What's next for the Ron Paul revolution?
Tom Davos
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0516/p09s02-coop.html
What's next for the Ron Paul revolution?
The effort to renew the Founding Fathers' vision is good for America.
By John Dillin
from the May 16, 2008 edition
Washington - Ron Paul and his 1 million supporters aren't going away. And
that's probably a good thing for America's future.
Remember Dr. Paul? He not John McCain was the real maverick in this
year's fight for the Republican presidential nomination.
While Senator McCain often sneered at Paul during their debates, many
voters cheered Paul and poured $35 million into his campaign.
Paul, a Texas congressman and longtime gynecologist, remains in the hunt
for delegates to September's Republican National Convention. But his focus
has now broadened widening to what The Idaho Observer calls a "national
civics lesson."
To that end, Paul's legions often young, educated, and tech-savvy are
expanding their influence into grass-roots GOP politics. They hope to
recruit Paul-like candidates for local, state, and federal offices,
particularly for Congress. That's already sparked clashes at local GOP
meetings.
Following in the footsteps of Barry Goldwater, Paul has also just
published a 167-page book, "The Revolution: A Manifesto." He spells out
his positions on everything from abortion to Iraq to the collapsing
dollar. Forty-eight years ago, Goldwater's classic "Conscience of a
Conservative" launched a public groundswell that helped propel Ronald
Reagan into the White House.
Paul's own politics hark back to classical conservatives, such as Sen.
Robert Taft of Ohio (1939-53), and to the nation's Founding Fathers. He
favors smaller government with limited powers. To rescue a falling dollar,
he'd dissolve the Federal Reserve and urge a reconsideration of the old
gold standard. He would close hundreds of foreign bases and would force
deep cuts in the Washington bureaucracy by abolishing the income tax.
Opponents denounce his blunt views, calling him unrealistic in an era of
global terrorism.
Nor did major media welcome Paul's ideas. They mostly ignored him or
treated him as an 18th-century anachronism.
Nothing separates Paul so clearly from most Republicans as his views on
the Iraq war. His reasoning goes straight back to the Constitution,
specifically Article I, Section 8, which reserves the power to declare war
exclusively to Congress.
No such declaration happened with Iraq in 2003 under President George W.
Bush, or in Iraq in 1991 with President George H.W. Bush, or in Vietnam in
the 1960s with President Lyndon Johnson, or in Korea in 1950 with
President Harry Truman. Instead of demanding declarations, we've settled
for congressional "resolutions."
Truman started this defiance of the Constitution. In the Korean conflict,
which official Washington called a "police action," 36,407 US service men
and women were killed. That's more than all those killed (22,424) in the
Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the
Spanish-American War.
In his book, Paul writes: "The Framers [of the Constitution] did not want
the American president to resemble the British king." He quotes Alexander
Hamilton in the Federalist Papers:
"The President is to be commander-in-chief.... In this respect his
authority would be nominally the same as that of the king of Great
Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing
more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval
forces while that of the British king extends to declaring war and to
the raising and regulating of fleets and armies all which, by the
Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature
[Congress]."
Do these kinglike actions by recent US presidents really matter?
Absolutely. Just look at Iraq. The war is being fought by a shrunken
volunteer military made up of less than 1 percent of the American
population. This is convenient for politicians. With no congressional
declaration and no draft, most American families don't feel the real pain
of war.
But White House failure to get a declaration handcuffs the president when
things go wrong as now. The American military is clearly too small for
simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet even McCain, who says
winning in Iraq is vital, shies away from imposing an unpopular draft.
Paul sees this and other problems runaway taxes, mounting US debt, an
"American Empire" mentality that has put US military bases in 130
countries as symptoms of Washington's failure to follow the
Constitution.
David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, says of Paul: "I
was very distressed, frankly, with the way he [Paul] was sort of dismissed
[by other GOP candidates]. He was speaking to values that they should
respect." He says: "Ron Paul is talking to people who are thirsting for
the real thing. And he's hitting the same chords that Goldwater hit and
that Reagan hit in the early days. He's a very healthy phenomenon."
So far, Paul has about 42 delegates. There is hope that with enough
delegates, he will win the right to address the convention.
Big media still ignores him. But his followers are determined to push the
government closer to the Founding Fathers' vision.
It's a long shot. But so was the American Revolution.
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John Dillin is a former managing editor and Washington correspondent for
the Monitor.