Ashley just can’t figure out why:
I’ve been trying to understand why smart people I know support Ron Paul and I just can’t get my head around it. I get the sense that maybe the Ron Paul People I know just don’t realize what Ron Paul’s all about. That or they just don’t care.
The Ron Paul People I know are almost all straight, single, relatively young, non-religious, white men. Available demographics suggest that this is an accurate picture; there are others in Ron Paul’s camp, but it’s basically youngish white men.
They do not consider themselves to be Democrats or Republicans. Some of them hate the idea of rules, many of them hate the idea of having their money taken away in taxes, but none of them are stupid or without the resources to learn more about their candidate. And none seem to care about any of Ron Paul’s policies outside of cutting spending, regulations, and taxes.
Every Ron Paul Person I know comes out of the woodwork any time anything negative is said about the guy, no matter how true the statement and no matter how much that individual disagrees with Ron Paul’s position or behavior. I get the sense that libertarians are so excited to have someone on the national stage that they don’t want to see anything problematic with the guy, but he’s transparently a bad deal.
So, why are these people supporting a crazy, racist Christian fundamentalist?
I sent her the following email:
Dear Ms Miller,
I’m not going to waste any time correcting your attempt to criticize Ron Paul. Instead, let us simply posit that you are absolutely correct concerning every single complaint you listed about the man. Here is why you, and everyone else, should not only vote for him, but pray to the God in whom you do not believe that he wins the 2012 election anyhow.
He is the only national politician who gives the United States any chance of surviving the collapse of the global economy.
You may not like him. You may think he is crazy and hypocritical and wrong on a panoply of issues. But the fact of the matter that he has been warning everyone about the eventual consequences of the credit boom that the Federal Reserve and the federal government created over the last fifty years, and the subsequent bust they have been desperately staving off since 2008. In doing so, they have made things worse, so much so that the USA may not survive as a nation when their efforts finally fail.
This is not a Democrat vs Republican thing. It is an economic sanity vs insanity thing. Obama has been disastrous, as he has increased federal debt 92% since 2008. McCain would have done the same or worse. Romney and Gingrich would actually be worse than Obama in this regard. The economic Fimbulwinter is coming and there is only one national politician who even understands the core issues involved.
You probably won’t believe anything I say here. That’s fine. But the central banks are presently dancing on the very edge of the precipice, as the recent actions of the Fed and the ECB serve to demonstrate. And if it all collapses before November, I hope you will remember that there was one man who understands why it happened, who tried to prevent it happening, and has been preparing to rebuild from the ashes for a very long time.
With regards,
Vox