Unsolicited Advice For Ron Paul

I'm glad I never had to endure a primary election as a candidate, where you battle with those within your party, splitting hairs while making the case for yourself, often with negativity coming through in the process of showing difference.

But I'm a Libertarian, and the differences between one LP candidate and another generally comes down to nuance. Not so in the Republican primary. Ron Paul is vastly different from the rest of the field, which does only separate by nuance.

I'm not just talking the war. Paul stands alone as one who would shrink the size, scope, and cost of government. Huckabee and Romney have raised taxes as governors. Thompson and McCain have voted for outrageous spending.

So, Dr. Paul, I have some unsolicited advice for you: Promote your ecomonic points first and foremost, even to the near exclusion of everything else.

Why? First off, you have to win the GOP nomination. It's just too much to ask of the Republican base, the people who are voting delegates, to go from supporting George Bush through this misguided war to taking the opposite position. If the war remains your #1 issue, you cannot win the nomination. Yes, you've been invoking Bush's campaign stances on foreign relations circa 2000, but it scarcely makes the 6+ years since 9/11/2001 vanish.

Give these folks a chance to save face. If you make the Republican base remember the fiscal conservatism of their increasingly distant past, you could well win the darned thing. None of the other Republicans sounds even remotely like a fiscal conservative, and when comparing their records to yours, most of them look like Karl Marx. You are making great points about the need for sound money. Americans who hate facts and study scoff at the gold standard and discussions of anti-inflationary monetary policy, but it's hard for anyone to deny being worried about the fact that the US dollar is weaker than the Canadian dollar.

That point alone sets you up for winning the election post-nomination. There isn't a single other candidate who has been talking about sound money, and it is becoming evident to absolutely everybody that our economy is beginning to ring the bowl. Every candidate who has voted for massive spending and borrowing- which is to say, everyone else- is guilty of causing the problem. They are guilty of making the US dollar weaker than the Euro, and weaker than the Canadian dollar.

You will not alienate your supporters by talking up fiscal policy. Indeed, that's why many of us support you, and give you these increasingly worthless greenbacks.

You have to win the nomination. Iraq is a losing issue strategically, at least right now. Go with your suprior fiscal policies.