Ron Paul's sketchy base makes reader suspicious

Publication Date: 11/27/2007

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

It seems lately that several people want to complain about the lack of coverage being received by Ron Paul in the Purdue Exponent. If the paper's coverage is portioned out based on the amount of votes they're likely to get, I'd say the Ron Paul coverage is about where it should be.

I don't know if I should be annoyed by the constant barrage of letters in support of "5 MILLION DOLLAR MAN RON PAUL," or terrified at his cult-like following. I wanted to like Paul at first, but unfortunately I can't. His ideas seem good at a glance, but his isolationist foreign policy simply unreasonable and foolishly naive. The same could be said about some of his domestic plans, such as eliminating the IRS; the sudden loss of 100,000 jobs might have a slight detrimental effect on our economy.

Most troubling about Paul, though, is the makeup of his supporters. It seems that ever racist, anti-Semite, neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier that inhabits the World Wide Web has to append "VOTE RON PAUL 2008" to everything they say. His campaign has received campaign contributions from rather unsavory figures (more here: http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/the_ron_paul_campaign_and_its.html). Unfortunately, Paul seems reluctant to distance himself from these characters, and in fact regularly appears on the talk show of raving lunatic Alex Jones. His

opposition of fictional entities like the North American Union and NAFTA Superhighway also cause me to worry for his sanity.

Many of the other candidates for the 2008 election certainly have their faults, but Ron Paul is no savior. His somewhat radical views and extremely radical supporters (small in numbers though they may be) make it hard for me to take him seriously.

Kyle Hagner

Graduate student