The real maverick

No more war: Readers, are you down with Bites? Do you agree that ending our ongoing occupation of Iraq is the most important issue facing the American electorate in 2008? Well, you’re in luck, because there’s a man running for president who has consistently voted against not only the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, but also the USA Patriot Act, as well. No, not Rep. Dennis Kucinich. This man’s not even a Democrat.

Meet Rep. Ron Paul, the 10-term congressman from Texas, one of 10 politicians seeking the Republican presidential nomination and apparently the only one possessing a modicum of both brains and integrity. Like Kucinich, Paul speaks his mind, not what he thinks corporate campaign donors want to hear, which is why his message got lost in the shuffle of last week’s Republican presidential debate moderated by Chris “candy colored clown” Matthews on MSNBC.

Matthews is easily the most embarrassing “journalist” working in America today. In dreams, his perfect presidential candidate is none other than our own Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Chris made certain to ask the men gathered to discuss the most pressing issues of our time whether they’d support legislation permitting the Austrian strongman to run for president. No, Paul replied, adding that he’s a strong supporter of the Constitution’s “original intent,” which doesn’t permit aliens to run for president.

“Oh, God,” Matthews guffawed.

It’s just a little Constitution.

We don’t need to follow it all the time, do we?

Rudy got fear: Just in case the corporate campaign donors weren’t hearing what they needed from the televised debate, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani served it up in a nice big fat thought balloon.

“When you had this debate last week and all the Democrats were up here, I never remember the words ‘Islamic fundamentalist terrorism’ being spoken by any of them,” Rudy gushed.

“OK,” Matthews agreed.

“I heard it a lot tonight.”

In fact, had Matthews bothered watching his own network’s broadcast of the Democratic debate, he might have noticed that “terror” or “terrorism” was mentioned no less than 20 times. While generally declining to invoke terms not used since the crusades, Democrats, with the exceptions of Kucinich and wild card former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, understand corporate America’s needs as much as Republicans.

And what does corporate America need? For starters, how about the $2 billion per week the United States is currently spending in Iraq, according to the Congressional Research Service? A half-trillion dollars already has been spent, and estimates for the eventual total range as high as $2 trillion. The business of America is business, and war, as always, is good business, as long as you’re not the one who has to fight and die in it.

Scary Barry: Paul hails from the Barry Goldwater strain of Republican libertarians, a breed that in its heyday composed a formidable political force, until its bloodlines were diluted by the opportunistic Reagan revolution. Matthews asked Paul how he would reconcile this libertarianism with today’s geopolitical situation, and the former Libertarian candidate for president knocked it out of the park.

“Well, you do it by understanding what the goal of government ought to be,” he said. “If the goal of government is to be the policeman of the world, you lose liberty. And if the goal is to promote liberty, you can unify all segments. The freedom message brings us together. It doesn’t divide us.”

Truer words will not be spoken by a Republican political candidate this election cycle, and only by Democrats who are not concerned with winning their party’s nomination. That makes Paul, not John McCain, the Republican Party’s real maverick. No doubt there are many aspects of Paul’s political philosophy regular readers of this space will find abhorrent, such as his staunch stance against illegal immigration. But Republicans seeking a true anti-war candidate to get behind have found their man.