Is Ron Paul Selling Out By Teaming With Romney?

[KnightofChrist]

I've had issues with supporting Ron Paul in the pass, leaving it up to the states to decide who has personhood and who doesn't, legalizing hard drugs, supporting legalizing prostitution. But this election season I was leaning towards supporting him and voting for him. But now that the news is out and it is pretty clear that he and Romney have some sort of an alliance has dashed my hopes that Ron Paul is against big government.

Do you believe Ron Paul is selling out buy supporting and teaming up with Mitt Romney? I believe clearly if it is true and it seems pretty obvious that it is that he is selling out. Romney is a statist and a socialist ie RomneyCare. It makes no sense for Ron Paul to team up with such a character if he truly cares about principle.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/02/21/the_ron_paul_mitt_romney_alliance_is_strong.html

[4588686]

I'd be more concerned with the fact that he is being immensely dishonest about Santorums record (and as someone who despises Santorum's politics that is not easy to admit). Santorum didn't send billions to dictators. He voted for food and fuel aid to save thousands to hundreds of thousands of innocent North Koreans when their psychotic dictator plunged them into famine. Ron Paul is an unadulterated dishonest piece of poo for turning an act of genuine decency into a political hammer to try to nail Santorum by appealing to the most base, xenophobic instincts of the electorate.

Edited February 24, 2012 by Hasan

[4588686]

As for allying against Santorum, I don't think that's really that bad. Romney wants to make sure Ron Paul doesn't run as an independent and ron Paul wants to avoid Mitt Romney carpet bombing him so he can work on building his nitch of followers who buy into his absurd theories. There's a natural symbiosis between them and this isn't really collusion. I mean it's not like Ron Paul is Romney's puppet. They just both have reason to want Santorum and Gingrich out of the way so their can each tend their own respective garden.

[4588686]

Slightly less dishonest is his complaint about sending money to Mubarak. As it is true that that money actually goes to the regime (or it might also be aid, it's hard to know since he doesn't cite which legislation he's talking about, but let's give Dr. Paul the benefit of the doubt and assume he's talking about the military and regime aid rather than humanitarian aid we send to Egypt). I think that preventing yet another regional war is worth the money since that money is our leverage against Egypt attacking Israel (and Israel desperately needs that money so they don't have to allocate the money necessary to defend themselves against Egypt). Such a war would probably be a humanitarian nightmare and would cost us far more in terms of sharply rising oil prices. I think you can make a strong case that Santorum buying peace from the Egyptians and Israelis IS the fiscally conservative thing to do. Of course Ron Paul would never admit that. God forbid he introduce any nuance or complexity to his Manichean world view.

Edited February 24, 2012 by Hasan

[KnightofChrist]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1330044154' post='2391973']
As for allying against Santorum, I don't think that's really that bad. Romney wants to make sure Ron Paul doesn't run as an independent and ron Paul wants to avoid Mitt Romney carpet bombing him so he can work on building his nitch of followers who buy into his absurd theories. There's a natural symbiosis between them and this isn't really collusion. I mean it's not like Ron Paul is Romney's puppet. They just both have reason to want Santorum and Gingrich out of the way so their can each tend their own respective garden.
[/quote]

However it's not just Santorum their teaming up against. They together are attacking all the other candidates but not each other. I've not seen Ron Paul go after Romney in any of the debates. They always seem to work together and last night was just obvious. One would think if Ron Paul truly believes all the anti-big government talk he proclaims he wouldn't be teaming up with someone that is the opposite of what he claims to believe.

[4588686]

[quote name='KnightofChrist' timestamp='1330046898' post='2392018']
However it's not just Santorum their teaming up against. They together are attacking all the other candidates but not each other. I've not seen Ron Paul go after Romney in any of the debates. They always seem to work together and last night was just obvious. One would think if Ron Paul truly believes all the anti-big government talk he proclaims he wouldn't be teaming up with someone that is the opposite of what he claims to believe.
[/quote]

I see your point. But as I recall he's also quite the connoisseur of Washington Pork and, as I recall, he was quite happy to try to link himself to Ronald Reagan despite Reagan's rather severe ideological impurity (from Paul's point of view). I think your concern makes a lot of sense. Psychologically at least. I mean Ron Paul's great appeal is his supposed authenticity and this fact highlights the fact that Paul really is quite ready to work with the system he supposedly so disdains. I personally don't think that the Paul supporter needs to worry to much about this mild collusion. I mean Paul knows that he's not going to win this election. Or the next election. Or the election after that. Ron Paul is never going to be President. But his son could be (in Paul's mind, I think). I don't mean that in a nepotist sense. I just mean that is son is a slightly more mainstream version of his father and if the father makes a strong niche in the Republican Party then maybe the son can take the father's message to fruition. If Paul makes the deal of do no harm with Romney then he buys himself time to build his movement. I mean I think you can be a principles Libertarian and still recognize that in order to build your movement you sometimes need to make a non-aggression pact with the lesser of two evils.

Edited February 24, 2012 by Hasan