Is Ron Paul Truly a Conservative?
May 31, 2007 by Orlando
Filed under Uncategorized
“The American people now have a real conservative in the race for president they can support,” stated Kent Snyder, chairman of the Ron Paul 2008 committee after Ron Paul announced his intentions to jump into the 2008 race. But in reality, is Ron Paul really a Conservative?
We can find that information at Project Vote Smart (vote-smart.org). According to the website, Ron Paul’s Conservative ratings range from 62% to 100% on any given year. His liberal ratings, however, are more telling. They range from 40% to 50%. They are the highest of any Republican presidential candidate. As a comparison, John McCain’s liberal ratings have ranged from 10% to 35% in recent years. Most Conservatives do not view John McCain as a true Conservative.
So where is Ron Paul’s liberal bent?
- Voted NO on military border patrols to battle drugs & terrorism.
- Voted NO on subjecting federal employees to random drug tests.
- Claims the War on Drugs has abused the Bill of Rights.
- He’s for legalizing medical marijuana and has a 30 rating by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
- Rated “A” by VOTE-HEMP, indicating a pro-hemp voting record.
- He supported the interests of the National Organization for Women 57%.
- Paul supported the interests of the AFL-CIO 50% in 2005 (the latest data).
- Ron Paul has voted closer to Democrats on military issues than Republicans.
- He has a 29% approval rating on national security issues by the Center for Security Policy (closer to Democrats than Republicans do).
- In 2006, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave Representative Paul a grade of “F”.
Ron Paul is NOT a Conservative any more than Hillary Clinton is a Conservative. Despite his adoring fans on the web (and only the web), Ron Paul, who was suppose to have surged after his “victory” over Giuliani, is in second to last place in the national polls.
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If by “conservative” you mean socialist, liberty stealing, gun grabbing, world police, UN slave, high-tax, big government violator of the constitution, then NO ~ Dr. Ron Paul is not a conservative.
If by “conservative” you mean small government constitutionalist, then YES, Dr. Paul is the most conservative person you can vote for.
Ron Paul is a libertarian, not a conservative. And while I have some libertarian leanings, there are also many things I disagree with libertarians on. I like having Ron Paul in the Congress and a few more like him wouldn’t hurt. But having him as the leader of the free world? Not on your life. That the chairman of his campaign describes him as a conservative is quite telling as well since he clearly knows that isn’t true and Ron Paul doesn’t claim to be a conservative.
Yeah, your problem is that you’re taking “conservative” to mean the same as “neoconservative”. There is nothing conservative about the big-government neoconservative movement. The undisputed founder of modern conservatism, Barry Goldwater, got pissed enough that when REAGAN started cozying up to the neocons, he called them on it.
Those who have hijacked the GOP and turned into the warfare-welfare party are not in any way shape or form ‘conservative’, they’ve just managed to hijack the term. It is no doubt this bastardized understanding of what the word actually means that was no doubt the basis of your post.
Ron Paul, the sometimes libertarian but now self declared conservative, is the joke of the ‘08′ election. His feeble attempt to add subatance to the great Fox News debate proved to conservatives that he cannot earn our vote.
As they tried to do in the ‘04′ Michigan primaries, the liberals are now trying to saddle the GOP with the worst possible candidate. They are forced to do this because the liberal/progressive candidates offer America nothing. Not-A-Thing! They have no energy policy, they have no plan for defending the country, they have no plan to keep the economy running smoothly, and offer us higher taxes and abortion on demand as their winning plattform.
Remember when we were promised a more transparent and ethical congress? Well, America is still waiting! Fortunately, America is learning quickly that the GOP, even with their many failures, aka. RINOs, do a better job than the democrats ever will.
Move over, ‘progressives’. Your day is about to end.
@AndyThePug,
“Who said, ‘Is this the time in our nation’s history for our federal government to ban Almighty God from our classrooms?’ Or, ‘You will search in vain for any reference to God or religion in the Democratic platform’? Who lamented that ‘we permit the world’s greatest collection of smut to be freely available anywhere’? Who warned that, ‘We as a nation are not far from the kind of moral decay that has brought on the fall of other nations and people’?” (Answer, and more, here.)
Ron Paul not a conservative? This proves the point that I have been making for years; that the terms “liberal” and “conservative” have lost their meaning. Most people cannot give an objective definition of either of them. Both terms are rooted in very positive political ideals, but folks don’t know about them today, niether it would seem does the author of this article.
As for the classical definition of conservative, Ron Paul’s picture should be next to the word in the dictionary. Ron Paul is definitely conservative. What passes for conservative today is collectivist claptrap. If Ron Paul doesn’t get the nomination for the Republican Party, it won’t be because he is not conservative.
Here is an informative video that shows how the terms liberal and conservative are used along two key dimensions. It makes you realize that it is not simply a matter of left and right.
Here is George Will’s view of conservatism here. Ron Paul is a pure conservative by the current standards of expectation of this very conservative commentator.
Anyone who thinks I’m a neocon obviously has not read much of my writing. The problem with the Republican party is they’ve abandoned conservative principles and I’ve been saying that for some time. But that does not make Ron Paul a conservative. I want smaller government. I agreed with Paul’s statement in the debate about getting rid of cabinet level departments like the Department of Education. But conservatism has NEVER meant isolationist. Paul makes decent points about US mistakes in foreign policy. But putting our heads in the sand now is not the answer. Paul thinks we can just withdraw from the rest of the world and the Islamic fascists will leave us alone. That is simple nonsense and believing so doesn’t make one a neocon.
Ron Paul is the most conservative member of congress – bar none.
The Ron Paul votes you talk about are all about the so called drug war that has completely failed. Putting people in jail because they smoke pot is ignorant and is not conservative. So the problem with the so called conservative surveys you are pushing is that they somehow believe strict drug laws equal conservatism. To the contrary, drugs are no different than booze which causes far more deaths but is legal. Drug laws should be a states rights issue, which is what Dr. Paul prescribes. There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States that says the Federal Goverment should regulate drugs. So when Dr. Paul votes against those drug issues, he is voting against the fact that its not the job of the Federal government to enforce drug laws.
As far as National Security, the problem with the organization you quote is that their idea of National Security is for the United States to be the World Police.
Earth to brain washed Orlando, thats NOT the job of the United States. The job of our military is to protect the United States against harm, not to get involved in places like Iraq (which is a total scam), Lebanon, Kosovo etc.
Conservatives use to try to avoid war, but the NeoCon Ideology of Bush has brain washed those who use to follow the Reagan doctrine of Peace through Strength,
not Peace through War