Will America's Conservatives Ever Feel Comfortable Voting for What they Are Supposed to Believe In?
Occasional reason contributor Todd Seavey explains to the mainstream conservative audience over at National Review why they should be pulling for Ron Paul.
Seavey starts off with what I think is a very doubtful premise--that Ron Paul could be a serious challenge to Hillary in a one-on-one. And he goes on to underestimate the extent to which normal American conservatives of the current day love Bush-era foreign escapades and war. Oh, he mentions it toward the end, but it's a bigger barrier to mainstream conservative embrace of Paul than he gives it credit for. See the famous Giuliani jab in South Carolina.
But Seavey certainly explains to conservatives why Ron rises above the rest of the GOP potential nominee herd in all other respects. An excerpt:
Do conservatives not really want all the things Paul has to offer? Then why do we fight at all? If it's merely for power and mainstream acceptance, one might as well support Hillary Clinton or wait until after November 2008 and support whoever comes out on top. But if we want a radically smaller government — precisely that thing that a Republican Congress neglected to do for the last twelve years, which has created the current mood of conservative frustration — we must support Ron Paul. Remember how small government was at the nation's founding and consider how perhaps even conservatives have since then become de facto socialists, accepting the leviathan state as inevitable. But it's not inevitable if they vote against it when history hands them that chance.
My most recent writing on Paul--on why some libertarians are leery of him--here.
