Arvin Vohra: Ron Paul, Rand Paul, and the Libertarian Party

Ron Paul has more courage and integrity than any other per­son I know of . He argued against the War on Drugs when it was at its height of pop­u­lar­ity. He chal­lenged the Fed long before it became pop­u­lar to do so; in fact, he almost sin­gle­hand­edly made it pop­u­lar to do so. He has fought against social secu­rity, the pre­scrip­tion drug sub­sidy, corn sub­si­dies, and count­less other pop­u­lar sta­tist boondoggles.

But, although he aggres­sively attacked Rick Perry and Newt Gin­grich, he never really attacked uber-statist Mitt Romney.

Ron Paul under­stood how prob­lem­atic the Fed was back when most of us thought it was essen­tial for eco­nomic sta­bil­ity. I doubt he sim­ply didn’t notice the sim­i­lar­i­ties between Rom­n­ey­care and Oba­macare, or Romney’s Key­ne­sian tax-and-spend poli­cies. Nor do I think that Ron Paul, who is about to retire any­way, would have been par­tic­u­larly afraid of any backlash.

I can’t pre­sume to know Ron Paul’s moti­va­tion. But I do know that there are cer­tain pres­sures that a man of integrity won’t ignore. He won’t ignore pres­sures on his moral­ity, his friends, or his family.

For months, the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment has been openly threat­en­ing his son, Rand Paul. In Jan­u­ary, nation­ally syn­di­cated con­ser­v­a­tive talk show host Mark Levin said, “If Ron Paul decides that he is going to go third-party…I will do every­thing in my power to defeat his son in Ken­tucky. I will do every­thing in my power to defeat his son Rand Paul in Kentucky.”

If that’s what the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment said on national radio, what were they say­ing behind closed doors?

I have no doubt that Rand Paul endorsed Mitt Rom­ney after a dis­cus­sion with his father, with his father’s encour­age­ment, and with great reluc­tance. His choice was to swal­low a dis­gust­ing pill and live to fight another day, or end his polit­i­cal career in the Repub­li­can Party.

Ever since I got involved in pol­i­tics, I have got­ten repeated requests to run as a Repub­li­can, and a few to run as a Demo­c­rat.. I have turned those offers down because I know that there is no future in it for me. I’m unwill­ing to attack gay mar­riage, to sup­port cor­po­rate sub­si­dies, or to pre­tend that abor­tion is the most impor­tant issue in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. (In order to be suc­cess­ful, Rand Paul has been forced to talk about abor­tion con­stantly, and pro­pose var­i­ous “Life Begins at Con­cep­tion” bills.) And I’m cer­tainly unwill­ing to back big-government sta­tists like Mitt Romney.

That’s why we need a strong Lib­er­tar­ian Party. The notion of “work­ing within” the Repub­li­can Party is ludi­crous. If the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment can pres­sure Ron Paul into for­go­ing attacks on a super-statist like Mitt Rom­ney, then what could they do to the rest of us?

Ron Paul ran as a Lib­er­tar­ian can­di­date for pres­i­dent in 1988. And if our party were bet­ter funded and had more clout, he prob­a­bly would have joined us for future cam­paigns, includ­ing his many suc­cess­ful con­gres­sional cam­paigns. We need to make the Lib­er­tar­ian Party stronger, so that Amer­i­can states­men will never need to choose between their prin­ci­ples and get­ting elected.

For that, we all have to work together. You can join the LP at https://www.lp.org/membership. Make sure to also join the LP face­book page at http://www.facebook.com/libertarians.

And join your state party (there is a list here: http://www.lp.org/states). We have great can­di­dates this year, includ­ing Gary John­son. Now let’s work together to get them elected.