Juan Williams: Ron Paul driving Republicans' White House campaign
The Hill ^ | May 9, 2011 | Juan Williams
Posted on Monday, May 09, 2011 9:10:17 PM by 2ndDivisionVet
Here’s a news bulletin — it is becoming increasingly clear that we are living in a time when Republican politics are being shaped by a 75-year-old, 12-term Texas congressman with a son in the Senate. And incredibly, it is no longer out of the realm of possibility that this outcast of the GOP establishment may win the party’s presidential nomination.
If you have not been paying attention, it is time to look around and realize that we are living in the political age of Rep. Ron Paul.
A CNN/Opinion Research poll released late last week shows Paul faring the best against President Obama of any potential Republican candidate. He trails the president by only 7 points, 52-45 percent, in a head-to-head matchup. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee trails by 8 points, with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney down 11 points to Obama.
In February, Paul won the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Action Conference for the second straight year.
Last Thursday, the day of the first GOP debate, one of Paul’s fabulously-labeled “money bombs” exploded with the announcement of $1 million in contributions for the Paul campaign.
The Tea Party, which drove the GOP to claim a majority of the House in the mid-term elections, grew largely out of the ashes of his 2008 presidential campaign, which emphasized limited government and a return to constitutional principles. Since then, the Tea Party has bullied the Republican leadership in the House to force budget cuts at the risk of shutting down the government and collectively become the most persistent critic of the Obama presidency on financial regulatory reform and health care.
The roots of all of this are in the libertarian mind of Rep. Paul.
At last week’s debate, put on by my other employer, Fox News Channel, I was struck by the libertarian flair the iconoclast injected into the evening. First, his presence along with another libertarian Republican — former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson — allowed for Republicans nationwide to witness a debate in which strong arguments for immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan came from the right. But that was just the start. There are instances where Paul’s views make the Republican establishment want to scream.
For example, I asked him about his stated concern that Israel will launch a unilateral military strike against Iran. He replied that Israel had become too dependent on U.S. military and foreign aid and that it should be responsible for its own security and sovereignty. In the past he has blasted the “neoconservatives” and their influence on U.S. foreign policy.
He has been adamantly opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since the beginning and has called for an immediate pullout of all U.S. troops. He rails against the American “empire” and argues that U.S. spending on a global military presence should be cut.
Paul’s thinking is also having an impact on conservative views about domestic policy.
Even when he called for legalization of marijuana, cocaine and heroin at the debate it did not elicit hooting but cheers from South Carolina’s famously right-wing Republicans.
