Live Q&As

A lot of people, especially his followers, think Ron Paul is unfairly neglected by the media. And I think there's a good deal of truth to this. In 2008, he was not at first taken as seriously as he should have been. Yet as he built up support and raised funds, he got more coverage. The same is true this time around. Media interest in him is coming around.

Paul represents a real challenge to conventional political categories--some of his positions (on foreign policy, say) seem very left-wing while others are hard-right (getting the feds out of education). Journalists are, alas, less sophisticated than most people and tend to ignore people who don't fit neatly into a pre-formed boxes. I think that's part of the reason Paul gets less attention than he might.

The newsletter issue is a disturbing one. It involves newsletters and other publications published under Paul's name that contain virulently racist and homophobic language and depictions. The newsletters were brought to light in Jan. 2008 by a story in the New Republic and my own publication, Reason, published a story about the never-publicly-acknowledged authorship of the material in question. (The link is above).

The congressman has addressed these issues over the years and I think that most people feel it was a terrible and pretty heinous misjudgment on his part but also that the newsletters don't represent what he really thinks based on his legislative record and personal comportment.

Yes, I think so. His take on the Federal Reserve (he wants to audit it and possibly end it) was until recently seen as outlandish, but he's got strong support for his audit bill, where over 300 representatives cosponsored his plan a few years ago.

If the GOP presidential candidate gets drubbed in the general election, I think that establishment Republicans will take a long look at Paul as the guy whose ideas they should be following. To the extent the GOP did well in 2010, it was because they embraced a Tea Party platform that called for an end to spending. That's something Paul has been pushing for decades.

I don't know, but I suspect that he's for the humane treatment of animals but that's it's absolutely not a priority for him.

I think Paul's position on abortion shows the limits of certain types of federalism. He has said repeatedly that this is an issue that should be handled at a non-federal level--Washington, he believes, has no constitutional mandate to speak on this.

But he also regularly introduces the Sanctity of Life Act which would define human life as beginning at "the moment of conception" (not a clear thing, by the way) and has expressed support for a constitutional amendment that would do the same. Either of those things would effectively trump any state laws allowing abortin. So he would clearly work to end choice.

The upshot of all this from an electoral point of view is that it's highly unlikely that Ron Paul (0r any politician) will be able to effectively challenge basically full legal abortion for the first half of a pregnancy when virtually all abortions take place. TheAmerican people are uncomfortable with abortion in some ways but want to keep the option open to.

I was once at a conference where a guy argued that public schools gave rise to rock and roll--they were so bad and so boring, he claimed, that juvenile delinquents turned toward rock to pass the time. Which is about the best argument I've ever heard for public schools.

The data show that public schools are two to three times more expensive per pupil in real terms than they were around 1970. Yet graduating seniors are getting the same results on the same standardized tests. Schools are not worse than they were; just much more expensive.

One of the myths I debunked was that Ron Paul is "anti-military." Certainly he instills fear in what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. He's aware that the US spends about 45 percent of global spending on defense and military--and more than the next 14 countries! I think it's important to note that he gets more contributions from active military than any other candidate, by far.

If the nation's soliders, sailors, airmen, etc. are opening their wallets for a guy, his military stance is worth considering.

This is a good question. I think Gary Johnson was an excellent candidate who was extremely libertarian. And he had a great set of credentials---a two term governor from New Mexico, a state that has two to one Dems over Reps. It's a mystery to me, though I think some of it is the same problem Paul faces: He doesn't fit into received categories.

He's 76 years old but supposedly in good health. I don't think that will be an issue.

Regardless of Paul's fortunes in Iowa and beyond, I think libertarian-minded candidates of either party are poised to do well. They did in 2010, as Ron Paul's son Rand, now a senator from Kentucky, could tell you. If you're selling a message of reduced government spending and reduced government control over your life, you'll do pretty well in most places.

We're coming off a decade-plus of massive overreach by first the Republicans and then the Democrats. We've got nothing to show for it but death (in wars), debt, and disillusionment.

As I said earlier, the media prefer easy terms for everything. You're either for something or against it. You're a hawk or a dove. I do think that we as a country are tired of indefinite war waged for indeterminate ends and spending more and more on defense despite no super-power threats on the horizon.

In 2008, Paul's non-interventionist foreign policy was seen as bizarre. Today, though the GOP front-runners remain unreflective hawks, it's clear that Paul's take is a powerful and important one.

Ron Paul is a great messenger for the news that the drug war is a colossal failure. As a conservative Christian and a practicing medical doctor, people will listen to him when he says that people should be free to smoke, eat, and drink what they want.

National polls are showing that a slim majority of Americans think pot should be legal--not just for medical use, but for recreational use. Earlier this year, Paul and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) introduced legislation to end federal prohibition of marijuana. That went nowhere so far, but when pot is legal and a lot of drug-war-related crime disappears, we'll all thank Ron Paul

Let's say you believe that no one should pay any income tax and someone comes along and pushes a bill that will cut taxes in half. Would you refuse to vote for that? I think that's the analogy here. We're not going to get total free trade -- that is, an absolute rejection of any restrictions on trade among countries. To consistently vote against things like free trade agreements such as CAFTA rubbed many libertarians the wrong way because such agreements are broadly (and correctly) seen as a move in the right direction.

Obviously a Reason reader!

I don't actually encounter many Progressives or liberals who insist they are morally superior and I try not to be a raving evangelist for my POV (though I try to be persuasive). It's pretty easy to stress that outcomes matter more than intentions and that giving people more freedom in their personal and economic lives leads to better material outcomes.

Ron moves in mysterious ways!

Incidentally, this issue suggests one of the reasons NOT to limit campaign donations. Certain candidates will always have superior name recognition or visibility and one way to counter that is to outspend them.

It should be noted that Rand Paul's opponent had a huge advantage in that he was handpicked by Sen. Mitch McConnell, who carries a huge amount of clout in the Bluegrass State.

Irrespective of the object of their affections, true believers are annoying for the same reason: They refuse to see their guy or gal as flawed.

Personally, I wish that some of Paul's positions -- on immigration, say, and free trade -- were more in line with his philosophical beliefs. In theory, he believes in open borders but in practice supports restrictions until the welfare state is abolished. Well, immigrants don't come here for the welfare benefits and they clearly add more to the economy (and tax receipts) than they take out.

Rare among Republicans, Ron Paul has been a persistent critic of the executive branch's usurpation of constitutional rights when it comes to civil liberties. He was against this sort of stuff when Bush was in the White House and he's against it now. He was anti-Patriot Act.

That sort of principled stance has cost him friends on the R side of the swamp but gained him respect from those of us who don't belong to parties.

The civil liberties issue is a disturbing one, especially when you realize that 99 percent of politicians are only criticizing policies to score points.

I don't know that this will work, but here's a snippet about Paul's message from a 2008 Reason story by my colleague Brian Doherty (whose bio of Paul will be out in the spring):

He wraps up the speech with three things he doesn’t want to do that sum up the Ron Paul message. First: “I don’t want to run your life. We all have different values. I wouldn’t know how to do it, I don’t have the authority under the Constitution, and I don’t have the moral right.” Second: “I don’t want to run the economy. People run the economy in a free society.” And third: “I don’t want to run the world.…We don’t need to be imposing ourselves around the world.”

Read more at http://reason.com/archives/2008/01/03/scenes-from-the-ron-paul-revol/print

Paul argues that the problem is the lack of a free market in medicine. About half of all health care dollars are spent by the public sector and regulations covering insurance plans, Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs make it difficult for people to shop for and purchase insurance. Even more important, the price signals that drive other markets are almost completely lacking in medicine. He's persuasive, I think, that getting government out of health care and getting the market in would lead to the same sort of increased access you see in, say, food.

Here's a 2006 article he wrote on the topic.

I think the idea of anchor babies and illegal immigrants crushing our medical and educational systems is totally overblown (go here for lots on that). We need more immigrants, not fewer. And if the legal status is the question, let's make it easier, not harder, to be legal here.

Well, I guess they both want to be president.

But apart from that, it's hard to find two people with more distinct views of how the federal government should function. There's a lot of overlap between most Republican candidates and Obama. Does anyone seriously think that big-government conservatives such as Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney would govern much different than Obama has? Or that Obama has been much different than George W. Bush?

If you're into the GOP (and I emphasize that I'm not a partisan), Paul is the clear alternative to the status quo.