http://www.concordmonitor.com/…
Ron Paul won the support of about half of the undecided voters gathered in a Manchester house yesterday, when he spoke about how he could save hundreds of millions of dollars by scaling back America’s overseas empire. But many left with concerns that Paul lacked the leadership ability necessary to work with Congress.
“How could anybody vote for somebody who could not describe one buck-stops-here leadership step?” she [Christina McKinley of Nashua] said. Earlier, she had asked Paul what experiences had taught him to lead.
“I don’t care how many wonderful ideas you have,” she said. “If he had demonstrable leadership experience, the door would have been kept open for me.”
Several audience members raised concerns that Paul sounded like an isolationist. Ken Murray asked Paul how involved America should be in the world, and was satisfied with his answer.
“He proposed open relations with all countries,” Murray said. “I wanted to hear that, so we weren’t walled off.”
But Murray was among those who remained undecided. Both Paul and Romney acted and looked presidential, he said. After Paul’s hour-long discussion, Murray would say only that he was “more inclined” to lean toward Paul. Sean Doherty, of Bedford, decided yesterday that he would support Paul over John McCain. He said that he had reservations, though, because he did not expect the Republican establishment to back Paul if he rose in the polls.
“I don’t think they’d support him,” he said. “I think they would depth-charge him.”
Across the room, Jim Sheehan seemed to symbolize Murray’s concern. Sheehan said that Paul was correct that we were headed for a financial collapse, but that he did not offer practical solutions.
“I believe in his ideas. I just think that they are not viable,” he said. “We have gone down the path too far to change, unless we have a total economic collapse. Then bring in Ron Paul.”
I’ll give McKinley that Paul doesn’t have a lot of leadership experience but how does one evaluate someone’s leadership ability? Does being the head of a successful business translate to being a successful president? Plenty of our presidents where from legislative positions. What would be considered leadership in those professions? Usually you get to well known positions through compromise of your principles. Right now that’s not really what we need. We need a strong direction for the executive branch toward stability and reasonable expenditures and let the Congress fight out the details to get there. Leadership is telling people how it is. Working with them to deal with the hardships that are coming down the road instead of ignoring them like just about everyone else does.
Then you have the complaints about the GOP not backing Paul. Well what would they do if he rose in the polls? Start backing the Democratic candidate? Create a new party? Not likely. If Paul does well than they will back him. People gravitate toward the winner (or perceived winner). Even if they do it grudgingly at first.
And for his ideas no being viable till after “total economic collapse.” Is this guy a sadist? I would rather try to stop the meltdown even if it hurts because prolonging the inevitable rarely results in less damage. We need to face facts and start working toward fixing these problems or else we are all going to be in deep shit and history shows those times usually result in larger government not smaller.
