Chicago Daily Observer

In a formal announcement that was foreshadowed by his low popularity in the Republican primaries, Ron Paul will tell his supporters that his campaign for president is over.

Paul (R-Texas) will instead launch a different kind of campaign that aims to encourage the election of Republicans who show a Libertarian lean to offices across the country.

In a letter to supporters on his new website, “Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty,” Paul says the past 17 months were the most exciting of his life.

“With the primary season now over, the presidential campaign is at an end,” Paul writes. “But the larger campaign for freedom is just getting started.”

He’s addressing CPAC now. Oh, if he’d only stop talking about that gold standard. He has so many better things to say…

On the other hand, I am impressed by how warmly his views on foreign policy are being greeted. And I love what he said about abortion:

“Life begins at conception. That’s not a political statement — that’s a scientific statement.”

Here is part of my fantasy Ron Paul speech, the one I wish he’d give:

I was driving east on Independence Avenue the other day. On the right, I first saw the Department of Agriculture. It has more employees than there are farmers in the United States. Then I saw the Department of Energy, which has never produced a single watt of electricity.

As I view the contradictory and relativist muddle that is the Ron Paul presidential campaign, I am grateful that I eschewed libertarianism as a political principle in favor of constitutional conservatism. Notwithstanding that, I confess finding much to admire about Ron Paul, the 1988 Libertarian Party presidential nominee.

He is a M. D. specializing in obstetrics, pro-life, who served his country as an Air Force flight surgeon.

He is adamant about abolishing much of the federal government based upon lack of constitutional foundation and ineptness and inefficiency. Here’s a list of things Paul wants to end because they have had failures in the past, or he sees them as useless:

the CIA,

the FBI,

the Department of Homeland Security,

the FDA,

the IRS,

Medicare,

DEA,

Our membership in the UN,

in NATO,

in NAFTA

in CAFTA.

That’s the short list.

This is ... Read More...

His forthright defense of freedom emboldens us all.

When Alan Keyes was running against Barack Obama for US Senate, a friend of mine from Indianapolis called me to ask if I was supporting Keyes. “No”, I replied, “He is too far out there”. “Too far out there?” my friend said “Barack Obama represents the worst school districts in the United States and campaigns against education reform, all the while sending his own kids to private school, are you sure it is Keyes who is ‘out there’”. It was a good point. Sometime the more radical idea is full of common sense, yet political inertia has convinced us such issues as taxation, education, and foreign policy are best served by the status quo, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

In many cases, Ron Paul comes across as having a much clearer vision of the United States than any of his post-modernist ... Read More...

Far from Conveying Freedom, His Group Gives a Whiff of Decadent Self-Indulgence

For one with a long history of conservative Republican political participation…and mine goes back to the 1952 presidential campaign of Robert Taft…the rally Saturday afternoon at the Hyatt-Regency hotel celebrating Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) could not have been a greater shock. Taft, son of the 27th president, was constitutionally (and this word is used advisably) unable to demagogue. His message of hoped-for return to the policies of the past did not contain many personal incentives. In place of entitlements he advocated work, instead of farm subsidies he emphasized the free market. He accepted Social Security and few other accoutrements of the corporate state but not many. He opposed expansion of the size of government, soaking the rich, a multiplicity of federal alphabetical agencies that robbed personal initiative.. He preached the hard lessons of fiscal rectitude. Most particularly ... Read More...

Congressman Ron Paul’s contribution to American political life is more significant than those made by all the other presidential candidates—of both parties—combined. Romney, McCain, Clinton, Obama, et al, are dancing around the Iraq disaster that has cost 3,700 American lives, left maimed tens of thousands more, and provoked greater than ever hatred of America by the Islamic world. These candidates are ignoring the colossal failure of the government to stop the violent crime and depressed wages that are the bitter fruits of unfettered immigration. As they debate whose scheme is going to provide more pills for old people (the single wealthiest age cohort in the nation), Congressman Ron Paul stands radically apart from all of them.
I say “radically,” for Paul’s contribution has been to call to the fore of mainstream political discourse a proper understanding of America’s political roots. Since Abraham Lincoln expanded the authority of the central ... Read More...