Presidential hopeful Ron Paul might not represent what his Republican rivals are touting this election year, but the Texas congressman says that he won’t budge on his own beliefs. In fact, says Paul, he wants to come to the rescue of the GOP.
"The truth is, I'm trying to save the Republican Party from themselves because they want perpetual wars, they don't care about presidents who assassinate American citizens, they don't care about searching our houses without search warrants and these are the kind of things people care about," Rep. Ron Paul told CBS’ Face the Nation program over the weekend. The libertarian legend has time and time again attacked topics on the campaign trail that his Republican Party rivals have left by the wayside. The extrajudicial assassination of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki and the National Defense Authorization Act, which he calls anti-constitutional, have become major talking points of the politician as he walks the road to the White House, although his right-wing competition has been few and far between in regards to tackling these issues. This reluctance to raise questions about US President Barack Obama’s targeted killing of his own citizens and his approval to essentially suspend habeas corpus by signing into law the NDAA are causing the collapse of the GOP, warns Paul, and he vows to continue vying for his party’s nod as the right’s last great hope.Speaking to CBS over the weekend, Rep. Paul also pursued an expedient end to the Afghanistan War, an operation the US veteran has long been critical of. "It was a waste, there's not gonna be a happy ending, and I think the Republicans have dug a hole for themselves because they're trying to out-militarize the president, say 'we should do more.' Yet 75 percent of the American people say 'we've had enough'," said the congressman.Throughout his tenure in Congress and while attempting a run at the president, Ron Paul has repeatedly attacked the GOP establishment for failing to offer not just a solution to America’s ongoing wars, but to the liberal ideologies embraced by President Obama. "The other Republican candidates offer nothing more than a continuation of a status quo or actually increasing the militarism we have around the worst, so I think that's a losing position," said Paul.Last month Paul told The Atlantic that both his right-wing competition and liberal-leaning politicians were practically on the same page as far as handling foreign policy in the US. On the topic of sanctions against Iran favored by President Obama and the GOP mainstream alike, Paul put down the attempt at collapsing any nuclear program overseas while at the same time showing how similar both sides of the political spectrum seemed to be in handling the issue.“And the worst thing the sanctions do, and Republicans and Democrats both support it and the other GOP candidates want war even more, the whole thing is there is a lot of dissension in Iran and we should encourage it by not interfering, once we get involve and threaten to bomb them, it becomes nationalistic – everyone joins the Ayataollah and Ahmedinejad,” explained Representative Paul. “So there is a blowback – unusual circumstances and unintended consequences.”Paul was campaigning outside of Washington, DC, at the University of Maryland last week. Nearly 2,000 fans came to support the presidential hopeful on the campus while the congressman continued to harp on an agenda of bringing liberty back to America.“Our goal should be to enhance liberty,” said Paul.“That should be what we’re all about.”