Things are so bad.....

[MicroBalrog]

I didn't say any candidate is better, and I didn't say who I was voting for. Possibly no one. The point is, Ron Paul has failed us just as surely as the RINOs have. Those of us who oppose the Left are in desperate need of a leader, and he has failed to be that, just as much as Romney has. That's just the way it is.

There is a vast, unbridgeable, philosophical gap between people like Ron Paul and people like Romney.

Ron Paul is imperfect due to his views on the fictional terrorist threat, I get it.

Romney may be right on foreign policy, but he's not only wrong on pretty much every other issue, but more importantly, he's philosophically headed in a completely wrong direction. Even if he happened to agree with us on some issue by accident - he could not be trusted at all to actually act on it. Even his attempts to "tack right" betray a deep misunderstanding of what is going on.

Paul, Herman Cain, Bachmann, all of these are quite reasonable candidates. But Romney and Perry are not because they simply have no understanding of the issues at hand.

Moreover, Paul would of course be the best candidate simply because he's the most radical candidate.

[De Selby]

How is Romney even right on foreign policy?

Angling for war on Iran is insane - I doubt any policy maker wants it.  Using the threat of it to get political benefits is a good way to have an accidental war.  And an accidental war on Iran is probably the surest way to destroy our economy at the moment (besides that it's grossly immoral to start wars because of polling).

Ron Paul is the only candidate with a coherent worldview, and that's why the media won't make sense of him.  They can't grapple with anyone who refuses to parrot corporate/security sound bites. 

[roo_ster]

Ron Paul is imperfect due to his views on the fictional terrorist threat, I get it.

No you don't.

He also has become a born-again open borderer, but that is almost incidental to the greatest indictment of Paul...his near-complete ineffectiveness.

Gotta be able to make stuff happen.  Paul has failed at that.  Were he to miraculously be elected POTUS, I doubt he'd be able to do anything with it.

Wish it were otherwise.

[SADShooter]

No you don't.

He also has become a born-again open borderer, but that is almost incidental to the greatest indictment of Paul...his near-complete ineffectiveness.

Gotta be able to make stuff happen.  Paul has failed at that.  Were he to miraculously be elected POTUS, I doubt he'd be able to do anything with it.

Wish it were otherwise.

As a practical matter, we also have to remember the context of our system. In order for RP to BE effective if elected, one of two scenarios must exist.

a) a fundamental philosophical shift toward libertarianism by the American people
b) RP granted near-dictatorial powers a la Cincinnatus to bypass Congressional inertia and Constitutional legal challenges

NGH.

[MicroBalrog]

No you don't.

He also has become a born-again open borderer, but that is almost incidental to the greatest indictment of Paul...his near-complete ineffectiveness.

Gotta be able to make stuff happen.  Paul has failed at that.  Were he to miraculously be elected POTUS, I doubt he'd be able to do anything with it.

Wish it were otherwise.

Even at the barest minimum, the executive order  power, the pardon power, and the Presidential bully pulpit are there.

If anything, Ron Paul has been extremely effective in the past few years [raising his popularity from the 1-3% mark to around 10-12%, and with it, the popularity of his ideas] and enabling libertarianism to box beyond its weight class in electing officials like Rand Paul, Justin Amash, and others.

[TommyGunn]

I'm not sure we need anymore "great leaders"

Seems like all the great leaders that we have had have gotten us into multiple wars and nearly ruined this nation: Lincoln,¹ Wilson, FDR,² ... :(

I'm ready for a non-leader like Coolidge, who shut down DC for the summer and went to Vermont on vacation 

¹ Lincoln got us into a war?  Uh uh; the south started the war; Lincoln was trying to keep us intact as a union.  Blaming Lincoln for the Civil War is bass akwards.


² I am no fan of FDR, but again, he didn't get us into a war.  Remember Pearl Harbor?  Those were Japanese planes, not Us Army Air Corp planes. 

Now, as for Wilson, you're on your own there.....

[MechAg94]

IMO, the Paulians are just as bad as the rest of the "conservatives" in that we are all looking for the perfect candidate who will come in and take over and make everything right like some mythical libertarian Super Reagan who can speak perfectly, put the media in their place, and convince everyone our side is right.  Few realize that guy does not exist and no one person will fix everything.  You can look at a lot of the commentary about the Repub candidates.  It seems that everyone of them has done something that ticks off someone.  I see so many people that have focused on their "man" and won't vote for anyone else or think we are doomed to reelect Obama.  We haven't even had a primary yet. 

[Tallpine]

No you don't.

He also has become a born-again open borderer, but that is almost incidental to the greatest indictment of Paul...his near-complete ineffectiveness.

Gotta be able to make stuff happen.  Paul has failed at that.  Were he to miraculously be elected POTUS, I doubt he'd be able to do anything with it.

Wish it were otherwise.

As opposed to electing someone (anyone) who will be effective at doing all the wrong things 

He could just veto virtually everything that Congress passes, for starters 


Won't happen though ... if he actually starts doing well (first and second place) in the primaries, somebody will have him taken out.  :( 

[Tallpine]

Lincoln was trying to keep us intact as a union.

So was King George III 

[TommyGunn]

But Georgie Boy lost and Lincoln won.

[Perd Hapley]

There is a vast, unbridgeable, philosophical gap between people like Ron Paul and people like Romney.

Ron Paul is imperfect due to his views on the fictional terrorist threat, I get it.

Wow, you really don't. You just can't or won't realize that elections aren't won by platforms. It might be nice if they were, but they aren't. And I wasn't talking about any of Paul's or Romney's policy ideas, foreign or otherwise. I said that neither, as a man, is the leader we need right now.

[MicroBalrog]

Wow, you really don't. You just can't or won't realize that elections aren't won by platforms. It might be nice if they were, but they aren't.

That's really really not what I was talking about.

And I wasn't talking about any of Paul's or Romney's policy ideas, foreign or otherwise. I said that neither, as a man, is the leader we need right now.

We need a leader? Do go on?

At the very least I can identify several positive personal qualities in RP that would enable him to do what is to be done.

[Tallpine]

the leader we need right now

Too bad old Uncle Adoph isn't around anymore - I hear he did a pretty good job turning around the German economy 

[Jamisjockey]

Too bad old Uncle Adoph isn't around anymore - I hear he did a pretty good job turning around the German economy 

For
the
win.

Evil loves to take root in bad times. 

[makattak]

Evil loves to take root in bad times. 

That's how we got FDR.