[Not as a presidential candidate, but rather his value as congressional ally]
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/matt-stoller-why-ron-paul-challenges-liberals.html
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Matt Stoller: Why Ron Paul Challenges Liberals
By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson
and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can reach him at stoller
(at) gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @matthewstoller.
The most perplexing character in Congress, ideologically speaking, is
Ron Paul. This is a guy who exists in the Republican Party as a staunch
opponent of American empire and big finance. His ideas on the Federal
Reserve have taken some hold recently, and he has taken powerful runs
at the Presidency on the obscure topic of monetary policy. He doesn't
play by standard political rules, so while old newsletters bearing his
name showcase obvious white supremacy, he is also the only prominent
politician, let alone Presidential candidate, saying that the drug war
has racist origins. You cannot honestly look at this figure without
acknowledging both elements, as well as his opposition to war, the
Federal government, and the Federal Reserve. And as I've drilled into
Paul's ideas, his ideas forced me to acknowledge some deep
contradictions in American liberalism (pointed out years ago by
Christopher Laesch) and what is a long-standing, disturbing, and
unacknowledged affinity liberals have with centralized war financing.
So while I have my views of Ron Paul, I believe that the anger he
inspires comes not from his positions, but from the tensions that
modern American liberals bear within their own worldview.
My perspective of Paul comes from working with his staff in 2009-2010
on issues of war and the Federal Reserve. Paul was one of my then-boss
Alan Grayson's key allies in Congress on these issues, though on most
issues of course he and Paul were diametrically opposed. How Paul
operated his office was different than most Republicans, and Democrats.
An old Congressional hand once told me, and then drilled into my head,
that every Congressional office is motivated by three overlapping
forces - policy, politics, and procedure. And this is true as far as it
goes. An obscure redistricting of two Democrats into one district that
will take place in three years could be the motivating horse-trade in a
decision about whether an important amendment makes it to the floor, or
a possible opening of a highly coveted committee slot on Appropriations
due to a retirement might cause a policy breach among leadership.
Depending on committee rules, a Sub-Committee chairman might have to
get permission from a ranking member or Committee Chairman to issue a
subpoena, sometimes he might not, and sometimes he doesn't even have to
tell his political opposition about it. Congress is endlessly complex,
because complexity can be a useful tool in wielding power without
scrutiny. And every office has a different informal matrix, so you have
to approach each of them differently.
Paul's office was dedicated, first and foremost, to his political
principles, and his work with his grassroots base reflects that.
Politics and procedure simply didn't matter to him. My main contact in
Paul's office even had his voicemail set up with special instructions
for those calling about HR 1207, which was the number of the House bill
to audit the Federal Reserve. But it wasn't just the Fed audit - any
competent liberal Democratic staffer in Congress can tell you that Paul
will work with anyone who seeks his ends of rolling back American
Empire and its reach into foreign countries, auditing the Federal
Reserve, and stopping the drug war.
Paul is deeply conservative, of course, and there are reasons he
believes in those end goals that have nothing to do with creating a
more socially just and equitable society. But then, when considering
questions about Ron Paul, you have to ask yourself whether you prefer a
libertarian who will tell you upfront about his opposition to civil
rights statutes, or authoritarian Democratic leaders who will expand
healthcare to children and then aggressively enforce a racist war on
drugs and shield multi-trillion dollar transactions from public
scrutiny. I can see merits in both approaches, and of course, neither
is ideal. Perhaps it's worthy to argue that lives saved by presumed
expanded health care coverage in 2013 are worth the lives lost in the
drug war. It is potentially a tough calculation (depending on whether
you think coverage will in fact expand in 2013). When I worked with
Paul's staff, they pursued our joint end goals with vigor and
principle, and because of their work, we got to force central banking
practices into a more public and democratic light.
<end geeky part of post>
Second half of post is about the deep connection between liberalism and war -- what, following Dennis Perrin, we might call the savage donkey critique.
Michael