Standing on stage in the Reagan Library during the first Republican debate, Ron Paul looked a lot like the ten other men on stage: a dark suit, white shirt, striped tie, the concerns of the highest office in the land on his mind. And on numerous occasions, he even sounded a lot like them, too. Though Paul lacked the practiced ten-word answers and poll-tested polish of the top-tier candidates, he spoke adamantly, defending one of his answers by declaring that “it’s conservative, it’s Republican, it’s pro-American, it follows the Founding Fathers, and besides, it follows the Constitution.” It would've all been par for the course, boilerplate political assertion of exactly the sort one should expect at a gathering of GOP presidential hopefuls — except that Ron Paul was talking about his opposition to the Iraq war.
Since entering into the crowded field of Republican presidential-primary candidates, Paul has become a lightning rod for conservative criticism as well as an unlikely Internet phenomenon. After serving in Congress for just over 16 of the last 31 years and attracting minimal national attention during that time, Paul has, in just a few weeks, begun to stand out — and apart — from the rest of the Republican candidates. Among fiscal conservatives, he is the purest of the pure, having steadfastly refused to enter into the sort of deal-making and political compromise on which Washington thrives. And, in a party where support for the war in Iraq runs high and often tops the list of voter concerns, Paul’s apostasy on the issue puts him decidedly outside the GOP mainstream, provoking harsh judgments from several prominent conservative pundits. Yet he is not without supporters either, most notably a zealous Internet fan base that no other Republican candidate can claim.
Part of Paul’s Internet appeal likely derives from his libertarian roots. Libertarians were early colonizers of the net, and, whether with more political bloggers like Glenn Reynolds or the crowds of government-wary geeks at technology websites like Slashdot, they remain an outsized presence there compared to their real-world influence. Paul has always served as a Republican in Congress, but in 1988 he was the Libertarian party’s presidential nominee. And it shows: As a congressional representative, his steadfast refusal to support government expenditures of nearly any kind has earned him a reputation as a principled economic conservative in a time where political deal-making is the norm. He has been referred to as “Dr. No” for his lengthy history of opposition to bills that would have the government do, well, pretty much anything. On a question about government-cutting at a recent debate, other candidates hemmed and hawed about which programs they might like to cut; Paul responded that he’d get rid of the
entire department of education.
Even on issues like global warming, where many Republicans — including staunch government-cutters like Newt Gingrich — have begun to warm to ideas like a carbon tax or an emission-trading system, Paul stands firm. “Nobody has a right to pollute, but I would rather approach the issue through property rights than through regulation,” he says. “Government should be there to protect property, not to divvy it up.” He departed from the free-market line to vote to give the government power to negotiate prices with drug companies, but only because he believes that, as long as the government is buying the drugs, it might as well get a good deal on them. On nearly every issue of note, he’s a small-government absolutist’s dream come true.
Yet Paul departs from his libertarian brethren on some major issues. A longtime obstetrician who has reportedly delivered more than 4,000 babies (he even took two days a week to perform deliveries during the early parts of his congressional career), he is firmly pro-life. “I could get paid for killing a fetus one second before birth, but I could get arrested for killing it one second later,” he says, “and there’s something very strange about that.” Nor does Paul side with other libertarians on immigration. He’s doubtful that the Senate’s immigration bill will accomplish much, and, in an interview with
National Review Online, agrees with those who’ve called it “amnesty” — which, he’s quick to add, he’s always opposed.
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