Ron Paul is the best republican candidate

First of all I want to apologize for the confusion on the debate topic. I guess I just focused more on the word CANDIDATE instead of REPUBLICAN to frame the debate. That radically changes the discussion I think, my way being raw politics oriented, yours being issues oriented. But seeing as that we are here I say we finished what we started. Secondly, you are right about that last line, I copied it from your argument to remind myself of it and then forgot to delete it. Sorry. As for the constitution, I think the problem is that so much of the constitution (the rules of the board game) are open to interpretation. George Washington originally thought that Article 2 Section 2 stating that the executive needed "advice and consent of the Senate" on treaties with other nations, meant that he should actually go over himself and talk with the Senate. After the first time he tried that he changed his mind. Alot of the things that we think at "the right way" to interpret the constitution are just happenstance. We dont need constitutional amendments to change the way that we interpret those parts of the Constitution. Moving on. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In terms of principled leaders, I think that you missed my main point. I was not talking about right and wrong, what I was saying is that many times there can be two rights. If the goal is to create the best nation possible, there are liberal and conservative ways to view that. I think that you can find examples that say both ways could be great. Some people in this country think high taxes and socialism are awesome. There is no real concrete way that you can say they are wrong. You may disagree with them, but that does not make them wrong. I apply this to Paul in the sense that I dont think he views things that way. As you said, if he finds a law unconstitutional, he will veto it carte blanche. First of all, he is not a lawyer, nor a judge, and thus is not really supposed to have the final say on what is constitutional. Secondly, this does not do what I originally argued a good leader does, take into account both sides of an issue. By doing this he will only serve to alienate a large portion of the population and limit his effectiveness as president. I just saw the movie Charlie Wilson's War, and though I have not yet seen the history channel version, I have been told that the movie was quite accurate. The movie is a perfect example that the congressional members who are willing to deal and work with people are the ones that get stuff done. That can be applied to the executive as well. Ron Paul may be able to accept imperfect bills but if and only if they fall into his view of how the government should operate. I dont think that will allow him to get very much done. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The other idea that is now floating around in the debate is whether or not people will get angry if government does nothing. I think you are making an unsaid assumption here that if Ron Paul wins it will mean there has been an overhaul of the national government. This will not be the case. No matter how low approval ratings go, the re-election rate in the house is something like 80 percent. Though people are mad at congress, non of them think that it is their representative that is the problem. So we will still have the same type of congress that we have now. My main point with all this was not government inaction but more executive inaction and impotence. How hard would it have been for congress to override a veto of the Patriot Act after 9/11. And if you think times have changed, look at the bill declaring part of Irans army a terrorist organization or any number of nation security bills that continue to get passed. This is the heart of the reason why Ron Paul is not the best Republican Candidate. As president he would be railroaded by congress and his ideas would be relegated to obscurity on the national scene. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I really dont feel like sparing with quotations since it isn't really a measure of minds but I will say this about those that you are often quoting. The founding fathers were very diverse in their ideas and they fought about those ideas with the very core of their being. Though many now view this as being principled, lets not forget what they often did in those fights. They argued in private, slandered one another in public and even dueled from time to time. In order to sway public opinion they would sometimes just make up scandals about one another. I say this only to remind you that they were not perfect and even they had to often sacrifice the "moral high ground" in order to get things done. No matter what they would think of Ron Paul, I dont think that he is the candidate to lead us towards anything, let alone our founding democratic principles.