Well it might help the government current accounts a bit. To save money you have to stop spending. But that would mean 100,000 sacked soldiers who will join the unemployed, no ammunition purchases or new tanks for said soldiers so arms companies start laying off staff. Sure, much much better to sack 100,000 soldiers than 100,000 nurses or road repair men, but even cutting back on this national disaster of spending on the military is also bad news for the economy.
I'm sorry but I think worrying over the economic impact on the Military Industrial Complex ending the wars the tax paying American public no longer support will have is probably the
worst reason not to do so I've ever heard. We're talking about organizations that have made unfathomable amounts of money in the last decade thanks
directly to our military engagements in the Middle East. Knowing they've gone from trillionaires back down to just regular ole' billionaires won't break any hearts here, I assure you. Also... when soldiers return from active deployment we don't
fire them.
Anyway, in spite of my sort of tongue-in-cheek assessment of Ron Paul's chances, DazedandConfused- we can agree the biggest upset at this point would be a Ron Paul nomination from the Republican Party, yes? In order for this to
really get serious, he's going to need to run from a starting position that isn't several hundred kilometers behind everyone else. In a head to head? Maybe... but one step at a time.
He needs the nomination from the Republicans because no third party Candidate has
ever won the American Presidency. The closest a third party ever came was with Roosevelt and he had been President before...
twice. Financially speaking, to be competitive with an incumbent President, he's going to
need the backing of one of the major political parties. At this stage in the game no third party is positioned to be a serious contender (if he were polling as well as he is from
that standpoint, it might be more realistic, but he's not- he's still gunning for the nomination at this point-)
A nomination it is extremely unlikely he'll get. So before the conversation drifts into democrats uprooting and voting for Ron Paul and what the Ron Paul presidency will look like, shouldn't the concentration be on
how he's going to get the nomination and the monumental detour that being relegated to a third party bid will mean?
So far as I can glean, there's no
plan for making a third party viable nor for salvaging his run after he doesn't get the Republican nomination. So far as I can tell there isn't really a plan for
getting the nomination which tells me he and his staff are aware of how unrealistic it is. So we're stalled at the gate; if we're really going to talk about a competitive Ron Paul, step one is the nomination. If they've given up on that as unlikely, step two is how to make a third party candidate a realistic alternative, and thus far I've year to hear anything on that subject let alone how it could possibly work.
Unlike
a lot of people I don't think Ron Paul is any more extreme (maybe more idealistic) than any of the other Republican contenders so I've no bias upon which to base an immediate dismissal of his likeliness as a serious opponent for Barack Obama other than the current state of affairs and his two failed bids in the past.
JSZ