{"id":5260,"date":"2011-12-29T09:27:28","date_gmt":"2011-12-29T14:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=5260"},"modified":"2011-12-29T09:53:45","modified_gmt":"2011-12-29T14:53:45","slug":"for-gop-the-danger-of-ron-pauls-consistency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/12\/29\/for-gop-the-danger-of-ron-pauls-consistency\/","title":{"rendered":"For GOP, the danger of Ron Paul’s consistency"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the big dangers for the Republican Party in this year’s protracted, fractious primary, is that it has given enormous play to some of the fringe ideas that hover on the edge of the conservative movement.<\/p>\n

Ron Paul, the libertarian from Texas, embodies a lot of those, ranging from the abolishing of income taxes to a plan to return the U.S. dollar to the gold standard.<\/p>\n

But I think a bigger risk for Republicans is the fact that Paul’s consistent, unwavering message highlights some of the illogic and inherent contradictions within the conservative movement itself, particularly when it comes to taxes, national defense, and foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Most GOP leaders have continued to advocate for deep tax cuts, despite persistent deficits and staggering national debt.<\/p>\n

They argue that deep cuts to the size and scope of government would allow us to balance the books over time.<\/p>\n

But those same leaders have demanded and supported staggering growth in the size of defense and homeland security budgets.<\/p>\n

According to one survey of spending<\/a> since the 9\/11 terror attacks, the Pentagon’s budget has grown 43%.\u00a0 Spending on nuclear weapons has grown 21%.\u00a0 And the homeland security budget skyrocketed 301%.<\/p>\n

And those tallies exclude the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which total more than a trillion dollars in additional expenditures.<\/p>\n

The U.S. now spends more on military preparedness than the next twenty nations in the world combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute — and roughly five times as much each year as China, our closest competitor.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of good arguments in favor of a strong military.<\/p>\n

But it’s very difficult — as Ron Paul points out — to argue that this kind of defense program, and the aggressive foreign policy supported by many conservatives, can be sustained without higher taxes.<\/p>\n

It’s also difficult to see how the current global reach of our military jives with the founding fathers’ discomfort with “foreign entanglements” and their aversion to the idea of America growing into a military empire.<\/p>\n

As Republicans continue to clamor for tax cuts and for costly new adventures such as a military strike against Iran, Paul’s more consistent narrative will echo in the background.<\/p>\n

And at a time when polls show that Americans are particularly weary of war, the GOP might find that for many voters, this particular fringe message has moved to the center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the big dangers for the Republican Party in this year’s protracted, fractious primary, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6548,6550,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5261,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5260\/revisions\/5261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}