GCOTD: Ron Paul

Now that he's apparently in the lead in Iowa, I guess I might as well pass this along:

The thing most wrong with present-day Republicanism is its passivity in the face of the economic crisis, its indifference to the economic troubles of the huge majority of the American population, and its blithe insistence that everything was fine for the typical American worker up until Inauguration Day 2009 or (at the outer bound of the thinkable) the financial crisis of the fall 2008.

It is the lack of concern to the travails of middle-class America that “reform Republicans” should most centrally be concerned with.

And no candidate in this race–ok, except maybe the defunct Herman Cain–has been more persistently, aggressively, and forcefully heedless of those travails than Ron Paul.

Everything else that’s wrong with Paul–the paranoia, the crank theories–exists as an adjunct to this first prime fault. And the success of Paul in winning a boutique audience for his message has driven the rest of the field to mimic his crank monetary theories. In the midst of the worst crisis since the 1930s, the one thing that all the current and former first-tier candidates have agreed upon (even Mitt Romney!) is the need for tighter money and higher interest rates. That should seem obviously nuts, and not in a theoretical or marginal way that denying evolution is nuts. The press for tighter money and higher interest rates now is the kind of nutty thing that a government can actually do--and that would inflict severe, immediate real-world harm on the US and world economy.

To illustrate Frum's point about economics a little further, gold has gone through the roof in the last few years as people have fled to investments that they see as safe. Now imagine how tough it would be to come up with your mortgage payment if we were still on the gold standard and coming up with money essentially meant coming up with some of that rare and suddenly extremely high-priced commodity. It's not hard to see how economic activity would slow even further if the recession-induced demand for money were exacerbated by the run-up in gold prices.

There are definitely some things I appreciate about Paul - particularly his willingness to ask much-needed tough questions about civil liberties and our foreign policy goals.

Aside from economics, after reading his positions I was surprised to see some right-wing social policy in there. For example, I would have thought standing up for same-sex marriage would be a no-brainer for a principled libertarian-ish type. Apparently not.

If you want a good libertarian candidate, try former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, who is sort of the shit. Too bad the Republican establishment kept him from ever getting attention in this Presidential race.