Posted 2/20/2007 05:08:00 PM by Douglas

More on Ron Paul, this time from the libertarians. [yeah, I know it's a FoxNews link, just suspend disbelief for a while.]

When you read about a vote in Congress that goes something like 412-1, odds are pretty good that the sole "nay" came from Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. He so consistently votes against widely popular bills, in fact, that the Washington Post recently gave him the moniker "Congressman 'No.'"

Um, that's DR. NO to you, snot-faced. Dr. Paul has delivered over 4,000 babies, in case you missed the last sound bite from his congressional campaign when he defeated someone's wet ass he spanked into breathing 30 years ago.

Paul recently announced his intentions to run for president in 2008. For the few of us who still care about limited government, individual rights, and a sensible foreign policy, Paul's candidacy is terrific news. Not because he's likely to win. He's a not-terribly-powerful Congressman who's a pariah in his own party – which also happens to be the minority party. Not the ideal presidential dossier.

Paul has already run for president once, on the Libertarian Party ticket. He returned to Congress as a Republican in 1996, even though the party machinery opposed him in the primary. He has since won re-election with progressively larger margins of victory, bucking the conventional wisdom about the political value of pork barrel spending and district patronage. Paul, for example, refuses to support federal farm subsidies, despite the fact that much of his district relies on agriculture. His constituents re-elect him anyway.

Paul's presence in the race is important because he'll put issues on the table that would otherwise be completely ignored. His presence in the primary debates alone will make them far more substantive and interesting than they've been in a generation. One example is the continuing disaster that is the drug war, which Paul rightly believes to be both immoral and unconstitutional. Paul also opposed the war in Iraq from its inception. Those two issues alone will differentiate him from every other candidate on the stage.

Face it. He's got no chance. But a strong Paul showing in New Hampshire might just show the knuckle dragging pollsters at the RNC that there really are some people out there concerned with the size of government, that people don't want that new government program. It's a start, I don't care what George Will says:

Paul, who really believes in limited government, will infiltrate that confabulation of sedate candidates in order, he says, to find out "how many real Republicans are left." This could be entertaining, meaning embarrassing.

Embarrassing for whom, you hectoring hack?