and political reality suggest a different outcome.


2. Not worth it

Assuming for the sake of argument that Paul actually would follow through on his promises to end the wars, I still say it's not worth the Faustian bargain progressives would have to make to vote for him. Despite his general opposition to military intervention and morals-based regulation (i.e. support for legalizing drugs), Paul is no Eisenhower-Rockefeller moderate Republican. He is well within or to the right of the Republican / Tea Party base on most issues (in fact many Teabaggers started as Ron Paul 2008 supporters), and he sometimes dabbles in tinfoil hat conspiracy theories. Here are some specific examples:

1. Paul supports overturning Roe v. Wade.
2. Paul supports abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard.
3. Paul supports replacing the federal income tax with a 10% flat tax.
4. Paul believes in the "NAFTA Superhighway," a repeatedly debunked paranoid conspiracy theory.

As if that isn't enough to make any progressive or moderate conservative recoil in horror, allow me to introduce you to Rep. Paul's old newsletters. In the pre-internet days, Birch Society types, and other far right fringe movements too wacky for mainstream conservative newspapers and magazines, used monthly newsletters to disseminate their views. Ron Paul published several such newsletters, under titles like Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, Ron Paul Political Report, and The Ron Paul Survival Report, on a monthly basis from the late 1970s until at least January 2008, when The New Republic unearthed some of them.

In addition to black helicopter / tinfoil hat paranoid conspiracy theories, the newsletters contain many bigoted statements against Black Americans, Latino Americans and gay people. The New Republic article explores the publications in some detail. (If anyone would like the full text of that article, my mom is a TNR subscriber, and I think that edition is lying around the house somewhere.) This website has re-published some excerpts from Paul's newsletters.

Paul denies writing the offensive articles in question, but there is no dispute that they appeared in publications bearing his name, published with his money, by companies he owned. The newsletters often did not include bylines to differentiate individual authors.

Also, Paul's story about who wrote the racist and homophobic articles has changed over time. When Paul's Democratic opponent in a race for his Texas Congressional seat made the newsletters a campaign issue in 1996, Paul said he wrote them and defended their contents. In 2001, Paul denied writing the articles and blamed an anonymous ghostwriter. By 2008, Paul himself denied any knowledge of them, and some of his associates claimed that Paul's former Chief of Staff and longtime friend and colleague Llewellyn "Lew" Rockwell wrote them.

Regardless of who ultimately put pen to paper or finger to key on those articles, Ron Paul allowed them to be published in newsletters bearing his name that he owned and financed. So he is ultimately responsible. And that is the icing on the "why I can't vote for Ron Paul" cake.

Claiming that all this is unimportant and that a Democratic Congress will be able to promote a more liberal domestic agenda with Paul in the White House is absurd. For one, Mr. Koerner and the Paul-eys preaching that message have obviously never heard of a presidential veto. Second, there is no guarantee that Democrats would stay in control of even one chamber of Congress during Paul's hypothetical presidency. Congressional elections have been highly volatile in recent years. Control of the House of Representatives changed only once in the 50 years from 1954 to 2004. It has changed twice since then (2006 and 2010), and there are indications it may change again next year. Meanwhile, the number of Democrats (including Independents who caucus with the Democrats) in the Senate has gone from 45 after the 2004 elections, to 60 for a while in 2009, to 53 now. And a LOT of Democratic seats are up for election in 2012 and 2014 due to the strong Dem performances in 2006 and 2008. And lastly, Democratic Congresses in recent years have proved laughably weak and incompetent, under both Presidents Bush and Obama. Even if the D's somehow maintained control of both the House and the Senate between 2012 and 2016, President Paul would beat them into submission.

Add all that up and the result is clear. Despite the importance of getting our troops and our financial resources out of Iraq and Afghanistan, supporting Ron Paul for President is unlikely to actually end the wars. And even if Paul somehow did end the wars, the price we would pay in every other area of policy, both domestic and foreign, is far too high. If you're an anti-government conservative or libertarian, by all means support Ron Paul. If you're an anti-war progressive, focus your energy on supporting stronger Democrats and restoring some semblance of organization and functionality to Democratic base voters and to every level of the Democratic Party's operations.