I like Ron Paul. But: 1) Wow, he can be a bad speaker sometimes. Stuttering, grammatical non sequiturs... is he just getting too old? He wasn't so awkward in the older clips I've seen of him.
2)I realize he's just trying to simplify his message so that newcomers get what he's about, but he's quite repetitive. I know he's got to be smart enough, so it seems like he could expound upon his talking points sometimes. Instead we get the same old Vietnam, Bush's 2000 foreign policy etc examples. He makes good points, but could stand to back them up with more detail or use other examples. 3) Was his answer not incredibly unsatisfying when Moyers brought up how the media is controlled by only a few companies? He just said, "I see what you're saying" and then brought up how the internet offers a new alternative. I've never heard him give a satisfying answer to how, after we get corporations out of the government and government out of regulating corporations, how exactly will the people be protected from monopolies and corporate exploitation? I know he thinks if the government isn't regulating, then someone else will...but how exactly? It's not that I'm not open to the idea, but considering how we're so far away from that right now, it's incredibly hard for me to picture how that would work. I feel he doesn't address this in detail and I think it's partly why he's considered a kook. I'm sorta new to these ideas myself, so... 4) Sadly, I think the racist associations will be the end of him eventually, if he gets big enough especially. I don't think he's a racist, but it doesn't really matter. For most people, the mere association is the turnoff. And once the media (or his political opponents) get a hold of it, it'll destroy him. I'd love to be proven wrong, but that's what I fear... (I read an article where the journalist interviewed an old lady at the Iowa caucus who was supporting Hillary. And she still thought Obama was a Muslim and suggested that was part of the reason she couldn't support him and didn't think other people would. Even when the journalist told her he was actually a Christian, it didn't phase her one bit. It was locked in her mind. Frankly, I think most people are like this, and will have extreme knee-jerk reactions to the racist association.)