Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Looking back at Ron Paul

Over the last couple of months i've been watching a good number of youtube vids, etc, by ron paul. And I've been realizing more and more why it was a mistake to want to vote for him.

Well there's the obvious argument of "why waste your vote", but that doesn't cut it for me... that's not what i'm talking about here... i mean more votes, even for a losing candidate allows him to speak up more.

Basically the main good thing about him is his foreign policy, he's right on the ball with that. As for the Economy, its great that he wants to lean out the government. It's great that he wants to get rid of the dept of homeland security, possibly repeal the patriot acts, etc. It was also great that he's home schooling friendly, and wants to turn gold into basically a form of currency (no taxes or capital gain on it). I also like his proposed approach to health care.

But the main things that really bother me about him are:
- his stance on immigration. He's too strict on mexico, and he wants to stop giving student visas to people from "terrorist countries"
- his stance on gun control is kinda scary. He basically wants to make it easier for people to buy guns and carry them around.
- He's too nice to corporations. I think he'd make outsourcing even worse than it is now, which is bound to happen to most industries sooner or later because of globalization, but he'd expedite the process significantly.
- It seems like he wants to have almost no regulation of corporations, this could be very problematic, especially for the environment.

but yeah... i'm not all that crazy about Ron Paul anymore. I'd love it if he would keep speaking about foreign policy though. I think he's also running for congress, maybe that's a better place for him.

So yeah, it's basically turned into what i thought it would, just another election season where we are given basically no real choices. If Clinton will be running for 2008, she'll do fine i think, but she'll probably work too slow. I think she'll beat mccain and become the first female president, and we'll have a total of 24 to 28 years of nothing but Bushes and Clintons running the country. If Obama wins (and he seems to have a pretty good chance at it right now), I think he'll basically do what Clinton would have, but faster. He's young, quick, and probably more approachable by leaders of foreign countries, I see more promise in him. The main thing that scares me about him is that he has said that he wants to go after PK and AFG, but I have a feeling that he was just bluffing to prevent losing certain votes.

Looking back on it now, my prefs would probably be:
1. Edwards
2. Kucinich
3. Ron Paul
4. Obama
5. Clinton

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