[Peace-discuss] The Nation: Why Do GOP Bosses Fear Ron Paul?

[E. Wayne Johnson]

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/22/144122913/the-nation-why-do-gop-bosses-fear-ron-paul

by John Nichols

Ron Paul represents the ideology that Republican insiders most fear: 
conservatism.

Not the corrupt, inside-the-beltway construct that goes by that name, 
but actual conservatism.

And if he wins the Iowa Republican Caucus vote on January 3—a real, 
though far from certain, prospect—the party bosses will have to do 
everything in their power to prevent Paul from reasserting the values of 
the "old-right" Republicans who once stood, steadily and without 
apology, in opposition to wars of whim and assaults on individual liberty.
Make no mistake, the party bosses are horrified at the notion that a 
genuine conservative might grab the Iowa headlines from the false 
prophets...

...Paul's notion of foreign policy is in line with that of conservatives 
used to believe. The congressman is often referred to as a libertarian, 
and he has certainly toiled some in that ideological vineyard. But the 
truth is that his politics descend directly from those of former Ohio 
Senator Robert "Mr. Republican" Taft and former Nebraska Congressman 
Howard Buffett—old-right opponents of war and empire who served in the 
Congress in the 1940s and 1950s and who, in Taft's case, mounted 
credible bids for the party's presidential nomination in 1940, 1948 and 
finally in 1952. In all three campaigns, Taft opposed what he described 
as the "Eastern establishment" of the party—the Wall Streeters who, he 
pointedly noted, had little in common with Main Streeters.

Taft was a steady foe of American interventionism abroad, arguing very 
much as Paul does today that it threatens domestic liberty. Indeed, just 
as Paul joined US Senator Russ Feingold in opposing the Patriot Act, 
spying on Americans and threats to freedom of speech and assembly in the 
first days of what would become an open-ended "war on terror," so Taft 
warned during the cold war that "criticism in a time of war is essential 
to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government."

"The maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the 
country...more good than it will do the enemy," explained Taft, who 
challenged President Truman's attempts to use war powers as an excuse to 
seize domestic industries and otherwise expand what Dwight Eisenhower 
would eventually define as the military-industrial complex.
"Even if it were desirable, America is not strong enough to police the 
world by military force. If that attempt is made, the blessings of 
liberty will be replaced by coercion and tyranny at home. Our Christian 
ideals cannot be exported to other lands by dollars and guns. Persuasion 
and example are the methods taught by the Carpenter of Nazareth, and if 
we believe in Christianity we should try to advance our ideals by his 
methods. We cannot practice might and force abroad and retain freedom at 
home. We cannot talk world cooperation and practice power politics."