I grew up in the Reagan years, and I was homeschooled back when it was illegal in my state. Yes, I had to hide from the truant officers because the state of Ohio would have arrested my parents for not sending me to public schools to be indoctrinated. I was brought up a card-carrying member of the Christian Right. Well, it worked. As a conservative Christian, I went out and voted Republican each election and helped put the Republicans in Congress under Newt Gingrich's leadership. Clinton safely neutralized, I could go back to sleep.
And then sometime in 2002, I woke up. I noticed the Patriot Act and really didn't like it. I realized I couldn't support any government that would perpetrate and try to cover up Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay.
It occurred to me that despite several years of Republican control of Congress, I couldn't point to a single federal law or act of Congress that represented my interests. The federal debt was skyrocketing under a Republican government.
I saw an increasing burden of government, horrifying fiscal policy, an evil man in the White House masquerading as a conservative and a Christian, and my fellow Christians and conservatives just blindly following the GOP.
Finally, I switched parties and became a Libertarian. While I had the dubious privilege of voting for Michael Badnarik, who disgusted me by marching in gay pride parades, I also got to vote for Ken Gividen for governor of Indiana, a much better man than either the Republicans or Democrats offered. I couldn't vote for George Bush under any circumstances, and I couldn't make myself vote for John Kerry.
Now, Ron Paul is running for president, and I can, with relief, switch parties back again. Paul is a genuine conservative with a back-to-basics message for disenfranchised conservatives like me. He's getting grass-roots support from the Republican base, and Independents and Democrats are registering Republican just to vote for him in the primaries. I haven't seen that since Ronald Reagan.
He's against the war, he's pro-life, he's against the U.N. and North American Union. He wants to abolish the IRS and Department of Education, and he's a 10-term congressman with a consistent voting record that is absolutely rock-solid conservative. Oh, and the mainstream media networks hate him.
With 70 percent of Americans against the war in Iraq, he's the only Republican candidate who stands a chance against the Democrats, because he's the only one that can draw votes from the "center," and he's the only one that can come across to a normal person as genuine and not a talking head.
His platform really speaks for itself. His positions on the issues and his credentials are perfect – classic conservativism like I haven't seen in years. Of the candidates from either party, he's the only one that can make a believable case that he would do his best to restore America to limited, constitutional government.
So, why isn't his name all over WND? Where's the your endorsement? And no, it isn't too early. Bluntly, no better candidate has or is going present himself.
Nathan