Can the 2012 presidential campaign of Ron Paul bring liberals disgusted with Barack Obama together with libertarians and small government conservatives? Sure – just so long as those liberals don’t mind a campaign run by a right wing theocrat who rose through the ranks of Republican political consultants by serving televangelists and bigots.
Drew Ivers is the chairman of the Ron Paul for President exploratory committee, but he’s been in Republican politics for a long while. Back in 1988, Ivers led the campaign of 700 Club televangelist Pat Robertson, who cheers when his god strikes out at America with natural disasters. In 1992, Ivers performed the same job for Pat Buchanan, an anti-semitic, racist, sexist, homophobic admirer of Francisco Franco, Augusto Pinochet and Joseph McCarthy.
After these campaigns, Ivers worked with the right wing Christian Coalition to set up the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition, a radical organization that advocates the replacement of secular democracy in the United States with Christian theocratic rule.
Is the leadership by Drew Ivers of the Ron Paul 2012 campaign not enough to alarm liberal admirers of Ron Paul’s anti-war policy? Then let’s speak practically. The presidential campaigns of Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan were stupendous flops. The decision to place Drew Ivers at the head of the 2012 exploratory committee demonstrates that Ron Paul doesn’t have the skills to find competent leadership for his campaign.
There are many things I like about Ron Paul, and many things I dislike. I love the energy of his 2008 campaign, the civil libertarian views, the antiwar views, and the unapologetic radicalism. I’m wondering, however, if Gary Johnson has the same basis in religion as Paul does.
Agreed. The point of this article is NOT that Ron Paul is evil. It is to remind liberal Americans that Ron Paul is an awful lot more than just his anti-war politics. Ron Paul has a more solid connection to the Michele Bachmann wing of the Republican Party than most people care to remember.
i heard Ron Paul on The View the other day (a tape of that section on-line actually) – he’s not a liberal or a progressive, in fact he doesn’t like a lot of the programs we take for granted and would shut them like the Republicans. i don’t see any good choices in the next election and expect that no matter who “wins” we’ll (the non-ultrarich or corporation) lose.
If our country was being ran the it way it was suppose to be we wouldn’t need any of those programs. That’s what Ron Paul was saying on The View. And unlike the rest of the Republicans he wouldn’t come in and shut down those programs overnight.
Fred, what you fail to see is that progressives NEED those programs, first to support themselves, (because they work at jobs like this that don’t pay) and secondly to garner a voting block from the lazy, or dysfunctional. Without these programs no one would vote for them. Their constituency consists of those who feel guilty for their success and those that can’t succeed and want to blame the “man” or anyone other than themselves.
And yes, if the country were run the way that was intended, we wouldn’t need the programs. The more progams, the more need.