Romney and Paul on top in New Hampshire…Four more years of Obama ahead?

@Aqua, I do believe you know me well enough that the rhetorical questions I was asking were not directed at any one person, nor was a blanket characterization that *only* the young were Ron Paul supporters.

That said, the NH demographic shows that the older the voter, the less inclined they were to support Ron Paul. Given that historically, the young tend to be for social justice/welfare programs… which runs counter to Paul’s fiscal policies… I have to wonder what was the attraction for Paul. Or even if they understood Paul’s fiscal policies. Hence the rhetorical questions (not “claims”, as you mischaracterized, @playwithfire05… awesome /sarc) . Fact is, a true libertarian society would be one where the wealthy genuinely dominates the serfs. Or maybe they haven’t looked that far into a future of libertarian policies. I have… did my time as a libertarian for about five years. That was quite enough for me.

This dichotomy of what is traditionally a youthful outlook on social policies, and this attraction to Paul is curious. To date, I’ve not seen a definitive study of Paul supporters, but I have seen at least one article that interviewed seven Paul supporters in Iowa, ages 17-21.

What I notice on the generic “why” question, it was an echoing of Paul’s slogan and his self-described talking points … liberty and Constitution as the basis, and how he’s “consistent”. Not unlike listening to the OWS types – also many in the Paul camp – repeating the chants. It’s all pretty generic stuff, and there isn’t a conservative that doesn’t disagree that adhering to the Constitution and valuing liberty forms our core beliefs.

But that’s about as specific as Obama’s promises of “hope and change”.

INRE consistency, I don’t consider that necessarily a plus or minus. While it may be admirable if related to a core belief, it also indicates a rigidity and resistance to enlightenment that is a part of the learning process. Personally, Paul’s consistency – the campaign point he is driving into the heads of the receptive – is over rated, IMHO.

But getting to the meat of the youth support… if you wanted to use these particular seven (hardly scientific, but perhaps “enlightening”…. ) four cited his anti-war foreign policy. One cited states rights using drug legalization and gay marriage as the example. The remaining two cited less controlling government and civil liberties.

There is no doubt that Paul’s anti-war and military isolationist stance appeals to the young. It could be that the lib/prog message of the cost of wars being at the heart of America’s fiscal woes is a lie that has become truth to these youth. It could also be that they simply find no valuable reason for a nation to go to war. At least one of the commenters was honest enough to say he supported Paul because “he wanted to live”, and not ever be called up for war. Yes yes, we’re a volunteer army now… and going to be a gutted one whether under Obama or Ron Paul. But in the event of something the scale of WWII, that could change, as history.. that ignored curriculum… shows.

Leaving out the five that focus on the foreign policy/anti-war that conservatives like me find unacceptable, two share a concern for government size and control. That’s a common thread, but then one has to believe Ron Paul can accomplish a smaller government with today’s or tomorrow’s Congress. Nor is Ron Paul the only one on the stage with that attitude.

Fiscal policies weren’t front and center when they glowed about RP. Only three casually touched on it as almost an afterthought when responding to another question about what may concern them. The majority of them support a Ron Paul third party run, with only a couple hesitating about the wisdom of such.

At least one of them demonstrated they were clueless about Paul’s fiscal policies, saying his friends from wealthy families were not inclined to support Paul because his fiscal policies would not be friendly to the wealthy, while the less wealthy would find Paul’s policies more beneficial. It would be very interesting to find out just how these youth think Paul’s fiscal suggestions would affect the much bandied about “wealth gap”. So far, I’m getting the impression they believe RP can be a wealth equalizer without advertising he is a wealth equalizer.

Overall, what I got from reading not only their answers, but the ensuing (and extremely arrogant) comments from readers is that:

1: It’s mostly anti-war support

2: That he “knows how to talk to the young” because he’s heavy into FB and Twitter social media

3: That they still retain the traditional social justice mentality of the young

4: There’s extreme dissatisfaction with the status quo. Yeah, get in line on that one… and I’ve been around longer than this bunch to be dissatisfied. They’ve barely left Mom and Dad’s basement yet, and have little to no time as an adult. I am quite curious to find out how they have been abused by the status quo under these conditions… LOL But I’m no fan of even this 2010 midterm GOP House yet either… as Aqua points out in #55.

Other than a veto, i.e. for this continuining resolution, that would be over ridden by the same Congress who passed it, what’s a POTUS to do? Or are the youth not familiar with the Constitutional authorities of each branch?

I remember being 18’ish… a wonderful time when I knew everything in the universe as well, and all those ol’ folk were just jaded and stuck in their ways. LOL Not unlike then, what the youth love is the ideals that Paul expounds, without connecting such a libertarian utopia to reality and it’s own failures. That’s the benefit of *not* getting your “news and information” from twitter and FB, and instead from life, observation and history books.

@just me 95 noted that “it was the youth vote that propelled Obama to the 2008 win.” To that I can only say, and how’s that working out for ya?

The young decided they wanted to try something new, young, hip with an inexperienced community organizer with flashy backdrops and a good – albeit far from original – slogan of change. Their politics are fleeting and inpatient – rather like dissatisfaction with a garment that’s out of date that year, or tossing the 3G phone to get the 4G. They picked wrong in 2008, so now they think another radical change … removing the nation from the world as a military superpower… is the new revelation.

And it’s still based on soaring rhetoric, and a serious deficiency in history.

Paul’s not going to be able to get rid of the CIA, the Dept of Int, the EPA etc. In fact, the young interviewed didn’t want the EPA disbanded because they were worried about pollution… Sorta like they think Paul’s fiscal policies are going to be socially class conscious and not be friendly to the wealthy.

What Paul’s got going is the Obama campaign in 2008. Many chasing a dream, and generally too young and impressionable to know that what Paul can and would accomplish as a POTUS is far more detrimental than it is helpful. Paul knows very well he’d never get a cooperative Congress for eliminating federal agencies, or the Federal Reserve. He can’t toss Congress ratified treaties on a whim. He can’t pull out of the UN and int’l organizations if a veto proof majority of Congress want to appropriate funds for that purpose. In short, for Paul to accomplish what he’d like, he’d have to ignore the Constitution he says he reveres and over step Exec branch powers himself… just as Obama attempts to do.

But he can slash the military even more than Obama. He can choose not to allocate appropriated funds to the foreign aid (all still a drop in the bucket for our real expenses). He might even be able to talk a Congress into legalization of some drugs, using the tax revenues to help balance the budget. That is the reason he wants to legalize drugs, you know…. the money. Quite the different argument than decriminalizing it. Wait until those that want to buy their pot end up paying state and federal sales tax on it, and getting inferior product to boot. Of course, it will be too late for them to figure out they put their faith and trust into the wrong guy.

But then, that’s what most of us did when we were young. We loved adventure, the new, the drastic… and had little patience if it didn’t yield the results we wanted quickly.

@anticsrocks, just to correct your dates, Ron Paul’s “two good submarines” observation was not 14-15 years ago, but 4-5 years ago. The WaPo interview took place in Oct, 2007.

I doubt that Dr. Paul is either so dumb, or so honest as to tell people that he’d be slashing military forces and equipment. After all, if the man thinks a few good submarines would do the trick, and sees little reason for the US to involve themselves in wars being fought on foreign soil, why would he keep a large military around, draining the budget? Ron Paul would seek to balance the budget by whittling US military power down to “a few good submarines”, and legalizing drugs so he can collect the taxes.

I’ve been collecting info on the EMP dangers for a month of so now. That’s one of the issues that every one likes to use to paint Newt as a conspiratorial nutcase. But the EMP dangers, which could seriously damage large portions of our electrical grid for months, or even years, are not limited to just terrorists, exploding a nuke in airspace over a strategic US target city. There is also the wave of solar flares that are enroute to Earth.

This burst was detected last summer, and was one of the reasons the House Committee on Energy and Commerce actually agreed unanimously (for once) on spending to upgrade the grid. The sun is more active now than it has been in the past 11,000 years.

Both threats are real. Most enemy nations are capable, or close to being capable to delivering weapon exploding over our airspace. That is a man-made catastrophe and response could be difficult, if not impossible, depending on how widespread the outage and communications and location of the bomb. The sun is a natural event that can have the same effect as a terrorist attack.

Mata: That’s kind of interesting, just me 95. Personally, not a big fan of Scheuer myself…

just me me me sez: Promote yourself much, Mata?

??? That I state I’m not a fan of Scheuer, and haven’t been for over a decade, is about “promoting” me?

You’re a weird bird, “just me”…. ironic considering your chosen “all about me” cyber handle. I suggest you let your personal emotions and dislike of me permeate whatever reasoning abilities you might possess.

The reason I linked to my old blog is because that is where I had that article link stored in my bookmarks and I wasn’t sure if the original link was still good. So the excerpts were there.

So you linked to your blog which linked to a NYT article written by a Reuters opinion man, Bernd Debusmann… the very same Bernd who wrote a piece where he opined his regret that Chavez has not yet achieved socialism, another article where he hailed Chavez a ‘rock star’ and another article where he more or less predicted that America’s ‘gun culture’ was fading. Hmmm

…snip…

Seems to me you don’t like to actually vet those you hold in high regard.

LOL! By golly, we really have to slow down for you, “just me me me”. How embarrassing for you that my “screed”, as you call it, started by calling it an absurd article.

IHT’s Bernd Debusmann has one absurd article today, “Hypocrisy never makes for good foreign policy”. It’s mostly a story of Michael Scheurer, the former head of the “get Bin Laden” unit under Clinton, bemoaning the fact that US leaders – present and past – don’t understand the “whys” of the Global Islamic Jihad Movement.

Therefore you’re screeching at me about holding the author in high regard when I began my blog post pointing to the idiocy of the author, and his support of Scheuer’s anger about America’s foreign policy. As a matter of fact, the entire article is about Debusmann being an idiot.. and I used his support of Scheuer to demonstrate that.

It’s even more embarrassing for you that you are dissing and demeaning Debusmann when he agrees with you, and your hero, Scheuer.

Confused much? Or just have a reading problem?

Scheuer, like your hero RP, is a blame America first type person. He’s always been like that. The ol’ “it’s our fault we got attacked because of our foreign policy… because we had a US presence in both bases and embassies in the Middle East” story.

If you knew anything about the jihad movement, the World Islamic Front Statement, as well as Zawahiri’s 2007 interview on their quest, you’d know they want no US presence in the Middle East at all. Our western ways taint their vision of the Caliphate, and tempt Muslims with unIslamic ways. And those like Ron Paul and Scheuer think that if we comply – just wipe the Middle East clean of all things US and Western – everything will be hunky dory.

Your boy, Ron Paul is the same.

Idiots like Debusmann – who agrees with you in your affinity for Scheuer – think that the jihad movements will allow Islamic democracies to stand. Note that article is from 2008. It’s now 2012, post “Arab spring”. Instead of democracy, we’re watching jihad radicals like the MB seize power in elections. But then, they should have known. Hamas and Hezbollah did the same in Gaza and Lebanon, and those that do not know history are doomed to repeat it.

just me,  I find it ironic you can get all up in arms about my replies to you.  May I remind you that this entire conversation started out when you gave us the not-so-surprising revelation that Scheuer was supporting Ron Paul?

Well, of course he is… Scheuer shares RP’s “withdraw from the ME” mentality as the cure for the jihad war.  Where Scheuer has a quandary is that he considered UBL a “rational” kind of guy who was actually waging the real war, not with combat, but our economy.  Even Ron Paul, to my knowledge, didn’t consider UBL “rational”.  But RP’s economic policies, *most* (not all) of which I like… as I’ve said over and over.. will do nothing to protect the US from an enemy who chooses to use our economy as a weapon.

When I came back and said that I was no fan of Scheuer… and for the same reasons I’m no fan of Ron Paul…what do you say?

Promote yourself much, Mata?

Following that “Romper Room” response… which you began… you then piled on with stating you thought my choice of Newt (the best meatball in the bunch, IMHO) was bad, that I didn’t vett the author of my source (which I had called an idiot), and that I had composed a “screed”.

And you have the chutzpah to morally declare that *I* can’t  “debate without name-calling and haughty slights”.

LOL!

You began the insults, and since that happens quite often on FA, I didn’t have to look around to see if I was parked on the right URL.  It’s also no surprise that when challenged… most especially the Ron Paul supporters… the insults tend to fly.  Buck up, just me.  If you start denigrating the conversation into personal insults, I assure you that I can play in the gutter as well as anyone.  Not my favorite arena, but one has to become adept at even the low roads when talking politics.

So forgive me if I can’t feel guilty about your shock and horror when I mock you for your hypersensitivity, and play on the level of discourse that you, yourself, set.

BTW, if you want someone to be “inclined” to continue to read… and I always read links people with opposing views include… it would be nice if you actually provided one.  But I find it hilarious that whoever the author was of the mystery article, that he was attempting to portray Newt as having very little to do with the Contract of America, and even tried to elevate a junior House member, Santorum’s, participation.  (I suspect we know where that reporter’s endorsement lies…) Santorum was not a major player, but he was a supporting actor… as was over 300 House Republicans.

Part of the Contract was that House and Senate members were all going to present legislation within the first 100 days of the stated goals.  Santorum was not one of them sponsoring a bill (he had just moved from the House to a first term Senator that year).  As Speaker, most tend to stay out of the debates and floor votes while they hold that position.  But only those most naive in political history would attempt to portray Newt as a bit player in the mid 90s politics.  Like the man or not, you cannot be honest if you do not recognize his achievements.

As far as Newt goes, of course I know he’s not a perfect candidate.  It’s the reason I’ve been holding out quite a long time before thinking about any of the candidates.  For months I’ve not liked any of them with any passion.  And that remains true today.   That’s why I say we’re craving a steak, and the buffet is only offering us meatballs and hamburger.  It is what it is.

Everyone picks who they think works for them better than the others. Out of the meatballs offered, my pick is Newt.  I do that sans any particular passion… just resignation.   We know who you like, and that’s fine.  But we don’t need lectures about how you’re superior to the rest of us, who find too many things about RP too objectionable to support under *any* circumstance.