Re:Ron Paul Launches Snowden Clemency Petition
by rayiner on Thursday February 13, 2014 @04:01PM
(#7234305)
No, but because he opposes a lot of things Americans have bipartisan consensus on. He rejects resl politik, the idea that America needs to intervene aggressively abroad to maintain its interests. Democrats will oppose particular interventions, like Iraq, but as Kosovo and Syria demonstrate, they don't really reject the basic idea of America as the world's police.
He had very different ideas about the division between federal and state power than the mainstream. Americans are more or less over the idea of federalism, as demonstrated by the popularity of Social Security, Medicare, highways, etc. On both sides, they mostly just want the federal government to tell states what to do. So when Ron Paul comes along opposing things like the Department of Education, he gets viewed as wildly out of the mainstream.
He had very different ideas about the division between federal and state power than the mainstream. Americans are more or less over the idea of federalism, as demonstrated by the popularity of Social Security, Medicare, highways, etc. On both sides, they mostly just want the federal government to tell states what to do. So when Ron Paul comes along opposing things like the Department of Education, he gets viewed as wildly out of the mainstream.