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By consistently polling around 10% among Republicans, he’s building bridges between loopy libertarians and actually-potentially-electable libertarians. Having run for the Presidency for the Libertarian Party in 1988, he’s since found an uneasy seat on the Republicans’ far-benches, and everyone’s now terrified he might split the vote Nader-style in 2012 by going back to his third-party roots.
He thinks they should completely dismantle the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank. He thinks America should leave the UN. And Nato. And NAFTA. And the WTO. And get out of Afghanistan immediately. He was one of only eight Republicans who voted against the Iraq War. But he’s also for legalising cannabis. And for putting heroin back where it belongs – in all the nation’s pharmacies. And he’s got no real problems with gay marriage. He says a Paul presidency would slash $1 trillion off of the national budget in its first year – the sort of cut that has probably never been tried anywhere in the world. He’d abolish petty inconsequential stuff like the Department For Energy. And the Department for Health. And, to signify the sort of man-o’-the-people president he’d be, he would claim only the median American salary of $39,000 a year. Though in fairness, he’d probably have to revise that figure downwards in years two and three of his administration, when the median US salary would be some moss and half a goat after the economy entirely seized up. He’d make the manufacture of currency a private enterprise – anyone would be allowed to make their own coinage, provided it was redeemable against a government-agreed amount of gold. And he’d eat a puppy every day on live TV just to assure the public he wasn’t getting too wishy-washy.
Even the Fox News gang have little truck with his unique brand of freedom-worshiping machismo – Bill O’Reilly sneeringly referred to his fervent band of supporters as "almost a cult". Which is ironic, as effectively, Paul is midwife to the entire Tea Party movement. By banging on about minimal government for 25 years, he has focused the whole lens of American politics on the issue. Mainstreamers might not actually vote for him, but mainstream politicians now have to court the opinions of the constituency he has created if they want to get elected. Pity that his beliefs are so extreme even the world’s most famous Austrian citizen wouldn’t have been down with them.Previously: Quango - Job Interviews For President
