Trouble for Ron Paul?

A Texas blogger posts an interesting poll in Texas CD14, Ron Paul's district. Congressman Ron Paul is a Republican in name, but a Libertarian in substance.

Question: As things stand now, would you vote to reelect Ron Paul to Congress or do you think it is time to give someone new a chance?
Response: 33% Re-elect, 48% Someone New, 20% Undecided

This is a sad reflection on Texas voters. Too many Americans value novelty over truth. This explains the success of Madison Ave. advertisers who can reduce the quality of a product but increase sales by calling it "New!"

The blogger notes that Ron Paul's Democratic opponent suffers from poor name recognition:

Only 25% of the district has heard of him, compared to 88% for Paul. As such, in a head-to-head matchup, Paul starts out with a comfortable 57-33 lead

Besides, right now it's Paul with the money (over $300K cash on hand) and not [his opponent] ($57K as of March 31),

Compare Paul's modest campaign war chest with that of Roy Blunt's:

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.asp?CID=N00005195&cycle=2006

The blogger reveals himself to be a Democrat who nevertheless finds much in Paul to admire:

There are things about Ron Paul that I like. Just the other day I got an email from a Democratic mailing list that praised Paul for his continued opposition to the Iraq war. There are issues on which my position will be closer to Paul's than it will to [Paul's opponent]'s, and in this increasingly polarized partisan atmosphere, that's highly unusual. Paul's not stamped from a mold, and he's not a yes-man, and I value those things. If we had a better Congress in place, I'd be content enough to leave him be.

But we don't have a good Congress; we have one that's corrupted and ossified by a dozen years of one party in power and that party's deeply flawed ideology, and those things can only be alleviated by a change in leadership.

Our blogger has fallen for the charade deliberately cultivated by the two parties: the idea that the two parties are different. The Republicrats and Demoblicans have been in power for the last 80 years, stuck in a revolving-door of leadership rotation. Regardless of which party is in power, there has been consistent, relentless growth in unconstitutional government. If America's Founding Fathers could be transported through time into the 21st century, they would see the reality of the Democrat-Republican stranglehold, and repudiate the two-party duopoly. As Georgetown Professor Carrol Quigley (Bill Clinton's mentor) observed:

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies."

But how many Missouri voters are willing to read that paragraph, reflect on its implications, and refuse to vote for the two-party monopoly?

A final quote from our blogger:

Further, Paul isn't taken seriously by his Republican Congressional colleagues. He's an eccentric they tolerate because he'll give Denny Hastert his vote for Speaker. On issues where I do agree with him, he has no effect on the debate. As his hostility to hurricane relief shows, he's not serving his constituents, and he's not serving any kind of purpose as a contrarian view/voice of conscience because no one with any power pays attention to him. He's a boutique Congressman at a time when seriousness is needed.

Ron Paul is more consistent with the free-market rhetoric of the Republican Party Platform than virtually every other Republican in office. The problem is not that Ron Paul is not taken seriously by the Republicans. The fact is that Republicans don't take their own rhetoric seriously.

When our own Congressman was first elected in 1996, the Republican Party Platform called for the abolition of the Department of Education, as well as numerous other unconstitutional government agencies:

As a first step in reforming government, we support elimination of the Departments of Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Education, and Energy, and the elimination, defunding or privatization of agencies which are obsolete, redundant, of limited value, or too regional in focus. Examples of agencies we seek to defund or to privatize are the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Legal Services Corporation.

The National Endowment for the Arts was notorious for its subsidizing of anti-Christian, pornographic “art,” including “art” which featured a figure of Jesus Christ submerged in a container of the artist’s urine. These programs undermine the very heart and soul of the America in which today’s students grow up.

And yet, our incumbent Congressman has not only failed to abolish these unconstitutional agencies, he has consistently voted to INCREASE funding for them. Democrats and the mainstream media highlight the fact that these Republican budgets embody "cuts" in the increases proposed by Democrats, but never mention that they still represent increases in overall spending. These budgetary increases in spending have been led by Majority Whip Roy Blunt.

But it’s not just that these agencies are unconstitutional. They are immoral and anti-Christian. And this is where America’s Founding Fathers would be truly horrified at today's Republicans.