I am not enamored with the current crop of Republican candidates, but this post isn’t about my opinion of the candidates. Rather, I want to take a stab at explaining why so many right-of-center young people like Ron Paul.
First and most obvious, they agree with him. But merely agreeing with a candidate’s position on the issues does not create the sort of hard core enthusiasm they have. Nor is Ron Paul a charismatic guy. He is a dowdy, aging man whose voice is anything but that of an orator. What I think really excites young people about him is something so very simple that a lot of older people (myself included) miss it.
The man is sincere, and he means what he says. That is not supposed to happen in politics. It is so unusual that it stands out, and I think young people can spot it. Sure, Ron Paul may be a curmudgeonly sort, but even the people who hate him will grudgingly acknowledge that he honestly believes what he says. Unlike politicians, he says what he thinks. His positions do not result from the homework of consultants or think tanks, and they have not been hammered out after careful calculations taking public opinion and polling into account. It’s as if he doesn’t especially care whether he wins. He just says what he thinks, and he has been doing so for a long time. Sure, the fact that he is the only libertarian in the race with anything resembling a chance helps, but the man has clearly been around long enough that young people can sense that he isn’t an opportunist.
Hell, at the rate things are going, I might vote for the man in protest in the primary. Regular readers know I have serious disagreements with him on issues I consider of extremely vital importance, but I know he doesn’t have a chance anyway, and Gary Johnson seems to have been completely erased. And who the hell else is there to vote for right now? I can vote against Obama later.
Comments
11 responses to “Protest vote?”
Anyone so possessed of goldbuggery as to believe that a shiny piece of metal has an intrinsic value that Man cannot change is far too loopy to be allowed into the penumbras of political power let alone the top job.
You think that’s bad? He also doesn’t accept the theory of evolution:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/29/scitech/main20098876.shtml
I’d laugh, but I’d like to know which candidate does.
Huntsman? Johnson?
I don’t know how loopy Paul is about the gold standard, but I do know he shouldn’t be allowed to make foreign policy decisions.
The value of having gold or silver, or any other commodity used as money is that it limits the power of governments to inflate, or arbitrarily debase the currency. Just how far Paul would take this I don’t know. Having something of intrinsic value in your hands instead of worthless pieces of paper would have prevented the Wiemar hyper-inflation and probably the rise of Hitler. It’s something to think about.
I am not touting Paul so much as a presidential candidate, but as a protest vote. He won’t be the nominee, but I think the GOP needs to know that people are getting frustrated — especially with the traditional “conservative versus liberal” game.
As a protest, why not? And I get the frustration. It just seems kind of rigged to me, and apparently to Stacy McCain. I rarely can stand to read his stuff, but this is on the mark:
Ever since Iowa, my gut-hunch fear is that the Perry bandwagon will somehow result in the nomination of Romney, the very alternative that Perry’s supporters desire most to avoid.
http://theothermccain.com/2011/09/13/the-prisoner-on-flight-1884/
My first reaction when Perry announced was that he’d been promised the VP slot by Romney, or some high level cabinet post. His run just seems contrived. He’s not up to a debate and it shows. Just red meat for the socons. When he peters out, he’ll endorse Romney, having stopped Bachmann in her tracks.
Or am I becoming cynical?
If it’s Romney, I’m writing in Gus Hall.
I refuse to vote for “at least he’s better” ever again.
I voted for Palin last time, hoping McCain would be a one-termer (due to age and health, the presidency is hard on folks), and she would be poised to run in 2012, but that’s the last time.
Romney is little better than Obama, I don’t see him scaling back the regulatory BS Obama’s put in place, I don’t see him increasing domestic drilling, I don’t see him even trying to actually reduce spending (he might try to reduce the increases by small margins) and I don’t see him repealing Obamacare (just “making it better”, which means we’re still screwed). He’s one of the new gentry who are better than we are, they need to tell us dimwitted types how to live our lives.
Romney has no principles.
I do see him fighting the tea party type congressman, in collusion with Boehner and McConell and the rest of the establishment GOPers, harder than he’ll fight the Democrats.
If we’re gonna be doomed, I’m not helping it anymore.
I’m going to do what I think is right and not listen to my betters in the GOP establishment who think I’m an ATM/vote machine.
I’m not enamored of Perry, but he’s about as good as we’re gonna get since the GOP establishment and Minitrue aren’t allowing Gary Johnson anywhere near a microphone.
Eric, you might want to consider Johnson as your protest vote if you can’t stomach Perry. At least that has the attraction of being more in line with who you really want.
Veeshir, I agree, but you’re assuming Johnson will even be on the ballot.
Yeah, that stinks.
I figure it’s because our betters in the GOP and Minitrue think he’s too dangerous (i.e. actually electable and that would throw a monkey wrench in patrician rule)
“The value of having gold or silver, or any other commodity used as money is that it limits the power of governments to inflate, or arbitrarily debase the currency”
What?
How exactly does that work? We have a written constitution that’s pretty plainly worded and they still manage to completely ignore it.
Why should some shiny metal stop them?
You’re asking a fox to recognize the intrinsic value of a chicken.
Guy, the gold standard talk was in relation to Ron Paul, you know, actually getting elected. Not very likely. What you’re saying is true enough, if we were to continue kicking the can down the road. But it appears a real monetary crisis may be at hand, and if that’s the case, then a return to sound money is what we should be talking about and advocating.
It’s either that, or some variant of Milton Friedman’s idea of limiting money supply growth to a small percentage, which is supposedly what the Fed would do. And we know how impossible it is to limit money and credit creation that way.
The Austrian School has it right. How we could get it implemented and working in a digital age would be the problem. Can you see Apple with $100 Billion worth of gold in the bank? Counterfeit gold coins with tungsten centers in circulation? A more likely scene would be a currency tied to gold, with silver in circulation once it reaches $150 an ounce – where it should be now in relation to gold.
Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.
A nice quote from Friedman – a Chicago School economist that I don’t really like, BTW.
Veeshir – I refuse to vote for “at least he’s better” ever again.
Ditto.