Best idea on the Republican side goes to Ron Paul: Shut down all 700-plus overseas U.S. military bases and bring those troops home. Economically it would save this country’s bacon, between federal dollars saved and the stimulus of all those troops spending their paychecks here rather than abroad. And it’s the right thing to do, strategically as well as morally.
Our unbelievably large footprint worldwide has squashed more people than it’s helped, and in the process has created plenty of new adversaries for us. It’s time to stop thinking we can police the world. Paul’s ideas resonate with all who hear them – the lightbulb clicks on each time a new person hears him speak. Unfortunately not enough voters will get to hear him, as he is anathema to the primary media outlets, owned as they are by the scions of the military-industrial complex, who have been calling the shots in Washington for at least as far back as President Eisenhower’s warning about them. Basically, if it ain’t good for Halliburton, it ain’t gonna happen.
Some of Paul’s other ideas are equally appealing, particularly eliminating the CIA and rolling its functions and duties back into military intelligence, from whence it sprang. Appealing, yes, but likely to happen? Never. The last president who considered it, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated before he could implement the plan, and no other president has – can you blame them? – seriously considered it since.
Paul isn’t likely to win the GOP nomination, and not only because of the media blackout he generates wherever he goes. He’s too old – pushing 80 – and isn’t particularly telegenic. But he can make some noise, and get some important issues discussed, for as long as he remains in the race.
Should he win:
Paul Vs. Obama – Obama favored 6-1. Only the libertarians – and a large percentage of anti-war activists and peaceniks – would come out for him.