Ron Paul: At Your Service
June 6th, 2007 by Michael van der Galien
An interesting article at the Washington Post about Ron Paul:
“Two days was not enough,” Jared Chicoine says, standing in the lobby of a Holiday Inn Express on the eve of Tuesday’s third Republican presidential debate.
Unshaven and dressed in a blue Ralph Lauren oxford shirt and khakis, Chicoine could easily pass for a hung-over fraternity brother. Instead, the 25-year-old is the non-drinking, nonsmoking New Hampshire campaign coordinator for Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.). That makes him the lone paid political operative working in a key state for a Republican presidential candidate whose candor has earned him plenty of buzz of late.
The presidential debates are the kind of spotlight every candidate relishes, and especially one like libertarian Paul, who isn’t exactly considered part of the GOP mainstream.
And Chicoine, with a true-believer’s heart, has arrived for these debates fresh from his honeymoon — all two days of it.
On Saturday, he married 19-year-old Kimberly Sutherland in a Baptist church in Woodsville. After the honeymoon in Jackson, he hotfooted here, his bride in tow. The two had planned the wedding last year, well before Chicoine got involved with the Paul campaign. But when your candidate’s got his big political moment and you’re his only man in the state, who’s got time to worry about honeymoons.
Barbara Hagan, a former New Hampshire state representative and mother of seven, said about Paul: “Ron Paul’s speaking to people like me. He’s an honorable man. He’s a hardworking man. I want my party back. I want my country back, and I want the U.S. out of Iraq.”
Chicoine about what he and Ron Paul stand for: “I like to think of myself as a Barry Goldwater conservative. When I think of the 1960s, I think of conservatism. People say, ‘Reagan, Reagan, Reagan,’ but what about Goldwater? That’s why I consider myself a paleo-conservative.”
And later: “I think [Paul’s campaign] should refocus conservatives about what it means to be conservative. We have to be about more than preemptive warfare.”
So, how did Paul do in the debate? “He’s trying to remind the party of what conservatism used to be. I think he did that tonight.”
I agree with that - I watched the debate in its entirety by now and have to say - whenever Paul could, he made his point. He tried to remind the Republican Party what their Party was once all about. Frankly, he does in many ways remind me of Barry Goldwater, although Goldwater, of course, favored quite an aggressive foreign policy.
It is quite amazing to see with how little Paul’s campaign has to get by compared to some of the other candidates. The good news? The ones who do actively support Paul do so very, extremely passionately. They believe in what he is doing and in his message.
It feels like Paul is a man with a mission: not the mission people like McCain, Romney and Giuliani have, which is to become president, but an entirely different mission altogether. Paul knows that he will never win the nomination, he simply hopes to influence people, he hopes to influence other Republicans and, by doing so, he hopes that the Republican Party will return to its (Goldwater) roots, whether he gets credit for the work he is doing right now or not, doesn’t matter to him.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 7:10 am and is filed under Ron Paul, Republicans, 2008 Elections. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
