NY Times article -- worthy of full reading. Many quotes of note.

Ron Paul - Presidential Election of 2008 - Elections - Candidates - Republicans - New York Times

The Antiwar, Anti-Abortion, Anti-Drug-Enforcement-Administration, Anti-Medicare Candidacy of Dr. Ron Paul

NY Times article on Ron Paul includes: Alone among Republican candidates for the presidency, Paul has always opposed the Iraq war. He blames “a dozen or two neocons who got control of our foreign policy,” chief among them Vice President Dick Cheney and the former Bush advisers Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, for the debacle.

Other interesting quotes from the article (slight edits). Do read the article.

- Ron Paul is the candidate of many people, on both the right and the left, who hope that something more consequential than a mere change of party will come out of the 2008 elections.

- Ron Paul is particularly popular among the young and the wired.

- Spreading a message has always been just as important as seizing office. Politicians don’t amount to much. But ideas do.

- Power asserted by modern presidents has been usurped from Congress, and that much of the power asserted by Congress has been usurped from the states.

- Ron Paul's vision has won most favor from those convinced the country is going to hell in a handbasket. His message draws on the noblest traditions of American decency and patriotism; it also draws on what the historian Richard Hofstadter called the paranoid style in American politics.

Quote with a minor factual blunder: Paul grew up in the western Pennsylvania town of Green Tree. His father, the son of a German immigrant, ran a small dairy company. Sports were big around there — one of the customers on the milk route Paul worked as a teenager was the retired baseball Hall of Famer Honus Wagner — and Paul was a terrific athlete, winning a state track meet in the 220 and excelling at football and baseball. But knee injuries had ended his sports career by the time he went off to Gettysburg College in 1953.

The fact is, Ron Paul became a swimmer after that knee injury. Swimmers are athletes too, even at Gettysburg College! Later in life, Ron Paul would be a 'swim parent' to his kids. His son become a nationally ranked butterfly swimmer while growing up in Texas.

- Ron Paul was annoyed by the evangelicals’ being so supportive of pre-emptive war, which seems to contradict everything that he was taught as a Christian.” The religion is based on somebody who’s referred to as the Prince of Peace.

- You cannot fake out markets, no matter how surreptitiously you expand the money supply. Spend more than you earn, and you are on the road to inflation and tyranny.

The quote above is a good one to remember when thinking about local politics and the operations of the URA and Grant Street politicians.

- For Ron Paul, everything comes back to money, including Iraq. “No matter how much you love the empire,” he says, “it’s unaffordable.” Wars are expensive, and there has been a tendency throughout history to pay for them by borrowing.

- Ron Paul (in the US House) warned against the rewriting of banking rules that laid the groundwork for the savings-and-loan collapse of the 1980s.

- Ron Paul tended his own Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE) and kept up his contacts with other market-oriented organizations.

- A heavily funded effort by the National Republican Congressional Committee tried to defeat Ron Paul. The National Rifle Association made an independent expenditure against Ron Paul. Former President George H.W. Bush, Gov. George W. Bush and both Republican senators endorsed Paul's opponent. Paul had only two prominent backers: the tax activist Steve Forbes and the pitcher Nolan Ryan. Ron Paul won.

- Republican opposition may not have made Paul distrust the party, but beating its network with his own homemade one revealed that he didn’t necessarily need the party either. Paul looks back on that race and sees something in common with his quixotic bid for the presidency.

- Ron Paul has been elected to the US Congress three times as a nonincumbent.

- Ron Paul is a politician of prodigious gifts.

- Ron Paul votes against pork-barrel spending even for his own district. In a rice-growing, cattle-ranching district, Paul consistently votes against farm subsidies. Ron Paul votes against FEMA and flood aid, and the district is along the Gulf. In a district that is home to many employees of the Johnson Space Center, Ron Paul votes against financing NASA.

- A newspaper in Ron Paul's district generally opposed him for re-election on the grounds that a “lone wolf” cannot get the highway and homeland-security financing the district needs.

- Ron Paul is a very charismatic person. He has charm. He does not alter his position ever. His ideals are high.

- “So many times, people say to us, ‘We don’t like his vote.’ But they trust his heart.”

- Admired for his fidelity to principle and lack of ego. “He is one of the easiest people in Congress to work with, because he bases his positions on the merits of issues.

Just last night on a local blog I ranted a bit about how the folks on city council rely upon back slapping and back stabbing. They don't have much else to go on. The working together of the council members was part of a discussion because of the cat license folly.

If I was on city council, I'd hope to be easy to work with because I'd be one who, like Ron Paul, bases positions on merits -- not political personalities.

- Ron Paul is independent but not ornery. Paul has made a habit of objecting to things that no one else objects to.

Right on! (I know, ... I'm quixotic and ornery.)

- In October 2001, Ron Paul was one of three House Republicans to vote against the USA Patriot Act.

-- In today’s Washington, Ron Paul’s combination of radical libertarianism and conservatism is unusual.

- Ron Paul’s ideological easygoingness is like a black hole that attracts the whole universe of individuals and groups who don’t recognize themselves in the politics they see on TV.

- To hang around with Ron Paul's impressively large crowd of supporters in Manchester, N.H., in June, was to be showered with privately printed newsletters full of exclamation points and capital letters, scribbled-down U.R.L.’s for Web sites about the Free State Project, which aims to turn New Hampshire into a libertarian enclave, and copies of the cult DVD “America: Freedom to Fascism.

Humm.... Are all newsletters 'privately printed?' Are there public printed newsletters? Is the NY Times a private or public newspaper?

Humm.... I've passed out the DVD, "America: Freedom to Fascism." It went to those at Pittsburgh's BootCamp (PodCamp). It isn't a 'cult' flick. It is a documentary.

Humm.... I use exclamation points and capital letters.... !!!! and even HUMMs too!!!!

Only the NY Times would us "U.R.L." with periods between the letters. OMG, tt is a web address. Big deal.

Humm.... the Free State Project is what it is. It is New Hampshire, as is Free Talk Live.

Ron Paul is not a conspiracy theorist. But the elitists at the NY Times is sure to interview a bunch of them to get quotes about Ron Paul for a feature on Ron Paul.

- Ron Paul's campaign is a clearinghouse for voters who feel unrepresented by mainstream Republicans and Democrats.

Great ending. But, the article did not end there. The NY Times article went on to editorialize with smugness. Ron Paul can be the next president of the United States because more people are upset with American politics than not.