Ron Paul for President -- Really?

During this past week, a number of liberal bloggers -- and Jon Stewart! – have rightly criticized the mainstream media for shutting out coverage of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, who nearly won the Iowa Straw Poll, and as I have argued, would have won had he bought a few more tickets for his supporters.

The reaction among some liberals to this criticism has been more than dismaying. For some, their distaste for President Obama is so all-consuming and irrational that they are now thinking Ron Paul would be a good alternative. Sure, they say, Paul is wrong on abortion, but, hey, we can overlook that because his non-interventionist policy jibes with our own anti-war agenda.

Okay, let’s look at a few of Paul’s other ideas:

He opposes any kind of amnesty for undocumented workers. Further, he says mandated hospital emergency treatment for illegal aliens should stop. He’s okay with charities providing medical treatment to undocumented people, but anybody who can’t get it is out of luck. Paul is a medical doctor; evidently he doesn’t think the Hippocratic Oath crosses international borders. He also has called for a Constitutional amendment to revise the Fourteenth Amendment principles and "end automatic birthright citizenship."

He opposes universal health care.

He would completely eliminate the income tax. He supports repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment, which authorized the income tax. Despite the amendment, for some reason Paul still thinks the income tax is unconstitutional. Nonetheless, he’s expressed support for a regressive flat tax.

He has signed Grover Norquist’s no-new-taxes pledge.

He wants to return to the gold (and silver) standard & eliminate the Federal Reserve, which he believes causes recessions & depressions.

He says prayer in public schools should not be prohibited & opposes “a rigid separation between church and state.” In 2005, he introduced a bill that “would permit state, county, and local governments to decide whether to allow displays of religious text and imagery and whether to ban atheists from public office.”

He is a huge Second Amendment advocate. He has said he thinks it’s fine for individuals to own machine guns.

He opposes any form of campaign finance reform, calling it a free-speech violation.

He opposed affirmative action laws, calling them “special interest laws.” He wrote a treatise against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, calling it unconstitutional.

He wants to repeal the Seventeenth Amendment, which brought us direct election of U.S. senators. He wants to return to the day when state legislators chose senators.

He opposes a Constitutional amendment to directly elect the president.

Paul says he’s against all federal laws defining marriage, yet – curiously – he defended DOMA. He opposed the Lawrence v. Texas decision (rendering sodomy laws unconstitutional) because he doesn’t think the federal government should have any say in marriage law.

He is “an unshakeable foe of abortion.” Although he says the Constitution requires that abortion legislation be left to the states, he voted in favor of a federal ban on partial-birth abortion in 2000 and 2003.

He says climate change is “not a major problem.” He believes the federal government has no right to impose clean air standards. He’s says pollution can be best addressed by lawsuits against companies that pollute the air of their neighbors.

He strongly opposes international treaties like the Kyoto Protocol to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and also opposes domestic progams like cap and trade. He opposes imposing fuel efficiency standards (too bad on this -- Obama just got the auto industry to agree to signficantly higher standards). Paul is against investment in public transportation, and he voted to repeal the federal gas tax. But he strongly favors public tax breaks for domestic oil drilling (Alaska? Yes! Offshore drilling? Yes!) & voted no on revoking oil & gas subsidies.

Paul would eliminate many federal government agencies & Cabinet positions, such as the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security. He also wants to get rid of FEMA, the Interstate Commerce Commission and the IRS.

He has repeatedly said he would "never vote for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution." That would include such “unconstitutional” programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Americans with Disabilities, civil rights legislation, etc. etc.

Is this the guy you want to hold the veto pen? Really? Get a grip, liberals.

Source: WikiPedia. “Political Positions of Ron Paul.”