I’ve gotten some pushback from folks who say that it’s wrong of me to focus attention on Ron Paul’s desire to make abortion illegal when there are so many others issues out there. I have two responses to that. One is to say that, obviously, any president needs to operate within a multi-part political system. The other is that according to Ron Paul, this is “the most important issue of our age”.
Stuck in Washington as Congress faces votes on continued funding of American military action in Libya, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, making his third bid for the White House, spoke via Skype to pro-life activists convening in Jacksonville.
“I talk a lot about right-to-life,” said Paul, who called it “the most important issue of our age.”
I respect that a great many people are frustrated with drug policy in the United States and are doubly frustrated by the fact that President Obama hasn’t stopped DEA raids on “medical” marijuana dispensaries in states that have used this route to create de facto decriminalization. The fact is, however, that most anti-drug laws and most drug law enforcement happens on the state level, and the President Paul won’t be able to repeal federal drug legislation without backing from Congress, which won’t happen. Like any president, President Paul will need to work with members of Congress and will need to set priorities. The abortion-banning movement clearly has a lot of support in Congress, and I think we should take Paul at his word that his top priority as president will be to work with those forces to try to ban abortions.
His desire to send the world economy into a new depression with tight money policies is also something many members of Congress back, as is his view that U.S. policy toward unauthorized migrants should become harsher. These, rather than big picture drug law reform, are the likely domestic policy outputs of a Paul administration. The good news is that he’d likely pursue a very restrained foreign policy for four years until the depression induced by his monetary and fiscal policy ideas led to a new administration.