Consider Ron Paul.

As many of you know from my previous comments, I was brought up a dedicated Republican.

Those were the days of Real Republicans, people like Dwight Eisenhower.  These leaders were true conservatives, in the sense that they were all about hewing to our Constitution and Bill-of-Rights.  And the Republican Party was faithful to that philosophy. 

In the mid sixties, the liberal movement gained ascendancy.  It too was about Freedom and Human Rights (notice that I capitalized these words).  But  while the liberal movement was not anti-American, it was about involvement in improving on what we as Americans had achieved in the first 19 decades of our existence as an independent Democratic Republic.  That led sometimes to massive and vocal demonstrations to get the established order to move on civil rights, the Vietnam conflict and other issues. 

As a Republican, I was in total support of the civil rights movement.  But I supported our involvement in Vietnam.  I have lived to question that support, but at the time …

The point is that the Liberal movement gained power and moved us in a very socialist direction, a “Great Society” direction if you will.  That started noticeably with JFK, and was promulgated by a Texan, President Lyndon Johnson.  

JFK was very popular, and Lyndon Johnson was his vice-president. 

Barry Goldwater was my choice in the race against JFK.  Goldwater was a Real Conservative.       

Then JFK was assassinated. 

Following a month of mourning, the presidential race resumed, but this time the Texan Lyndon Johnson was at the head of the ticket.  I campaigned door-to-door for Barry Goldwater in Minnesota – not an easy task in the Democratic Farmer-Labor (DFL) State where favorite-son Hubert Humphrey was now on the ticket as the vice-presidential candidate.  

That interruption of the presidential race by that awful tragedy changed everything.  For any of you old Republican soldiers out there, you will remember that we were shoveling water uphill.  I am convinced to this day that Johnson rode the assassination of a very popular JFK into the White House.  Although he may have won anyway, Barry Goldwater took a drubbing out of proportion to our perception of the support for his conservative cause and him.

I remained a Republican through the Ronald Reagan terms.  While I celebrated his first term, it seemed to me that he had perhaps overstayed his usefulness for the Republic in his second term.     

I don’t recall whether I voted for Bush 41 at the end of Regan’s presidency.  I sure as the dickens did not vote for him again if I did.  I saw Bill Clinton as the choice way before his nomination, and I supported him and was elated when he was elected.   I think all-in-all he was a very good president, although I have been turned off by his coziness with Bush 41 and his playing around in those Bushes.  

Bush 42 I identified as an arrogant disaster of Biblical proportions during the Florida fiasco.  He and his are the stuff of tyranny, and we have way more to fear from them than from any outside enemy.  

Which gets me to the point of this tome: Ron Paul speaks Constitutional and Bill-of-Rights wisdom.  He is a Real Conservative in the Dwight Eisenhower and Barry Goldwater tradition.  And his voice is lost in the media, and in the mummified Republican Party resurrected by der NeoCoNazi movement.  Ron Paul is anathema to this movement, and is probably in grave danger in “his own party”.

Let’s hear it for Candidate Ron Paul.  Or even President Ron Paul.  Long live our Constitutional Republic as envisioned by our founders!  

Strength with Honor.