[Peace-discuss] The vindication of Ron Paul

[E. Wayne Johnson]

"It is [Ron Paul] who sparked a new American Revolution and, after all 
these years, can no longer be easily ignored."

The vindication of Ron Paul
Will founding father of the tea party movement get his due from party 
leaders?

Ron Smith
Baltimore Sun

5:01 PM EST, November 18, 2010

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-smith-20101118,0,202354.column

Congressional Republicans used to enjoy the luxury of ignoring Ron 
Paul's cantankerous objections to the political premises they shared 
with their counterparts across the aisle. The question now is whether in 
the new Congress to be seated in January the longtime Texas 
representative will be allowed to chair the Subcommittee on Domestic 
Monetary Policy and Technology on the House Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Paul is the ranking minority member now, so the job would seem to be 
his after the GOP sweep in the midterm election, but the Republican 
leadership will decide whether to give the leading critic of the Federal 
Reserve Bank a prominent role in overseeing the Fed itself as well as 
the U.S. Mint and the U.S. relationship with the World Bank.

As little as they may relish the idea described above, kicking him to 
the curb could cause a huge problem with those new Republican 
representatives who identify themselves with the tea party movement.

Remember, it was Ron Paul supporters who kick-started the tea party into 
life on Dec. 16, 2007, when they dumped a $6 million "money bomb" into 
his presidential campaign on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

Not that all or even most tea partiers are Paulians when the rubber 
meets the road. Abolishing the Patriot Act, which he advocates, probably 
wouldn't be at the top of the priority list for the 52 Republican 
members of Congress who say they'll join a Tea Party Caucus.

Nor would most of these people back an actual anti-interventionist 
foreign policy, or ending the drug war, or abolishing the Fed, as does 
Mr. Paul, who has warned against what he sees as a neocon infiltration 
into the movement.

In fact, loner that he is, the good doctor will distance himself from 
the House Tea Party Caucus even though he is a towering figure to many 
of its probable members. Responding to press queries, his chief of 
staff, Jeff Deist, said, "Congressman Paul decided not to join the Tea 
Party Caucus. He strongly believes that the tea party movement should 
remain a grassroots phenomenon, rather than being co-opted by Washington 
or any political party."

His son, Rand Paul, also a medical doctor, was elected to the U.S. 
Senate from Kentucky and is working to organize a Tea Party Caucus 
within the Senate. However much he might or might not agree with his 
father's more radical ideas remains to be seen, but the potential for 
some much-needed principled dissent from the justly maligned status quo 
in the upper chamber is tantalizing.

We should be particularly grateful to Ron Paul for his controversial 
performance in the GOP presidential debate in South Carolina in October 
2007, the one where he stood before his fellow candidates and supposedly 
"blamed America" for the attacks of Sept. 11. Of course, he didn't 
actually "blame America," he merely pointed out that foreign policy has 
consequences, and that people get angry when their lands are occupied 
and they are bombed in their homes: "They attack us because we've been 
over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. … We've been in the 
Middle East. Right now, we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger 
than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say 
here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We 
would be objecting."

Rudy Giuliani, who made his fortune exploiting the coincidence that he 
was New York City's mayor when the attacks took place, won the biggest 
applause of the night with this reaction: "That's really an 
extraordinary statement. That's really an extraordinary statement, as 
someone who lived through the attack of Sept.11, that we invited the 
attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I have ever heard 
that before and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 
11. I would ask the congressman withdraw that comment and tell us that 
he didn't really mean that."

That didn't happen. Ron Paul chose to speak to the American people as 
though they were adults, thus violating the rules of Politics 101. 
"America's Mayor" went on to spend more than $20 million to win a single 
vote at the nominating convention.

Ron Paul never came close to getting the presidential nomination. He 
just went about his quirky business, talking to Americans as though they 
were capable of understanding his critique of foreign policy and the 
dangers of mounting public debt. Due to the Great Recession, a large 
number of them did understand and acted on the information.

It is he who sparked a new American Revolution and, after all these 
years, can no longer be easily ignored.