Why are People Afraid of Ron Paul?

I like to say that the only candidate that I ever voted for that I agreed with 100% was when I voted for myself when I ran for city council. (Unfortunately, I lost, both times.) In other words, I realize that there will never be any candidate out there that I perfectly agree with. What I try & do is find the candidate I best agree with.

From early on I found a lot in Ron Paul that appealed to me. Why? Because of his understanding of how our Constitutional system was intended to work & should work. & the more I listen to him, the more I keep hearing things that are direct quotes of what I say about how our Federal Government should function. The other day on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno he did it again, talking about our monetary policy & the fact that the Constitution requires our legal tender to be based on gold & silver.

During the Thursday night debate on Fox he talked about our economy & put in a good plug for the Austrian School of economics that I support.

Early on, the biggest problem I had with Dr. Paul was some of his followers. Some of them were, & are, flakes. Yet, I realized that the flakes weren't really representative of his supporters. & that was because some solid, anything but flakes, friends of mine supported him for the very reasons I found him appealing.

A few weeks ago the Des Moines Register called him extreme. I suspect that if our Founding Fathers were alive today & pushing for the Constitution to be ratified, they would say that it, & they, were extreme & that some things should be changed to make it less radical. By extention, the DM Register was also calling me extreme. Funny, but I always thought that respecting the Constitution made me middle of the road, not extreme. It was at that point that I knew I had to support Dr. Paul at the Iowa Caucus. Up to then, it was a toss-up between him & Gov. Mike Huckabee for who I was to support in the Iowa Caucus after Sen. Brownback pulled out.

I don't agree with him 100%. But he is strongly Pro-Life & honest about the way we need to go about ending abortion constitutionally. & as you know, Pro-Life is the overriding issue for me. If he wasn't strongly so, I wouldn't be able to support him.

Anyhow, here is his Tonight Show appearance from 7 Jan 2008:

& from last night's debate (10 Jan 2008):

It is interesting to hear how much support he had from the audience.

I don't know if he will win. I just know that like Alan Keyes in '96 & 2000, he is bringing issues to the forefront that need to be discussed & dealt with. & not be forgotten after the election like so often in the past.