The article I wrote entitled 10 Reasons Not to Vote for Ron Paul has generated tons of comments, most from his supporters. Here is just a quick response to some of these. I have not provided references within this response but please see the previous article for tons of them.

Ok, so I am going to try and put my thoughts down and make sense while doing it. A whole lot of responses have been along the vein of “But he’s only going to be president, I don’t agree with him but he can’t mess up that badly.”

What about Congress, the Supreme Court? These other branches are not going to be filled with people who will make sure that he won’t mess things up too bad. When you think about who you are going to vote for, you have to look at the whole picture.

The fact is that Ron Paul has sponsored 346 bills since Jan 7, 1997, of which 341 haven’t made it out of committee and 0 were successfully enacted. He may have big ideas and want to really change things but he hasn’t been successful thus far.

So if I buy into his rhetoric, which I don’t, I am still faced with the fact that the Paul presidency could be an entire 4 years with a “lame duck” president.

The Bush administration has raped this country, and others, and left us with a huge gaping hole where once we had our civil rights and integrity. Again, Paul’s rhetoric sounds nice, “The Constitution!” is his war cry. However, as a liberal Democrat, it is very important to me to ensure that all of our citizens really are afforded equal rights. Ron Paul does not support this, with his words he doesn’t support this, with his record he doesn’t support this.

People have picked apart my arguments and most have countered with inaneness or just craziness. For instance, it certainly does matter on the issue of abortion whether or not his record matches what he says. He’s personally against it but would leave it up to the states, yet he has several time proposed legislation that would label a fetus a human. Now, in all reality how would that not lead to a ban on abortion, at least for the majority of the country?

So, then there’s an abortion ban and still no good sex education or contraceptive availability. Even if America defies statistics and abortions end there, what happens to the thousands of unwanted babies? Social services that would have helped them are gone under Paul, it may surprise the Religious Right, but unwanted children aren’t exactly snatched up and adopted. What then?

Our homosexual citizens will see no relief in their quest for equal rights. Again his personal views and record don’t support his rhetoric on this issue. Like most president’s he will have a cabinet and nominate justices that are in line with his views.

Our environment will be further destroyed. He sponsored a bill that would stop conservation efforts that interfered with recreational boating. That doesn’t sound to me like someone with good priorities.

It has been shown in our recent history, remember the Industrial Revolution, that without some sort of regulation (ie OSHA and the minimum wage) business owners take great advantage of their workers, at times to the cost of their lives. Just because someon has an ideal of how things should be that doesn’t change basic human nature. Businesses will still be greedy and without oversight we will end up right back to those good ol’ days of worker abuse.

Now, do I think that the government is run efficiently? Absolutely not, but I do believe that there are ways to fix the things that are broken without removing the whole system and thus ensuring chaos. Someone said either here or on Reddit, that basically both Republicans and Democrats want smaller government just in different places. The difference in my view, is that Democrats want our people protected and our tax money to fund programs to help the taxpayer. The other side would do the opposite, cut social services, give incentives to big business, and further discrimination.

While Paul talks a good talk it is clear, to me, that he is just like every other Republican candidate underneath except a lot more eccentric. And just to reiterate I encourage EVERYONE to RESEARCH on their own, I do not expect, nor want, anyone to make decisions based on other peoples’ opinions.

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