(This diary fleshes out several comments I've written in the past couple days in more detail.)
I've said before that I'm not as worried about the GOP co-opting the Occupy movement, as I am worried about the Ron Paul crowd co-opting it with their stupid "end the Fed" message. That's been happening at the protests.
And now with his lead in Iowa, despite what the mainstream media has been saying about his chances (or rather, usually ignoring his existence altogether), I fear he could very well become the GOP nominee. And if that happens, based on comments from progressives here and elsewhere, I fear too many of us are in the same mindset in 1980, when we thought there's no way that Reagan guy could possibly win the presidency.
Do NOT make the same mistake twice. My thoughts on why Paul can win the GOP nomination below the fold, and a look into his crazy views that have unfortunately gone unreported in the mainstream media, which has allowed him to brainwash way too many progressives into thinking he's an OK guy.
First, understand that Ron Paul has a solid group of committed followers, almost to the point of being cult-like, if you've ever tried arguing with them on ANY issue Ron Paul has ever taken. They've been pounding their "end the Fed" message at the Occupy protests, and they've managed to be welcomed there. A former neighbor of mine who's a big Ron Paul supporter has been to the Occupy L.A. and Occupy Oakland protests, and they've been spreading around this Thomas Jefferson quote:
The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin [gold and silver.] If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered. –Thomas Jefferson
Because what applied to an agrarian society in 1790 must surely still apply to a technologically advanced society in the digital age. Riiiiight. Since I'm not an economics expert, I'll let Kossacks Helpcomputer and FishOutofWater explain why this thinking is so foolish.
Helpcomputer: Every industrialized nation has had a central bank since at least World War 2. A central bank functions as the anchor of a nation's currency and monetary regulation. It's central banks that keep a check on inflation and regulate the flow of cash through the economy.
In times of crisis, they can act as a lender of last resort and take other emergency steps to stabilize the system.
The system is far from perfect. Our Fed caters to the overlarge and overpowerful banks. It's abandoned its lawful duty to combat unemployment. But to propose dismantling the Fed is akin to proposing eliminating the police because of their habit of brutality and racism.
Ron Paul gets away with this because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. People understand that the Fed is big and scary, but they don't quite understand its central role in our economy (and the world's economy, since much of the world takes its cues from the American dollar). So his simplistic, paranoid message works on them.
If you want to imagine a world without a central U.S. bank, you can just read about our history pre-1912. One panic after another, often spurred by spurious gold and silver speculation. One of the biggest robber barrons of all time, J.P. Morgan, held the country's economy hostage by manipulating gold currency. Beyond the inevitable chaos on the macro level, eliminating the Fed will cause all sorts of individual local effects. Can you imagine doing business in a world where a dollar where you live is worth more or less than in the next town over? Or where every bank and large corporation issues their own currency, so that there are 30,000 different currencies in circulation? Because that's what we had up until the 1870's, when the federal government finally stepped in and regulated monetary policy, a duty inherited by the Fed.
The FDIC is unrelated to the Fed and was established 25 years after the Fed.
Thomas Jefferson was simply wrong, as most people of the time were about economics. We've had two hundred years of economic study and experience to draw from that Jefferson did not. Returning to a gold standard (or any commodity pegging) would be a complete disaster. There's a reason no other developed nation is on the gold standard. It's the irrational fever dream of a special brand of American anti-government paranoia.
FishOutofWater: European banks have been empowered to create money through debt, not the central bank. Individual banks do what's in their interest, not the economy's interest.
Greenspan's libertarian attitude towards bank regulation was a large contributor to America's financial crisis. The Fed needed stricter control over banks, not less. Allowing banks to create highly leveraged mortgage backed securities created enormous amounts of virtual money which inflated the housing market. That asset inflation led to the housing crash when the bubble burst.
We need a stronger regulator of the banks. Eliminating the Fed would be an absolute disaster.
Salon's Gary Weiss wrote an excellent must-read article exposing Ron Paul's phony populist message. Of course, he was savaged in the comments section there by the Paulbots coming out of the woodwork.
It was a masterful performance. Ron Paul — fraudulent populist, friend of the oligarchy, sworn enemy of every social program since Theodore Roosevelt — had won the day, again.
Why shouldn’t he? Frauds win, whether they are in finance or politics. Bernie Madoff proved that, and so did Ronald Reagan. The success of the Ron Paul campaign with young voters, which David Sirota pointed out in Salon Monday, is but the latest example of how Americans can be persuaded to support the most reactionary politicians in America when they’re suitably manipulated, even if they aren’t reactionary and, sometimes, even when they identify themselves as progressive.
....
That, fundamentally, is what the deficit debate is all about, from the perspective of Ron Paul and the radical right. It’s not about getting the red ink out of the government but using the government’s fiscal travails as a pretext to change the very purpose of government. So yes, he opposed the Wall Street bailouts, as Rand no doubt would have, and that also is “yay”-worthy to many people. But if you buy that, if you buy Ron Paul, you have to buy the rest of his belief system: his opposition to securities regulation, his opposition to consumer protection, his belief that the markets can defend Americans from the depredations of big business.
What I’ve just described is many things, but it is the very antithesis of the values of Occupy Wall Street, which is based on opposition to the prerogatives of the top 1 percent at the expense of the 99 percent. Yet rather than forthrightly oppose OWS, which would at least be intellectually honest, Paul has sought instead to co-opt it, con it, calling it a “healthy movement” at one appearance, and seeking to link it with his “end the Fed” agenda. In Keene he went one step further by declaring himself as being in league with the 99 percent and against the 1 percent.
That’s about as far from the truth as it possibly could be. The only question is, how long is Paul going to be allowed to get away with his faux-populist con job?
I've noticed that every Ron Paul fan I've ever met has had money. Maybe they're not rich, but at least solidly middle class, where they don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, or how they're going to pay the rent and the bills next month.
It's easier to be libertarian when you already are in, not the top 1%, but say the top 30%. And they're mostly young, so when you tell them that they're just one injury or illness away from financial ruin, they don't believe you since they're obviously invincible.
I had one of them tell me that Ron Paul was right to advocate for getting rid of FEMA, and those who were in the path of Hurricane Irene "should have known better" than to live in hurricane-prone areas. I asked him since when was New York City a "hurricane-prone area", to which he ignored the question.
He also said that though he was pro-choice, it didn't matter if Roe v. Wade was overturned because the states would get to decide, and we live in California where nothing will happen. And to those who live in red states where it WOULD be made illegal, he said of those women who would be affected, "they can move elsewhere".
Back in June, remember when almost every single Miss USA contestant showed they do not believe in evolution? He posted that link on Facebook and laughed at how stupid they were. I responded by asking, "Can you believe one of them said this?" with this quote about denying evolution, and we all had a good laugh.
"I think it's a theory...the theory of evolution and I don't accept it as a theory. But I think the creator that i know, you know created us, every one of us and created the universe and the precise time and manner and all. I just don't think we're at the point where anybody has absolute proof on either side."
I didn't tell him at the time that the quote was not from one of the Miss USA contestants, but actually from Ron Paul. :-) I later told him, and his response was to shrug it off and say, "Yeah, but he's old." That’s it. That was his way to brush it off. Didn't affect his support of Paul one iota.
Such is the libertarian worldview. He was recently saying anyone who supports Obama after he signed the NDAA is a traitor to our country. I was tempted, but didn't, to tell him that he "could move elsewhere" if he didn't like it. :-)
Oh, and he rejects all the stuff about Ron Paul being racist because of his newsletters, because he's Muslim, and Ron Paul has stood for their freedom of religion over issues like the "Ground Zero mosque". And Ron Paul being old? They don't care. They keep citing how he walks a lot and is healthy, and challenged the other candidates to a race, and none accepted, so therefore he must obviously be the healthiest of the bunch! That's libertarian logic right there.
I have a suspicion they're going to use this video of Paul claiming there will be riots in the streets of America, just like Greece, from 2010, and claim that he was right because of how the Occupy movement did spring up this year, and ignore how incredibly wrong he was predicting massive inflation because of what the Fed did.
Now, as for the race itself, y'all should be getting more worried about Paul, because he may very well win Iowa, and use that momentum to appeal to the libertarian strain in New Hampshire to pull off either an upset of Romney or finish a close second. Look, he's already in second place there now. If that happens, you can throw out all those polls showing him in single digits in South Carolina, because he'll win that state as well with the momentum from those wins under his belt. People like a winner. And you get the sense the Ron Paul fans WILL show up at the Iowa caucuses no matter what the weather may be, and their devotion can garner Paul a few extra delegates here and there that will put him over the top.
Yes, winning Iowa in 2008 didn't help Mike Huckabee win New Hampshire or secure the nomination. But Paul is no Huckabee. Have you guys forgotten New Hampshire is the "Live Free or Die" state? A libertarian message has much more appeal to New Hampshire Republicans than a socially conservative message would have. I can easily see Paul gaining ground in New Hampshire if he wins Iowa.
I've seen many comments here that the GOP establishment will prevent him from winning. The GOP establishment? Really? If he wins both IA and NH, they can't stop him. 2010 showed us that the GOP establishment created the Tea Party via astroturfing, but like Frankenstein's monster, it turned on them and forced them even more rightward than they had already been, knocking out several of them in primaries. Some worked to our advantage (Christine O'Donnell). Many did not (Mike Lee knocking off Bob Bennett in UT-Sen, Trey Gowdy knocking off Bob Inglis in SC-04). If the Republican base starts thinking Ron Paul can beat Obama, and after NH that's all the mainstream media will be talking about, they'll flock to him faster than Chuck Schumer to a TV camera.
In fact, how'd the GOP establishment do in Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Utah in those Senate primary races? Yes, some "establishment" candidates had their own flaws, but even with establishment support, they couldn't win their primaries. Let's recap who they were.
Alaska: Joe Miller vs. Lisa Murkowski
Colorado: Ken Buck vs. Jane Norton
Delaware: Christine O'Donnell vs. Mike Castle
Florida: Marco Rubio vs. Charlie Crist
Kansas: Jerry Moran vs. Todd Tiahrt
Kentucky: Rand Paul vs. Trey Grayson
Nevada: Sharron Angle vs. Sue Lowden & Danny Tarkanian
Pennsylvania: Pat Toomey vs. Arlen Specter
Utah: Mike Lee vs. Bob Bennett
Yes, I'm including Pennsylvania. Because if Pat Toomey doesn't enter the race (when he had said he was running for Governor until Specter voted for the stimulus), Specter stays a Republican, backed (grudgingly) by the establishment.
About the only place the "establishment" pick won where there was an actual Tea Party challenger was in New Hampshire, where Kelly Ayotte barely beat back Tea Partier Ovide Lamontagne by just 1.2% in the primary election. And that only somewhat applies, as Ayotte was seen by enough Republicans to be a Tea Partier herself.
Had 2010 not happened, I would think the GOP establishment could do what they've done in elections up to 2008, and secure the nomination for Mitt Romney. But 2010 did happen, and showed that the GOP establishment is less powerful now than you'd think when it comes to telling their base how to vote in the primaries. All the pleading from the establishment so far hasn't budged Romney's numbers from the 20-25% range. I just don't think they're as big a factor as people make them out to be anymore.
Remember, the Delaware primary was late in the year, and by then everybody fully well knew about the Tea Party movement. This was after Miller took out Murkowski in Alaska, and Lee took out Bennett in Utah. The GOP establishment went all-in to bombard Christine O'Donnell in a desperate attempt to save Mike Castle in those final weeks, and it didn't matter one damn bit.
So how's the "establishment" gonna save Romney now? Are they running the devastating ads against Newt Gingrich in Iowa? No, those ads are from Ron Paul's campaign.
We need to start focusing on the polls from PPP that show Paul BEATING Obama among independents. PPP's polling shows in state after state, Paul is winning independents over from Obama, while both Romney and Gingrich lose the independent vote to Obama. Doesn't matter if it's a red, blue, or swing state. See for yourself:
Virginia
North Carolina
Colorado
Montana
Arizona
Florida
California
Pennsylvania (16% of Democrats here say they'd vote for Paul over Obama)
Ohio
nationally
Even on the electability question, even before Gingrich's collapse in the polls, Paul had already shown himself to be polling at basically the same with Newt when matched against Obama in just about every state PPP did a poll in.
In fact, in New Mexico, Paul now is MORE electable than Romney OR Gingrich (not that he'd actually win New Mexico, but that he'd come the closest).
Again, you cannot just chalk this up to independents being dissatisfied with Obama as the incumbent, and so they go for the challenger, because at the same time, as I said, Romney and Gingrich LOSE the independent vote to Obama, sometimes by wide margins. ONLY Ron Paul is winning independents from Obama.
If Ron Paul becomes the GOP nominee, you'd better pray like heck the Democratic base turns out, otherwise the independent vote may actually swing the election in several key states over to him. Unless..........
The message we need to start sending out now to Americans all over is that Ron Paul would almost certainly destroy the fabric of our country with his domestic policies on civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, the gold standard, and how any poor person would fare in his worldview. He's basically gotten a pass from our pathetic media. They ignore him, so his racism and other insane beliefs never get reported on, and he gets to seem like your quirky but lovable uncle. He's not. This would be a good place to start educating people about who he really is.
Yet a subsequent report by Reason found that Ron Paul & Associates, the defunct company that published the newsletters and which counted Paul and his wife as officers, reported an income of nearly $1 million in 1993 alone. If this figure is reliable, Paul must have earned multiple millions of dollars over the two decades plus of the newsletters’ existence. It is incredible that he had less than an active interest in what was being printed as part of a subscription newsletter enterprise that earned him and his family millions of dollars. Ed Crane, the president of the Cato Institute, said Paul told him that “his best source of congressional campaign donations was the mailing list for the Spotlight, the conspiracy-mongering, anti-Semitic tabloid run by the Holocaust denier Willis Carto.”
Or this, which also drew out the Ron Paul fans from the woodwork in a full frontal assault on the author.
See, right now, he looks good on the surface. But then if you go scratching a bit deeper, you'll find he's not what you think he is. He's not against these wars because he's a dove or a pacifist. He does it because he's an isolationist. He probably wouldn't even have entered WWII! And he certainly would've (like FDR did, pathetically) also denied entry of those ships carrying Jewish refugees, and turned them back to face their deaths. The Holocaust? Pfft, not our problem. Darfur? Let 'em die.
Oh, but he loves the Constitution! Really? LOL, this guy wants to GUT the Constitution, and get rid of the 14th, 16th, and 17th Amendments! (Birthright citizenship, income tax, and direct election of Senators, FYI.) I love how people claim to "love" the Constitution, but then simultaneously want to get rid of multiple Amendments to it. Uh, no.
The Fed needs to be more transparent, not ended altogether and replaced with a lunatic gold standard. We went off of that because it was too damn volatile. Paul's other economic prescriptions are also bugfuck insane and wrong, as Paul Krugman explains in PG language. Oh, and not to mention, Paul was one of only THREE Congressmen who voted against Sarbanes-Oxley. Yep, can't have any regulations on banks or corporations. That's just being mean to them.
Update: Ooh, the New York Times has a story up now about his racist newsletters! More, please.