Why I voted for Ron Paul By: Joe Scarborough

[Mira]

Posted for your information only. I found it interesting, maybe so will others

Why I voted for Ron Paul

By: Joe Scarborough
June 12, 2012 01:11 PM EDT


I operate on instinct. So I should not have been surprised by my own gut reaction to the absentee ballot that lay before me on the kitchen table.
I scanned the list for Republican primary candidates and let instinct take over.

Mitt Romney? Not on your life. A big government Republican who will say anything to get elected.
Rick Santorum? No way. A pro-life statist who helped George W. Bush double the national debt.
Newt Gingrich? Ideologically unmoored. A champion of liberty one day, a central planner the next.
Ron Paul? Yep. I quickly checked his name and moved on to a far more complex task: fixing my daughter a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
After spending six months analyzing each candidate’s every move for three hours a day, five days a week, it never occurred to me that my decision to vote for the quirky congressman from Texas would happen as fast as a tornado whipping through an Amarillo parking lot. After all, who would vote for a candidate that criticized the killing of Osama bin Laden, blamed U.S. foreign policy for Sept. 11 and wants to abolish Social Security?
Certainly not me.
But I also would never vote for a GOP candidate who was the godfather of Obamacare, or another who added $7 trillion to Medicare’s debt or yet another who bashed Paul Ryan one week and venture capital the next. Faced with this truckload of big government Republicans, I cast my vote for the only candidate who spent his entire public career standing athwart history yelling “stop” to an ever-expanding centralized state.
While Romney was distancing himself from Ronald Reagan, Paul was fighting with Republicans to balance the budget for the first time in a generation. While Santorum was supporting an unprecedented expansion of entitlement spending, Paul was warning of a great recession that would be caused by government interference in the housing market. And while Gingrich was talking about how he would build up the federal government to push his conservative agenda, Congressman Paul spent all his waking hours focused on dismembering that big government beast.
It was the first “protest” vote I’ve ever cast, and it felt … well, it felt good. Suddenly I understood a bit better why the Ross Perot or the Pat Buchanan or the Ralph Nader voters did what they did.
They thought the system was so broken that they couldn’t sit out but also couldn’t stomach voting for a conventional candidate at a time of unconventional problems.
Do I think a Ron Paul presidency is ever possible? No, I don’t. But I do want some of the Pauline virtues of candor and non-poll-tested conviction to play a larger role in our politics.
So now I’ve cast my protest vote. It felt good.
What I really want, though, is a party and a politics that’s commensurate with the problems and possibilities of the country. We’ll get there one day — and then we can focus on progress, not protest.
A guest columnist for POLITICO, Joe Scarborough hosts “Morning Joe” on MSNBC and represented Florida’s 1st Congressional District in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001.


http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=D6D4C199-7388-408F-B860-605DF65407E8

[MindMover]

1. If one cannot see through the smokescreen of libertarian nonsense...

then you deserve what you get....

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/41483660@N04/6657578499/][img][/img][/url]
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/41483660@N04/6657578499/]libertarianism-anarchy-for-rich-people[/url]

[Puregonzo1188]

3. That's bullshit. I know a lot of anarchist and most of them identify as leftist. Anarchist were very

active in the labor movement and helped win some of the important victories for labor rights we have today (along with communists and socialists).

I suggest you do some research before posting nonsense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World

[MADem]

9. It's not bullshit. Look at what the cartoon is actually saying.

It doesn't matter how your little friends claim that they feel, they're reaching the same anti-government conclusions and having the same effect on the population as the rich libertarians who also do not like government.

That's what the cartoon is saying.

A person can hate lemons because they don't like the taste, and another person can hate lemons because they are allergic to them, but the bottom line is the guy selling lemons ain't selling 'em to those two.

[Puregonzo1188]

18. It's bullshit because you have no idea what anarchism is or what anarchist believe.

Your comparing anarchism to libertarianism is like right wingers calling Obama a socialist or a communist. It's the same concept--people throwing around a word they don't know the meaning of as a pejorative.

How can it be that libertarians hate labor unions and anarchists have been highly active in the labor movement if they're the same? How can libertarians be for free markets and anarchist some of the most militant anti-capitalist if they're the same?

Do you think the Wooblies were the early version of the Tea Party? Do you think Emma Goldman would support Ron Paul if she was alive today? How about Sartre?

[MindMover]

21. From a definition of anarchism.....

"the term "libertarianism" has often been used as a synonym for anarchism"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism

[MADem]

22. It doesn't matter, at the end of the day. It's the result, not the process. It is two roads to

the same end. That is what the cartoon is saying--quite clearly, too. You're just not taking the point.

[spanone]

2. joe threw his vote in the trash can...congratulations mr scarborough

he'll end up voting for mitt, i bet.

[MagickMuffin]

10. Perhaps he'll vote for Gary Johnson

Now that would be something worth writing about.

[Johonny]

4. They thought the system was so broken

Why does Joe think a career house member is somehow an outsider and not part of the broken system? Or should the question be does Joe think?

[MADem]

11. Joe came in with Newt--he was part of the Contract On...er, With America crowd.

He was one of those obstructionist fuckers who wouldn't let Clinton do a goddamned thing, who hemmed the guy in, who pushed WJC into the DADT compromise and twisted his arm to get DOMA on the books in exchange for passage of other legislation.

The only way he could be regarded as an "outsider" is that most congressional representatives don't wind up with dead women in their offices...in that way, he's certainly one of the special, different, and very RARE ones!

[JHB]

5. It's your party, Joe. You and your people made it that way.

If you don't like the menu, maybe you have lousy ingredients.

[MADem]

6. Pauline virtues of candor and non-poll-tested conviction?? How about those "virtues" of racism and

sexism?

Jeez--he's stupider than I thought he was. Why didn't he write in his old buddy McCain (he was seen drooling in the front row at the McCain-Bush huggy rally) if he didn't like the field, instead of voting for a white supremacist who hates women?

[EFerrari]

7. A match made in heaven.

[FSogol]

8. This is what passes for deep thinking for a tv pundit?

What an f'ing embarrassment. Shame on any thinking person that watches this drivel.

[tularetom]

15. By definition no thinking person watches that drivel

If you watch it you are not thinking.

QED.

[Mira]

17. I could not have assessed it

better myself.

[Starry Messenger]

12. If Ron Paul actually ever ran the country, that peanut butter would have sand and bacteria in it.

And there's not a fucking thing that douchecanoe could do about it.

[MindMover]

13. OMG, I am still laughing.....

[FSogol]

19. Well said!

[KamaAina]

24. Douchecanoe!!

[nobodyspecial]

14. In the legendary words of EarlG

Fuck Ron Paul.

[zappaman]

16. Haven't said it in a while, so

FUCK Ron Paul.

[tanyev]

20. Here's hoping we get to hear him whine about Paulbots causing trouble at the GOP convention.

[Enrique]

23. it shows how full of shit the rest of them are

all this garbage they've been saying, especially about Obamacare, and now all the RW pundits are backing the guy that invented it.

But at some point it also becomes bullshit itself, there's a lot of reason to believe Ron Paul was there to help Mitt. He made some attacks against Gingrich and Santorum which applied equally to Mitt, but he laid off Mitt.