Ron Paul is just exactly about real integrity - does not accept congressional pension money for his service - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92OV3RbU3ek
Simple, building socialism DOES NOT WORK - LOL! The government spending is exploding in Health, Education, and Welfare and things are worse - this is the wrong way to create wealth in a society.
Ron Paul may have truth on his side, but he's a horrible speaker publicly. Obama would eat him up. The public don't want truth (at least not yet). They want someone to tell them what they want to hear. That's politics. "He knows too well how to manipulate the mob."
Ok, if "building socialism" or, as some righties seem to think, building "equal outcomes" does not work, and our growing stratification is evidence of that, then your statement, "they have been fully brainwashed into a horrible corpotocracy with building socialism" is irrelevant at best.
I don't see any certified (or certifiable (!)) leftists on this thread, so as one who's mostly given up on you guys, just one observation: the world clearly works better when power is distributed, rather than concentrated. The only argument Paul has with the Republicans is on just how concentrated power should be in powerful private hands. The Republicans say most, Paul says all. From a private citizen's POV, there's not much difference between all the power being in corporate hands versus all the power being in government hands. For a little guy, having them both keep each other in check is the best possible solution. Paul is totally against the government checking private power, the Republicans make a few exceptions, said exceptions dwindling by the hour as the extremists complete their takeover of the party. The Democrats are Republicans lite these days, but a few of us are working hard to change that. As for his stance on international relations, well, leftists have been calling on us to pull out from all this international crap since Vietnam (actually long before; check Mark Twain on this way back when being anti-interventionist meant taking a stand against us making the Phillipines a colony instead of letting them have their independence; on this he was joined by Grover Cleveland, who was so principled on this that he wouldn't even annex Hawaii when it was given to him on his lap, the closest match to Paul among all the Presidents after the Civil War and before WWI). I'll take checks on everyone's power and a non-interfering foreign policy over trusting that we'll all be just fine if we just let GE, Google, the Koch bros, and other unelected people have their way with no checks whatsoever on what they do. All that said, I admire Paul for his honesty and forthrightness in declaring what he's for and what he's against, and for his thorough understanding of just how anti-militarist the Constitution is (it would be nice to have one prominent person on the left who understood this as well as he does), even if he does want to turn the clock back to 1890. At least he's clear on that, as are his followers. If he wins over Romney, it will be because of that more than anything else. No one likes someone who's beliefs change with the direction of the wind.
Completely disagree. Obama appeared to be a great public speaker 4 years ago when the hopium high was still going strong...when his captive audience believed in every line of bullshit that was re-directed from the teleprompter to his lips. The honeymoon is over and a straight talker like Ron Paul is much more of a sell than some guy who sounds like he should be reading the 6PM news. All of the false gravitas, the inflected/affected bullshit has turned off many, many people. Aside from the racists who still support him for the color of his skin, the guy has been in a nose dive since his inauguration in Jan 2009.
I hope you're right, but I don't believe you are. When Paul talks, I hear the truth. What the uneducated hear is "Hey you damned kids, get off my lawn!" He stutters, trips over his words, raises his voice at the wrong time and sounds hysterical while doing it. He has wonderful ideas and is the best choice, but cannot convey it to the mainstream public.
I dunno. I disagree. I think Ron has gotten better and better. Sure he's not a smooth talkin businessman. But he's done a very good job.