Why progressives should gladly vote for Ron Paul over any Democratic candidate including Obama

By Steve Brown

Watch this astonishing new interview with Ron Paul.

http://dailybail.com/home/videos-ron-paul-bring-the-troops-home-now-maxine-waters-the.html

Ron Paul has proposed many unacceptable positions, such as criminalizing abortion, rejecting climate change as a global threat, withdrawing Government funding from social programs, refusal to tax the rich, support of unlimited corporate donations to election campaigns, and promoting prayer in the public schools. But my objections to these and other positions of Ron Paul pale into insignificance when weighed against his clear and unequivocal promise, if elected, not only to stop our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan IMMEDIATELY, but to bring home all American troops -- not only from Iraq and Afghanistan -- but also from Germany, Japan, Korea and the nearly 800 U.S. military bases maintained around the world.

Ron Paul is the only candidate – Republican or Democrat – who has even addressed this issue, let alone made such a clear statement of intent. Aside from the profound moral insanity of our government’s murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan, these wars -- and our foreign military bases -- and the bloated military-industrial complex that instigates these wars and sucks up over 60% of the federal budget -- are primary causes of our economic crisis, and of the increasing violence and international terrorism that may lead to nuclear war and the destruction of our planet.

Nothing at this moment in history is more important than stopping our wars and dismantling our military-industrial complex. If Ron Paul could start doing this now, I will gladly put off the fight over his less palatable policies to another day. That is, if Ron Paul even lives to see another day, and does not instead meet the same fate from an assassin’s bullet as John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert F Kennedy and Malcolm X -- or anyone else who is perceived (rightly or wrongly) to be a threat to the power establishment.

At election time, the Democratic Party routinely thumbs its nose at the progressive movement because it thinks we have nowhere else to go. The mantra has always been, “Any Democrat is better than a Republican.” But except on minor issues of lifestyle and culture, is that really true? Has Obama really been – not smarter, of which there is no doubt – but better than Bush? Or has he been able to get away with things that Bush could only dream of, because the left has not dared to challenge him as it challenged Bush and his predecessors?

In addition to his firm stand on ending our wars and cutting military spending, Ron Paul is very strong on civil liberties. Whereas Obama has been rapidly shredding our civil liberties and snipping every thread of the social safety net so painstakingly constructed during the past 65 years since the New Deal.

Obama is owned by the financial sector (his largest campaign contributor was Goldman Sachs), and Michele Bachman,  Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and every other Republican is also deeply in debt -- morally, spiritually, and financially -- to the same corporate interests that finance the Democrats (although the specific donors may differ). But Ron Paul does not seem to be in debt to anyone except his own conscience and his own principles – which may be a mixed blessing, but far better than we can expect from any other candidate on the horizon.

So I will vote No to Obama and Yes to Ron Paul, in the not unlikely event that he becomes the Republican nominee. Any other candidate – Republican or Democrat – will be a disaster. If we can’t have Ralph Nader (sigh), then the next best thing really is Ron Paul. Even if Ron Paul is not on the ballot, I will give him a write-in vote, and if enough voters do so, we might, for the first time in U.S. history, actually elect an anti-war president who really is.

P.S. My election prediction? As a registered Democrat, I have been contacted by some of the fundraisers now beginning to call supporters all across the country to raise money for Obama’s upcoming election campaign. When I tell them No, I will not donate to Obama’s campaign, and will not vote for him in the election, they don’t even ask why … anymore. They simply sigh and, after prompting, admit that they have been getting this answer from more and more Democrats. Although not all Democrat say they will actually pull the lever for a Republican, many are suggesting that they may simply stay home on election day. If this trend holds – and it seems to be getting stronger – Obama may be crushed in one of the biggest electoral landslides in U.S. history, rejected not only by Republican voters, but also by his own Democratic electoral base – whose members may differ considerably on why they are unhappy with Obama, but nevertheless all agree that Obama has terribly betrayed both them and the principles of the Democratic Party – not to mention the Constitution itself.

P.P.S. If it is not enough that Ron Paul has pledged to stop our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bring home our troops, and close America’s nearly 800 foreign military bases, please not that Ron Paul has also pledged to close down all of our nuclear power plants, and to veto any bill intended to fund or subsidize nuclear power plants – or, indeed, fund or subsidize any form of non-renewable energy. So let’s agree to argue about school prayer later, in order to help Ron Paul end our wars and close our nuclear plants now.  

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Steve Brown is a New York writer-activist and long-time fundraising professional who

spends a good part of his time (pro bono) teaching progressive organizations how to

raise money, increase membership, and enhance their public profiles. He is currently

a director of Pacifica Radio WBAI-FM in New York.