God,
Some people just cant believe that Ron Paul has a following in the GOP itself. If you watch Fox, they treat Paul like some kind of interloper. Paul is for limited government and non-intervention. This is very old school Republicanism.
You mean like in the 1930's, when the GOP was keeping refugees from Europe out and insisting that Japan and Germany were not a threat?
Yeah, I'll agree with that. Since the early 1950's, though, he's as much an aberration on foreign policy as Lyndon LaRouche for the Democrats.
There are two Republican FP camps - the Reagan/GWB strong interventionist model, and the Nixon/GHWB pragmatic interventionist model. Noninterventionism is anathema to most Republicans.
Note I did say
VERY old school Republicanism, but after Bush/Cheney neo-conservativism has become less popular in the party, the non-interventionist view has risen again. Many see how foreign entanglements are expensive and dont get the results as predicted. And has been noted, Ron Paul is the original Tea Partier as he takes the argument against big government to its logical conclusion.
And in IA there is an additional factor in that Paul has been making a strong appeal to evangelicals with his pro-life messages and commercials with him talking about how many babies he has brought into the world and talking about being affected by seeing fetuses thrown into the trash. With evangelicals having no single standard bearer like Huckabee, Paul is also cutting into that vote too. Thusly he is able to break past the 20% mark.
Bottom line is that Republicans cant pretend that his message resonates with portions of the party, especially the more conservative IA Caucus going population.
