A Contrarian View of History and Events

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Not since 1939, when Winston Churchill’s lonely, defiant voice called the Nazis for what they really were, has anybody this old, been this right about something so dangerously missed by the rest of the public.

For the last decade, Ron Paul, a stubborn, ridiculed, white haired, Texas congressman, has been a persistent, irritating, lonely voice on the floor of the US House of Representatives, warning the nation about the imminent collapse of the American economy. And suddenly, like Churchill’s unheeded prophecies long ago, the disastrous tide of our own prescient Nostradamus of Lake Jackson, Texas is crashing down upon us.

Of course, comparing Ron Paul to Winston Churchill is comparing apples with oranges, or maybe apples with grapes, because Ron Paul hasn’t had his chance to do anything about it at all, but the comparisons so far are uncanny. Churchill was warning that, like it or not, the German’s were rearming, another war was coming and England better get ready.

Ironically, Ron Paul’s pleas have been the exact opposite. Different times and different circumstances have demanded a different kind of courage. We spend a trillion dollars a year unnecessarily maintaining our overseas world empire, the Texas congressman intones, and it has not only brought us to the verge of bankruptcy, but, even worse, it is also hurting us more than it is helping us, creating new enemies we don’t need.

The message of both men was, at first, treated unfavorably. Mr. Chamberlain had looked Mr. Hitler in the eye, had seen his soul, and had returned from Munich with “peace in our time.” People wanted to believe Chamberlain and they felt comfortable in their majority.

Likewise, when a Republican president ordered the invasion of Iraq, connecting it to 9/11, and Ron Paul rose on the floor of the House of Representatives to say we should stick to fighting terrorists and not start another, unprovoked overseas war, colleagues laughed at him. We were assured that the people of Iraq would be cheering in the streets. After all, Saddam Hussein was a bad man, another Hitler.

The world is full of bad men, Ron Paul pointed out. Pol Pot had killed three million of his own people, but five American presidents had served out their terms without so much as calling for a United Nations’ resolution condemning the man. African tyrants rose and fell without Americans dying by the thousands to police the continent. The cost of endless years of arrogant, international interference, Ron Paul pointed out, would someday reach a breaking point. The budget couldn’t handle it. His colleagues laughed. Iraqi oil, they said, would pay for the whole adventure and even turn a profit. American private companies rushed to line up for their share of the loot.

When a Republican president seized on the perfect political solution, don’t raise taxes, in fact, lower them, just print more money and in the process dilute the coinage, make everyone’s money worth less, only Ron Paul rose on the floor of the House of Representatives to condemn the hypocrisy. And he was hooted down for his trouble, by Democrats and Republicans alike. The GOP held him in special contempt. Democrats had raided the treasury for years, they said, now it was the ‘conservatives’ turn.

“But are we truly conservatives if we too raid the treasury?” He argued. For his trouble, the Republican leadership blocked him from early televised debates and rigged state conventions to keep his growing numbers from participating.

Like Churchill, Ron Paul has found himself estranged from many in his own conservative political party. Both men have experienced the wilderness. Both men have been marginalized and ridiculed by the media for their ‘alarmist’ positions. And both men have persistently spoken the inconvenient truth, even when theirs was a lonely, isolated voice.

When a new popular president and a new popular administration, in the name of an economic crisis, extended the corrupt cycle of electing and rewarding, opening the spigots of the US Treasury to preferred voter blocks, this time on the left, while punishing others, Ron Paul once more stood on the floor of the US House of Representatives and spoke against the tide of a vast majority.

“We need this new stimulus bill,” they argued, “or things will get worse.”

“But if spending got us into this crisis,” Ron Paul answered, “Why do you think spending will get us out of it?”

Or as Winston Churchill once remarked, “However beautiful the strategy, you should still occasionally look at the results.”

“What has changed?” Ron Paul asked Congress. And what is the difference between Wall Street greed that uses bailout money to pay big bonuses and cabinet nominees who “forget” to pay thousands of dollars in taxes? Why should executives from General Motors be shamed into parking their corporate jets while a new president, demanding belt tightening, picks up a new Marine One helicopter, costing more than his 747 Air Force One?

Slowly, inexorably, Ron Paul’s message is beginning to take. Members of his party and liberal media personalities, some who would have been the least expected, have begun to sense the danger. Conservatives are coming home, some ashamed, acknowledging that it was they, not Ron Paul, who had drifted away. Some governors and senators and television pundits are now mimicking Ron Paul’s message, even paraphrasing his exact words. There are Ron Paul look-alikes, such as Governor Mark Sanford. “He’s just like Ron Paul,” his supporters assure us, “only better.” Who’d have thunk it? It is now popular to be like Ron Paul.

But there is one last Churchillian comparison that remains unclaimed, one comparison that cannot yet be made. When the tide of war raced across Europe and the full danger of what Hitler intended for the world was seen for what it was, the people of Britain, even the political leaders who had once condemned and ridiculed him, soon called on Winston Churchill to rise up and lead them. He had seen something that they had missed and the people were demanding that he, especially, be called upon to help solve it.

And what about us and our times? Has fate and history conspired to bring us to this brink and leave us without remedy?

Today, hundreds of thousands of Americans are echoing the questions that the islanders of Great Britain were asking in their time of crisis. If superfluous spending and overseas arrogance has driven us into this financial crisis, if we are on the verge of The Second Great Depression, then shouldn’t we get help from the one man who saw it coming all along? The one man who risked exile and ridicule to call a spade a spade?

“Talent,” Goethe said, “Is hitting a target no one else can hit. But genius is hitting a target no one else can see.” America needs Ron Paul. And they need him soon. Before it’s too late.

(You can follow Doug Wead’s series on how Ron Paul can actually win, go all the way, do it, be elected and change the world, by signing up to follow Doug Wead on Twitter)

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Okay sports fans, here we go. As of now, who is the front runner for the GOP nomination in 2012? And the answer is pretty simple. Sarah Palin. She is not only the most likely to win the nomination, she is also probably the only one who could beat Barack Obama.

Actually, no one can beat Barack Obama. He will have to beat himself or a perfect economic storm will have to take him out. I’ll get to that but first, let’s talk about Palin.

Here’s what she has going for her….

1.) She is the front runner, which translates into money. And because the GOP primaries have been front loaded, with big states appearing early, the candidate with the most money will win the nomination. And while people are less likely to give this early it still gives her months and months to collect.

2.) She has name recognition, which also translates into money. It works like this. Your friend is having a fundraiser, a thousand dollar a pop. You get your picture taken with the candidate. Would you cross the street for a picture with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani or Sarah Palin? Most would pick Palin and that is why she will raise so much money.

And after most candidates get their money they have to spend it on name recognition which Palin already has. I’ll put it this way, your local news station in Iowa says, “We’ll be right back with the story of Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty’s visit to town.” Will you stay tuned? A Sarah Palin visit to your town will get more press. Name recognition begets name recognition.

3.) She is a woman and a “born again” Christian. 50.7% of the country are women and many of them saw a double standard in the media treatment of Sarah Palin. And 42% of the country claim to be born again Christians, many of whom did not take kindly to the attacks on her religion.

4.) The first contest is in Iowa, a state loaded with Evangelical Christians. This is where George W. Bush astonished the audience by saying that his favorite “political or philosophical figure” was “Jesus Christ because he changed my heart.” His debate opponents who chose names like Winston Churchill cried foul, Jesus wasn’t a political figure, what was Bush doing? But it was too late. (What George W. Bush was careful not to make public until all his lifetime of elections were over was revealed in a recent interview when he announced that he doesn’t believe the Bible is really true. Hmmmm.)

5.) The media and the public will be very reluctant to let Obama go. It will take scandal and economic collapse but we have already seen signs that both are possible. If that happens, they will not feel good about passing the White House onto a white male. The transition to a woman, in this case Sarah Palin, will be more acceptable.

Yes, yes, I know. Mitt Romney had money last time. And Mike Huckabee was a born again Christian who won Iowa. And Rudolph Giuliani was the front runner for a year. And all three lost the nomination. But that is oranges and apples and I will tell you how they are different and how Sarah Palin could dispatch them all tomorrow. And what about the Ron Paul insurgency? Tomorrow.

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President Barack Obama is turning out to be the most liberal American president since the liberal-conservative debate began in this country. President John Kennedy, for example, governed from the center left. The big debate of his administration was federal aid to education. Bill Clinton also governed from the center left. And he joined Governor Chuck Robb and others in organizing the moderate coalition that was the power in the Democrat Party at the end of the century. Lyndon Johnson was truly liberal but at least he partnered with Republicans and Southern Democrats on foreign policy. So this experience, a completely true liberal, a George McGovern in the White House, is new for Americans and coming as a bit of a shock.

The American people like Barack Obama. And they especially like the idea of an African America as president. It purges the land of so many demons and it has made American popular again in the world. But the move toward socialism, as Newsweek outlined in its last issue, is happening at breathtaking speed. And the opening of the federal treasury to pay off political debts is stunning in its transparency.

I was invited in to talk about all of this yesterday night on the FOX NEWS CHANNEL. Here is the link.

One example in particular illustrates what is happening.

Charitable Choice was signed into law three times by Bill Clinton. A bi-partisan congress liked it so much that they enlarged the bill each time. What it does is offer government subsidies to disadvantaged Americans who need social services that can be provided more effectively by the private sector. Say a young lady needs drug rehab and Teen Challenge can boast a recidivism rate six times better than the government program, then Charitable Choice will help the young lady get into the program. Or say that a young man in the inner city needs a job and a Catholic job training program has a stellar record of training and placement.

Well, Barack Obama is gutting the whole thing. He is introducing a “cannot hire your own” provision which means the Catholic program cannot hire only Catholics or Mormons, Mormons or Christian Scientists, Christian Scientists. They must hire atheists or gays or whoever applies. Of course, the program will lose its effectiveness, the very thing that makes it more successful than the government programs. So the programs will drop out of Charitable Choice.

Who is hurt? The hundreds of thousands in the inner city who lose their ticket out. And maybe some of the programs that have been caught in the middle of expanding to meet the need. For Barack Obama, this was the payoff to a coalition of atheists, gays and the ACLU, a way to punish the religious groups in their behalf. But it doesn’t really help the groups either. They don’t get anything out of it and it costs them a big chip. Everybody loses on this one, except the President. Good politics, I guess.

The point is this… Nothing like that would ever happen on Bill Clinton’s watch. He supported the program as did 90% of the Democrats in congress. Only a handful of the most liberal senators and congressmen ever opposed Charitable Choice and one of those was Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

Most Americans like Barack Obama and want him to succeed. His gracious and kind personality makes him a sort of Ronald Reagan of the left. But there is a big difference. Reagan governed from the right at a time when the American people were on the right. Obama is governing, at least in these first weeks, from the left, and the American people aren’t there yet. We will see.

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