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Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Why young voters love Ron Paul

Salon Home


Topic

2012 Elections

Monday, Nov 28, 2011 11:30 AM Eastern Standard Time

Why young voters love Ron Paul

It's not because they're potheads. It's because they're sick of America's militaristic misadventures

ron paul

(Credit: AP/Manuel Balce Cenata)

Topics:, ,

Despite a sustained campaign by the Washington media and political establishment to marginalize him, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, is still a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. That has a lot to do with the support he’s receiving from young voters. In almost every survey and activist straw poll, Paul draws big numbers from voters between the ages of 18 and 29.

The laziest way to explain the counterintuitive phenomenon of youth rallying around the GOP’s oldest candidate is to insist that it’s about kids’ silly college fling with unrealistic libertarianism or that it’s about kids’ affinity for drug use — and more specifically, Paul’s support for legislation that would let states legalize marijuana. This degrading mythology ignores the possibility that young people support Paul’s libertarianism for its overall critique of our government’s civil liberties transgressions (transgressions, by the way, now being openly waged against young people), nor does the narrative address the possibility that young people support Paul’s drug stance not because they want to smoke weed, but because they see the War on Drugs as a colossal waste of resources. Instead, Paul is presented as merely a fringe protest candidate, and the young people who support him are depicted as just dumb idealists, hedonistic pot smokers or both.

One problem with this fantastical tale, of course, is that it insults the intelligence and motivation of young voters. But another, even more troubling facet of this tale is how it uses speculative apocrypha and stereotyping about ideology and drugs to suppress concrete social survey data about the far-more-likely foreign policy motivations of young Ron Paul supporters.

Paul, of course, is one of the only presidential candidates in contemporary American history in either party to overtly question our nation’s invade-bomb-and-occupy first, ask-questions later doctrine and to admit what the Central Intelligence Agency acknowledges: namely, that our military actions can result in anti-Americanism fervor and terrorist blowback.

Predictably, Paul’s foreign-policy honesty has generated Washington media scorn (most recently and explicitly, as Glenn Greenwald points out, from CBS News’ Bob Schieffer). No doubt, that scorn has much to do with that media being disproportionately older, more establishment-worshipping and more hyper-militaristic than the general population. But far away from D.C. green rooms in Real America — and especially among younger voters — Paul’s foreign policy positions are generating the opposite of scorn. Indeed, as a new Pew Research Center report suggests, these positions are almost certainly a driving force behind the support for his candidacy.

The new study tracks how younger voters are now strongly rejecting traditional American hubris in favor of Paul’s more empirical views on foreign policy. For instance, it finds that while older citizens embrace American exceptionalism in insisting our culture is inherently superior, younger voters do not. But the key finding as it relates to Paul’s candidacy has to do with blowback, which Paul frequently discusses on the campaign trail. As Pew reports (emphasis mine):

Two-thirds of Millennials (66 percent) say that relying too much on military force to defeat terrorism creates hatred that leads to more terrorism. A slim majority of Gen Xers (55 percent) agree with this sentiment, but less than half (46 percent) of Boomers agree and the number of Silents who share this view is 41 percent. A plurality of Silents (45 percent) believe that using overwhelming force is the best way to defeat terrorism and 43 percent of Boomers share that view.

These findings have been largely ignored by the media and political establishment. That’s predictable. These poll numbers undermine the dominant fairy tale that Americans universally support status-quo militarism — and so they are largely omitted from the media discussion of the presidential election. It’s the same thing for Paul’s foreign policy positions in general — they are either ignored or mocked by a political and media culture that is ideologically invested in marginalizing them.

Nonetheless, there are two good pieces of news in all this.

First, whereas in earlier eras such establishment hostility to a politician’s position could prevent that candidate from making a serious run for president, polls show Paul’s foreign-policy message is likely getting through to a key demographic, giving him a genuine shot at his party’s nomination.

Second, whether Paul eventually wins the GOP nomination or not, the trends embedded in his current electoral coalition will affect our politics long after his candidacy is over — and even if you don’t support Paul’s overall candidacy, that’s a decidedly positive development for those who favor a new foreign policy. (A brief side note: This article is in no way a personal endorsement of Paul’s overall campaign — I have serious problems with some of his economic positions.)

With the defense budget bankrupting our budget and with our imperialist foreign policy making us less safe, the younger generation’s rejection of hubris and hyper-militarism — and that generation’s willingness to support candidates in both parties who similarly reject that militarism — provides a rare ray of hope in these political dark ages. And not just a fleeting hope — but a long-term one.

As the Pew data show, the younger generation, whose foreign policy views were shaped not by World War II triumphalism but by grinding quagmires like Iraq and Afghanistan, has a far more realistic view of America’s role in the modern world. While that position may shift somewhat over the years, the numbers are striking enough to suggest an impending cultural break from the past. As the younger generation assumes more powerful positions in society and more electoral agency in our democracy, the possibility of such a break gives us reason to believe America can create a new foreign policy paradigm in our lifetime.

David Sirota

David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.More David Sirota


Ron Paul’s phony populism

Salon Home

Topic

Ron Paul

Tuesday, Nov 29, 2011 8:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

Ron Paul’s phony populism

The libertarian presidential candidate is a true friend of the 1 percent

Ron Paul

Ron Paul, phony populist (Credit: AP)

Topics:, ,

To me, the epiphany of the most dreadful presidential campaign in history took place in Keene, New Hampshire, last week, when a Ron Paul town meeting was interrupted by some Occupy Wall Street hecklers.

“Let me address that for a minute,” the Republican presidential candidate said, “because if you listen carefully, I’m very much involved with the 99. I’ve been condemning that 1 percent because they’ve been ripping us off –” He was interrupted again, this time by cheers, almost drowning him out.

After the usual chants of “We are the 99 percent” and “There are criminals on Wall Street who walk free,” Paul quickly took back the audience, not that he had ever lost it. “Do you feel better?” he asked, to laughter.

“We need to sort that out, but the people on Wall Street got the bailouts, and you guys got stuck with the bills, and I think that’s where the problem is.”

It was a masterful performance. Ron Paul — fraudulent populist, friend of the oligarchy, sworn enemy of every social program since Theodore Roosevelt — had won the day, again.


Gary Weiss is an investigative journalist and the author of "Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul," to be published by St. Martin's Press in February 2012. More Gary Weiss


Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Five myths about Newt Gingrich

The Washington Post

Five Myths
Challenging everything you think you know

Five myths about Newt Gingrich


In fact, many Republicans bemoaned their frustrations with Reagan during his administration, and Gingrich was part of this story. He broke with Reagan on the president’s 1982 tax increase, accusing him of “trying to score a touchdown for liberalism, for the liberal welfare state.” In late 1985, he worked to stall a tax reform bill that Reagan supported, which eventually passed.

Sometimes, Gingrich fired from the left, faulting the administration on such issues as South African apartheid. In his Ripon Forum interview, he said: “Let me say first that one of the gravest mistakes the Reagan administration made was its failure to lead aggressively in civil rights.” He compared Reagan unfavorably to George H.W. Bush, who “is seen as a post-Reagan president by African-Americans, who feel he and Barbara are truly committed to their well-being.”

If asked, Gingrich would probably say that he was dispensing some tough love. Perhaps Reagan had a different view of the matter.

4. Gingrich single-handedly brought hyper-partisanship to Capitol Hill.

During the 1980s and ’90s, Gingrich often employed tough tactics and harsh words that heightened partisan tensions — but he was not the only culprit.

He criticized Reagan for his mild 1984 reelection campaign, saying that he should have run “by forcing a polarization of the country. He should have been running against liberals and radicals.”

It wasn’t just Gingrich, however; there was plenty of roughness on the other side. “The evil is in the White House at the present time,” House Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.) said of Reagan. “He’s cold. He’s mean. He’s got ice water for blood.” And when House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-Tex.) went to the House floor to dispute Reagan’s account of private deficit meetings, he used the word “lie” eight times.

Gingrich’s tenure as speaker was bipolar. Even as he led the House during government shutdowns and the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, he also helped secure welfare reform and balanced budgets. And before the impeachment controversy, he was quietly working with Clinton on a “grand compromise” for Social Security and Medicare.

5. Gingrich lacks the drive to win the presidency.

Earlier this year, several of his campaign aides quit, saying that he was shunning the mundane tasks a presidential candidate must take on. At the time, some speculated that Gingrich was less interested in running for president than in preaching grand ideas. But for Gingrich, preaching is not a distraction, it is the essence of campaigning. He often speaks of Winston Churchill, who spent his own wilderness years speaking and writing before his nation called him back to power.

Gingrich’s drive transcends normal politics. “I have an enormous personal ambition,” he told The Post in 1985. “I want to shift the entire planet. And I’m doing it. . . . The ambitions that this city focuses on are trivial if you’re a historian. Who cares?”

Now Gingrich has a chance to realize some of those ambitions. Will his complex record weigh him down? It’s a dilemma any historian should understand.

John J. Pitney Jr. is the Roy P. Crocker professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College and coauthor of “American Government and Politics: Deliberation, Democracy, and Citizenship.”

From the Outlook archives:

Newt Gingrich’s defense of the 1995 government shutdown

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