Thoughts on the Future

Doug Wead looks toward the future in his latest piece. The following is an excerpt, and you can read the rest here.

The fact is that a successful run for president is the only way to reform the GOP and the only way to take control of the party and the only way to get new congressmen elected.People will only get off the ground if they are shooting at the moon.They need the inspiration of a big dream.

Well, you say, the conditions were right in 2008. We had an unpopular war in Iraq and an unpopular president. And Ron Paul’s moment was great theatre.In one of my earlier blogs I compared it to the little boy who cried, “The Emperor has no clothes.” Ron Paul’s arguments were breathtaking. He was reading the collective minds of millions and saying publicly what they were barely able to admit to themselves, let alone to a spouse or a friend. It came as relief to find that these instinctive feelings, these unconscious worries, rested on a bedrock of principle that someone had been tending and fussing over for years. And when the debates ended, 32 million, grateful, dollars came pouring into the Ron Paul Campaign.

But to relegate the Ron Paul phenomenon to a lucky confluence of events, to say it cannot happen again, is to say it was only a parlor trick and never was an argument based on principles. It is to deny ourselves.

Indeed, the one big, frightening collective thought that has come to the Paulista nation in recent months is the reality of all that he and others have been warning us about. All those things they have been saying about the Federal Reserve and the house of cards of this global world economy are now upon us. If Ron Paul cannot get a political head of steam going in this environment then who can? And if not now, when the daily news confirms their prescience, then when would they ever be able to do it?

We who believe in the original American idea, or even some remote version of it, or ever believe in a free markeplace, must rally now, or forever resign from public life. What will we tell our grandchildren? We didn’t try because we didn’t think we could win? Shouldn’t the American people be given that choice? Shouldn’t the media be forced to confront it as well? Remember, our currently serving lame duck president is a “conservative Republican.” And he willingly “socialized” the American banking system to buy a few good days on the stock market for the Republican nominee.

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