How to oppose the Paulbots

I do not think it makes the best political strategy to simply write off every single word GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul says as nonsense or automatically oppose every one of his opinions or positions.  There is plenty of craziness in his record, no doubt about that and I am certainly not defending him or endorsing him in any way, but I think it will actually help his chances if he can paint himself as the victim of a smear campaign by the political and media elites. 

He does make some sensible points about scope creep in the Federal government and how the US taxpayers simply can not afford all of the current global military operations and that the Federal budget  must be brought under control or the ship will sink.  Those are some pretty basic points that resonate with a whole lot of ordinary Americans from both the right and the left. 

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to oppose Paul's candidacy.  To simply paint him as a kook and ridicule him will do more to undermine the arguments that need to be made against his agenda. 

Ron Paul claims to be pro-Constitution, but he advocates intermingling of religion and law on a number of fronts.  He claims to be for peace and national security but he opposes offensive military operations and alliances that work to prevent enemy attacks and aggression.  He claims to want to improve the economy, but he would abolish the Fed and that would bring utter turmoil to American and global financial markets and kill off any hope for economic recovery for decades.  He claims to not support crazy conspiracy theories, but he is very comfortable hanging out with the people who do spread them and he welcomes their political support.  

He clearly does not look at the secondary effects of the policies he would enact. He does not consider all of the unintended consequences and chain of events that would result in the wake of the economic chaos his policies would create.  He does not understand that the confidence of the people in their future, their currency, and their government is the most precious commodity. 

For all intents and purposes, Ron Paul is the candidate of the John Birch society. He won't publicly admit that, but he parrots every one of their talking points and takes all the same political stands.  Unfortunately there does not seem to be a modern day William Buckley to take on the Bircher radicalism within the GOP.

In my mind there are plenty of reasons to oppose Ron Paul but I warn against taking the easy route and just ridiculing him without being familiar with the reasons why.

For the record, I do not think he will win the GOP nomination for President.  I do think he will end up running as third party candidate, perhaps with a lefty running mate like Dennis Kuchinich from Ohio.  Just a hunch there..