The "Goldwater" Conservative

Ron Paul may be the last vestige of Barry Goldwater within the Republican Party. He is the only candidate willing to take a stand against all entitlement programs and regulations. He is the one candidate who makes liberty his principle platform. As such, he is objectively the most economically Conservative of all the Republican Presidential candidates.

Nevertheless, there has been a move by many Republicans, and conservative talk radio hosts, to attack Ron Paul and attempt to remove him from the Party entirely. Chris Wallace even had the nerve to ask Ron Paul why he is running as a Republican solely because Paul believes in a neutral international policy. This quite possibly could be the most dangerous action by Republicans in years.

Marginalizing Ron Paul is so disgraceful because the Republican Party has steadily lost Libertarian votes over the last decade. In fact, many lifelong Republicans became registered members of the Libertarian Party. They simply felt that the Republican party no longer believed in limited government.

After several years of the Libertarian Party being a secondary movement, however, Ron Paul realized that libertarians would never have a chance to get their message out on a national stage unless he registered as a Republican. In essence, he grew up and brought many libertarian voters back with him.

Overall, by registering as a Republican, Ron Paul allowed the libertarian platform to enter the debate on a National stage. Notably, this is something the movement had failed to accomplish for many years.

If, however, Ron Paul supporters continue to see this hatred spewed directly at them from the remaining Republicans, they may decide to move back into the shadows of the Libertarian Party once again. This would forever remove the “Goldwater Republican” from the Party, something thought absurd just thirty years ago.

So the next time you think it is prudent to attack Ron Paul because of his controversial stance on Iraq, just remember that it may cost the Party its most Conservative voting block.