Under the previous post, one fellow asked the following question:

Question for you Ronites: OK, I get it. You love everything about his stands on every important issue facing our nation. But looking at Mr. Paul as a person – his record in Congress, executive experience if any, ability to work profitably and honorably in the great compromise that is Washington politics, and so forth – what makes you think he can govern?

If by some crazy chance he wins his first primary at some point, and then another, and another, resulting in both hell freezing over and the GOP nomination, and then goes on to best Billary or B. Hussein … after all the I-told-you-so’s from his true believers, I still see an ineffective President. A guy with Perfect Points of View on Every Problem, but who in the face of congressional opposition doesn’t get a thing done toward any of his laudable goals.

The following response, along with another response from a fellow Ron Paul supporter, is in the comments section, but i figured it would make sense to make it its own post. Here is in a nutshell my reason for supporting Ron Paul’s candidacy for presidency.

The point is that you can’t do anything about the poor state of our government if all you want to do is tweak the government as it is (which is seriously screwed up, and tweaking ain’t gonna cut it). The problem with the government is that people are treating it like an absolute government instead of the limited government that it is supposed to be. What’s the difference? The Constitution of the US was written in such a way that the federal government is limited to doing *ONLY* that which is explicitly stated in the Constitution and its amendments (cf., Tenth Amendment). However, our federal government thinks it can do anything that it takes a notion to do so long as it gets a majority in both houses of Congress and gets the president to sign it. Yet, there is still no constitutional warrant for the federal government doing lots of things, including, but not limited to, funding art (i.e., the National Endowment of the Arts), regulating education withinin the several states (i.e., the Department of Education and everything the Congress attempts to do about regulating education, especially “No Child Left Behind”), putting forward government insurance (i.e., Social Security and the property insurance for property owners in places that experience natural disasters), establishing a federal bank (i.e., the Federal Reserve), establishing federal police (i.e., the FBI), funding and subsidizing domestic businesses and foreign governments, and any other number of programs and activities the federal government engages in as a matter of course without any qualm. (Please note: i don’t have a problem with some of these things *IF* there were constitutional warrant, which is to say, 3/4 of the several states ratifying an amendment to the Constitution in order to authorize the federal government to engage in these things, but without constitutional warrant, they are illegal, even if they are almost universally accepted).

It takes someone who really understands and abides by the Constitution in order to bring us back to the point where our government really is “for the people and by the people.” And that just underscores the need for someone who isn’t a career politician to do the jobs in the Congress. It was through Parliamentary reform in England that there even *WAS* such a thing as a paid elected office. What that did was to give everyday, common men the ability to be elected to those offices, when they would have no means to support their families if they gave up their normal jobs to serve in Parliament. That same idea was carried over to our Congress and executive office. The point is that the people who make up the government *SHOULD* be ordinary citizens. Your assumption, though, is, for whatever reason, that the people who fill these offices should be career politicians? Why? Where does that assumption come from?

The truth is, you can’t do *ANYTHING* ultimately productive if you don’t have a proper foundation from which to operate. That’s true as much for our government as it is for the Church of our Lord Christ. People can have all kinds of ideas for lots of things to do, but if they do not comport with the standards in place (i.e., the Constitution), then they are useless ideas, illegal ideas, or, worse still, destructive ideas. So, Ron Paul’s candidacy may seem like a long-shot, but he’s the only person running in this race with the kind of principled leadership (and longstanding record) that can indeed lead us back to having a government based on the Constitution in truth, and not just in name.

At the same time, though, an “ineffective” president is a good thing–if you mean by “ineffective,” one who doesn’t get much done in terms of implementing new government programs and government spending. And, too, the reason many of us support Ron Paul is because he would have a very anxious veto pen (something our current president has no idea about). That veto pen would mean a curb on Congress’ spending and attempts to expand government–which is one of the reasons why Ron Paul is such an appealing candidate. Is he going to be able to return government to its proper limits in two or four years? Probably not. After all, it got the way it is over the course of 148 years now. You can’t undo in 4 what took 150 years to do. But, he will be a good start on the way back to our government being what it was originally intended to be if he is elected.

The final point is an important one. Ron Paul may not have, as my father said, a “Chinaman’s chance in Tokyo,” but my supporting him, giving money to his campaign and telling everyone i know about him is not so short-sighted as to end in February with no primary wins or even in September at the Republican Convention (because, even if Ron Paul only gets the handful of delegates he already has for his runner-up finishes, it is still possible for him to be the ultimate nominee; read about the 1880 Republican Convention and the way Garfield came to be the nominee); no, this is the beginning of a movement to see the government turned around. Ron Paul isn’t some sort of “Messiah”; he’s a servant of the people and a comrade to every other American who loves his country but is afraid of his government and wants to keep it in check. Ron Paul may not be the candidate to get elected, but he’s a pivotal figure in the overall, long-term fight to recapture what the federal government should be (not what it became after the War of Northern [i.e., “Federal”] Aggression, when the federal government actually believed its own propaganda to think it could do anything it wishes as long as they have the power to back it up).

I support Ron Paul *BECAUSE* i support the movement and the long-term goals we have as Paleo-Conservatives, not the other way around.

You don’t beat a dead dog. You don’t take aim at people who aren’t a threat. And you don’t make political attacks against people who are on the fringe and offer no threat to the status quo.

The trouble with people who talk straight about just about everything is that they are easy targets for people who like to use pull-quotes. The sad thing is that these attacks are coming not from the political right (i.e., Neo-Conservatives) but from the left (i.e., Neo-Liberals). The truth is that the left knows they can’t beat Ron Paul on the issues, so they must attack his character—and they must, at all costs, beat Ron Paul, because he stands for a complete and absolute end to their demagoguery, race-baiting, and victim-mongering. In other words, when people start to think for themselves, take care of themselves, and fight for themselves with the liberty God gave us, they’ll be out of a job. That’s the last thing they are going to let happen, and they’re willing to maitain their exalted place by any means necessary.