A Gettysburg College alumnus dives into the race. He's a complete nutjob of course, but appears to be a man of principle. The nuttiness doesn't disqualify him for the Republican nomination, but I'm afraid the princple does:
MR. HARRIS: Congressman Paul, you voted against the war. Why are all your fellow Republicans up here wrong?
REP. PAUL: That’s a very good question. And you might ask the question why are 70 percent of the American people now wanting us out of there and why did the Republicans do so poorly last year. So I would suggest that we should look at foreign policy. I’m suggesting very strongly that we should have a foreign policy of non-intervention, the traditional American foreign policy and a Republican foreign policy. Throughout the 20th century, the Republican Party benefited from a non-interventionist foreign policy. Think of how Eisenhower came in to stop the Korean War. Think of how Nixon was elected to stop the mess in Vietnam. How did we win the election in the year 2000? We talked about a humble foreign policy. No nation-building. Don’t police the world. That is a conservative, it’s a Republican, it’s a pro-American, it follows the Founding Fathers. And besides, it follows the Constitution. I tried very hard to solve this problem before we went to war, by saying declare war if you want to go to war; go to war, fight it and win it, but don’t get into it for political reasons or to enforce U.N. resolutions or pretend the Iraqis were a national threat to us.
MR. VANDEHEI: Congressman Paul, Pete from Rochester Hills, Michigan wants to ask you this. If you were president, would you work to phase out the IRS? (Laughter.)
REP. PAUL: Immediately. (Laughter.)
MR. VANDEHEI: That’s what they call a softball.
REP. PAUL: And you can only do that if you change our ideas about what the role of government ought to be. If you think the government has to take care of us from cradle to grave, and if you think our government should police the world and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a foreign policy that we cannot manage, you can’t get rid of the IRS. But if you want to lower taxes, and if you want the government to quit printing the money to come up with shortfall and cause all the inflation, you have to change policy.
REP. PAUL: Well, you do it by an understanding what the goal of government ought to be. 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. I believe that when we overdo our military aggressiveness, what it does it actually weakens our national defense. I mean, we stood up to the Soviets. They had 40,000 nuclear weapons. Now we’re fretting day in and day -- night about third-world countries that have no army, navy or air force, and we’re getting ready to go to war. But the principle, the moral principle is that of defending liberty and minimizing the scope of government. And every --
MR. MATTHEWS: I’m sorry, we have to go on. We have to go on.
MR. MATTHEWS: We have Mrs. Reagan here. The camera will not focus on her, but I will tell you, it will now focus on you. Mrs. Reagan wants to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Will that progress under your administration?
REP. PAUL: Programs like this are not authorized under the Constitution. The trouble with this -- issues like this is in Washington we either prohibit it or subsidize it.
MR. MATTHEWS: Right.
REP. PAUL: And the market should deal with it and the states should deal with it.
REP. PAUL: Well, in my first week, I already got rid of the income tax. In my second week -- (laughter) -- I would get rid of the inflation tax, the tax that nobody talks about. We live way beyond our means with a foreign policy we can’t afford and an entitlement system that we have encouraged. We print money for it, the value of the money goes down, and poor people pay higher prices. That is a tax. It’s the transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to Wall Street. Wall Street’s doing quite well, but the inflation tax is eating away at the middle class of this country. We need to get rid of the inflation tax with sound money.
MR. VANDEHEI: Congressman Paul, Carrie (sp) from Connecticut asks, do you trust the mainstream media?
REP. PAUL: (Laughs.) Some of them. (Laughter.) But I trust the Internet a lot more. And I trust the freedom of expression, and that’s why we should never interfere with the Internet, that’s why I’ve never voted to regulate the Internet, even when there’s the temptation to put bad things on the Internet. Regulation of bad and good on the Internet should be done differently. But, no, there’s every reason to believe that we have enough freedom in this country to have freedom of expression, and that’s what is important. And whether or not we trust the mainstream or not, I think you pick and choose. There are some friends and some aren’t so friendly.
REP. PAUL: I am absolutely opposed to a national ID card. This is a total contradiction of what a free society is all about. The purpose of government is to protect the secrecy and the privacy of all individuals, not the secrecy of government. We don’t need a national ID card.
MR. MATTHEWS: Do you think Scooter Libby should be pardoned?
REP. PAUL: No, he doesn’t need a pardon. But he doesn’t need it because he was instrumental in the misinformation that led the Congress and the people to support a war that we didn’t need to be in.
REP. PAUL: I certainly would continue on my earlier theme that foreign policy needs to be changed. Mr. Republican, Robert Taft -- we have a statue of him in Washington -- he advocated the same foreign policy that I advocate. I would work very hard to protect the privacy of American citizens, being very, very cautious about warrantless searches, and I would guarantee that I would never abuse habeas corpus.
You know, I think I'd trust Ron Paul with the controls before I'd trust any of the other guys. That's frightening.
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