WASHINGTON - Texas Representative Ron
Paul, who 24 years ago performed dismally as the
standard-bearer of the Libertarian Party, has
begun making waves in the 2012 presidential
campaign, to the extreme discomfort of
neo-conservatives and aggressive nationalists who
dominate the foreign policy rosters of most of his
Republican rivals.
While his third-place
finish in Tuesday's Iowa caucuses disappointed
loyalists who felt he had a good shot at winning
the first Republican primary test of the election
year, the 76-year-old physician came within three
percentage points of the top two finishers - the
party's establishment candidate, former
Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and the latest far-right
insurgent favorite, former
Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum - out of a
seven-candidate field.
Political insiders
still believe that Romney, who gained the formal
endorsement on Wednesday of the 2008 Republican
candidate, Senator John McCain, will eventually
win the party's nomination. But Paul's showing -
as well as the increased media attention he has
received in recent weeks - suggests that he could
well emerge as a force to be reckoned with at the
party's convention next summer and could pose a
major threat to Republican hopes of ousting Barack
Obama if he decides to run as an independent in
the November.
While Paul received just
over one in five votes at the caucuses, it was who
those voters were who flocked to his banner that
proved most significant, and perhaps most alarming
to the party's power brokers and its prospects for
victory in November.
According to a New
York Times survey of participants who entered the
caucuses, a whopping 48% of those aged 17 to 29
said they supported Paul. By contrast, only 13%
were for Romney.
One in three voters who
participated in caucuses for the first time said
they favored the anti-interventionist libertarian.
Perhaps most significantly, 44% of participants
who described themselves as "independents" or
"other" (rather than Republicans) said they
supported Paul, as opposed to 18% who said they
preferred Romney.
Independents, who,
according to most surveys, make up around 40% of
the electorate, are generally considered critical
to the outcome of next year's election.
Why independents, young voters, and
first-time caucus-goers were so attracted to Paul
is now the subject of considerable speculation and
research, if only because the candidate himself
holds such unorthodox, and, in some cases,
seemingly inconsistent views on a wide range of
subjects.
On economic issues, he is a
loyal follower of the tenets of the so-called
Austrian School founded by such free-market
ideologues as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von
Mises. In his more than 20 years in congress, he
has consistently voted against proposals that
would increase the size and spending of the
federal government, which he considers the
greatest threat to individual freedoms. He has
frequently called for the elimination of
government departments and even of Social Security
and the Federal Reserve. A proponent of
"states rights", he believes those powers that are
not explicitly allocated to the federal government
by the US constitution, such as social issues like
a woman's right to an abortion, the definition of
marriage, and the legalization of marijuana,
should be left to the individual states.
Consistent with his libertarian views, he
has also been outspoken in defense of basic
constitutional rights, including everything from
the right to bear arms to restrictions to be free
from warrantless searches and seizures.
Unlike any of his Republican rivals, he
has strongly and repeatedly denounced the 2001
Patriot Act, which greatly expanded the
government's powers to detain terrorist suspects,
the use of torture against detainees, and the
growth of Islamophobia, especially among
Republicans.
He may be best known for his
strongly anti-interventionist and anti-war -
critics say isolationist - views on foreign
policy, views that have garnered him a growing
following on the left of the political spectrum,
as well as the fervent opposition of Israel-
centered neo-conservative and nationalist hawks.
Paul, for example, opposed congressional
resolutions authorizing military force against
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya and has called for
radical cuts in the defense budget, in major part
by withdrawing troops from bases in Europe, Japan,
and South Korea, as well as hastening the US
drawdown from Afghanistan.
"When I see a
candidate like Ron Paul, whose foreign policy is,
if anything, worse than the Obama administration
apparently leading in Iowa according to some
polls, "it just gives me great concern." " said
former UN ambassador John Bolton late last month.
Bolton, an aggressive nationalist par
excellence now based at the neo-conservative
American Enterprise Institute (AEI), described
Paul as living "in fantasy land".
Indeed,
the divergence between Paul and the rest of the
Republican field has been most dramatically
illustrated during debates about Iran.
While the other candidates have accused
Iran of building nuclear weapons, described Tehran
as the greatest threat faced by the US, and
pledged to use military force as a last resort to
prevent it from obtaining a bomb, Paul has not
only expressed skepticism on the first two counts
and strongly opposed the third, he has argued that
Washington should be able live and negotiate with
a nuclear Iran, just as it did with the former
Soviet Union and China and asked a logical
question:
"Just think how many nuclear
weapons surround Iran," he told a Fox News
interviewer in August. "The Chinese are there. The
Indians are there. The Pakistanis are there. The
Israelis are there. The United States is there.
All these countries ... why wouldn't it be natural
if they might want a weapon. Internationally, they
might be given more respect. Why should we write
people off?"
More recently, he cited the
downing of a US drone over Iranian territory to
question both the hawkishness of his rivals and
the militarization of US foreign policy under both
Republicans and Democrats.
"Why were we
even flying a drone over Iran?" he asked. "Why do
we have to bomb so many countries? Why do we have
900 bases in 130 different countries when we are
totally bankrupt? I think this wild goal to have
another war in the name of 'defense' is a
dangerous thing. The danger is really in us
overreacting."
While such reasoning is an
abomination to the many neo-conservatives and
aggressive nationalists who are advising Romney,
Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and
Texas governor Rick Perry, in particular, others,
including some leading opinion-shapers across the
political spectrum suggest that Paul is asking
precisely the kinds of questions that US voters
should be considering as Washington faces an
increasingly multi-polar world.
In "an era
of unprecedented elite failure", noted
conservative New York Times columnist Russ Douthat
last week, "it sometimes takes a fearless crank to
expose realities that neither Republicans nor
Democrats are particularly eager to acknowledge."
"There is no denying that Paul's worldview
has helped him to launch a powerful critique on
American foreign policy," wrote another
conservative commentator, Daniel Drezner of the
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy on his
foreignpolicy.com blog who nonetheless stressed
that he would never vote for Paul as president.
"His hypothesis that the United States has
invited some blowback by overly militarizing its
foreign policy cannot be easily dismissed."
His critique has gained traction from
left-wing analysts as well, including Salon.com's
Glenn Greenwald and Katrina van den Heuvel, the
publisher of The Nation, who recently tweeted, "I
have big problems [with] Ron Paul on many issues.
But on ending preemptive wars & on challenging
bipartisan elite consensus on [foreign policy],
good he's in."
Yet another commentator,
author Robert Wright of theatlantic.com, noted
this week that the value of Paul's foreign policy
views lie less in their substance than "in the way
he explains them".
Citing several
examples, including his questioning of why Iran
would not want nuclear weapons, Wright observed
that "Paul routinely performs a simple thought
experiment: He tries to imagine how the world
looks to people other than Americans."
Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign
policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.
(Inter Press Service)
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