I know we have some Ron Paul supporters here, so here are some reasons to NOT like Ron Paul

[cascadiance]

11. Civil Rights he definitely sucks with. Civil Liberties though he has some winning points...

I want to preface this by saying that I am by NO means advocating for Ron Paul. The dangerous things listed here that he does support here make him even worse than the other Republicans here who aren't as strident on those issues as he is.

But we do need to acknowledge where his "strengths" are that he ropes these narrowly focused (and at times on only a single issue) voters that he attracts to get them to come to our side.

He also is strong about advocating that we restore more transparency to our intelligence agencies like the FBI and CIA, and put in place more protection for whistleblowers in these agencies as well as folks like those people at Wikileaks. Obama by comparison, with his poor record on using rendition, killing Americans overseas without due process, signing of the recent National Defense Authorization Act, and continuing Bush's habits of using State Secrets privilege to fend off civil lawsuits (which he might and perhaps likely will do against folks like Chris Hedges on the NDAA too) has put himself in to the position of giving us a tough time with Ron Paul voters that value that as well. And I myself feel that those issues are pretty darn important and wish Obama would get his head out of the sand with them.

Many of these young Ron Paul voters do see the value of the issues listed above as well as the transparency issue I list here, and don't really see the value of things like Social Security and Medicare, because they are swallowing the lies about them not being available to them later, and don't see the necessity of such programs yet at this stage of their lives in many cases.

We need to understand what goes on in their narrowly focused heads to help weed them out of those feelings. And where Obama is weak, we need to find a way to offer them hope with other people in the Democratic caucus and party (Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich, etc.) to show them that empowering Democrats (and putting more in power hopefully in this election that aren't Blue Dogs to take back the seats once inhabited by Blue Dogs and now occupied by tea party Republicans) will ultimately get them more what they want and not screw everyone in the process with other issues.