The coming of age for my political consciousness, in serendipity, coincided in the late aughts with the rise in national prominence of one Ron Paul of Galveston, Texas — otherwise known as Dr. No for his stubborn refusal to go along with whatever bipartisan Swamp legislation du jour.
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Much like Donald Trump (only more successfully) did in 2016, with much the same pushback and gatekeeping from the Old Guard, Ron Paul stood alone on those GOP primary debate stages in 2007 and 2008 and accurately described the calamity that was U.S. foreign policy, the travesty of the privatized Federal Reserve central banking system, the unconstitutional War of Terror used for domestic spying and suppressing domestic dissent, and so much more.
The party didn’t fully come around at that point.Instead, we got John McCain and later Mitt Romney in 2012 — two of the worst presidential candidates ever fielded by the GOP.
Ron Paul stood alone back then, swimming upstream, incurring great consternation and wrath from the establishment as he spoke hard truths about the calamity in the Middle East, at that point only a few years old, at a time when criticizing it meant being smeared as a traitor or a terrorist sympathizer or whatever.
Whether Paul was treated more unfairly by the establishment GOP or the legacy media is a toss-up; the latter aggressively accused him of all manner of –isms, including racism for pamphlets produced under his name that the media dredged up from over a decade prior, which Paul claimed not to have known about and aggressively disavowed.Related: Unhinged Liberals Accuse RFK Jr. of Using Secret Nazi Code on Twitter
The revelations via the Washington Post conveniently came in the thick of the 2012 primary campaign, at the peak of his relevancy and the threat he posed to leading candidate and clear establishment favorite Mitt Romney.
Most of their assaults on his political ideology and character felt more like ringing endorsements than condemnations.
Via The Guardian, January 2012 (emphasis added):
This is the man who, to trumpet his pro-life agenda in Iowa to social conservatives, released an ad that questions whether repealing Roe v Wade would eliminate women's abortion rights in enough states, since it would create "abortion tourism" (a situation with which the Irish and the British are already familiar). He opposed the Obama administration's decision to declare birth control a preventative medicine, which pressures insurance companies to cover it without co-pays. He has said he would allow states to decide same-sex marriage rights for their citizens but keep the Defense of Marriage Act intact – which restricts federal rights, including immigration and social security survivor benefits (among others) to opposite-sex married couples.
He also opposes the US supreme court decision in Lawrence v Texas that decriminalised consensual sodomy in the United States. He opposes the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He wants to restrict birthright citizenship, denying the children of immigrants legal status in the United States if they are born here, voted to force doctors and hospitals to report undocumented immigrants who seek medical treatment, and sponsored bills to declare English the official language of the United States and restrict government communications to English. And that's just for starters.
Don’t threaten me with a good time!
The party, after Trump arguably finished the job that Paul started even before the inception of the Tea Party, has since come around to his point of view on foreign policy and a great many other issues.
Yet, it seems to me that he hasn’t ever gotten what I believe are the accolades that he truly deserves.
Alas, he’s still alive and kicking at 90. So perhaps there’s still time while he’s on this Earth.
On August 20, Ron Paul enters his tenth decade of life.
Here’s hoping for ten more.
