All right, y'all welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our first guest on the show today is James Ostrowski.
He is a trial and appellant lawyer and libertarian author from Buffalo, New York.
He writes for LewRockwell.com.
His blog is called Political Class Dismissed and that's also the name of his book that you can find at Amazon.com.
Political Class Dismissed essays against politics, including what's wrong with Buffalo.
Welcome back to the show.
How's it going?
Real good, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
It's been way too long.
I guess last time we spoke was on occasion of Ron Paul's run for president four years ago.
And we talked a couple of times about his electoral prospects and that kind of thing then.
And I was wondering if we could maybe do a little bit of that today.
It seems like the race is a bit different in a lot of ways and a bit the same in a lot of ways too.
And I just wonder what you think of Ron Paul's chances of winning some primaries and perhaps even a nomination this time around.
Well, last time I my position was that he would have been a very strong candidate in November, but had had a very tough time getting out of the Republican primary.
This this time's a lot a lot different for many reasons.
First of all, the many of his prophecies have come through.
He's been vindicated on many issues.
The country has changed.
We're in much deeper distress.
And people are more willing to look at a message of real change when when they're really in distress.
Also, the the cast of characters that Ron is up against, we're hearing about on every day.
He's really up against a bunch of clowns.
The strongest opponent, obviously, is Romney.
But Romney is the plastic man who has no beliefs and has no ideas.
And everybody pretty much knows that he doesn't even deny it.
And then getting beyond that, Kean is imploding and really had no ideas anyway.
Perry is already imploded.
Bachman's imploded.
Gingrich imploded like 25 years ago.
And I can't even remember who the rest of the candidates are.
So, you know, there's no expression.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Dr. Paul's been very lucky in the fact in who he's running against.
And I don't think people have really fully grasped that.
And I think it's obscure by the fact that the people who could arguably command Tea Party support are all divided among six or seven candidates.
But when that clarifies, I think Ron Paul will be in a much better position to be one on one with Romney.
I think he's really on that trajectory right now.
And once you get the plastic man one on one, anything can happen.
Yeah.
Well, OK, lots of things to go over there.
First of all, it's this is part of, I think, what you were talking about, how different the landscape is and the ideas in the country are.
You know, this always happens.
Same thing happened in the 1990s when the Republicans are out of the presidency, the party and especially the voters like to pretend to themselves that they care about the Constitution and freedom at all.
And we know that we that they absolutely repudiate that as soon as there's a Republican president with vigor and glee.
However, they've had four years in a row now of pretending they're constitutionalists and whatever.
So that's pretty good.
They're sort of warmed up.
They're in their full anti-government mode rather than their the way they were at the end of the Bush term was, you know, even if they didn't like a lot of things about Rudy Giuliani, they love that blood thirst.
And now that's not quite going over as well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Republicans, you know, mainstream Republicans, when they're out of power, they talk like libertarians.
And when they're in power, they govern like liberals with all the nasty things that that implies.
So, you know, you're exactly right.
But more and more people are finding out that there is that phoniness out there among these other candidates.
And I really although the media kind of likes to think, oh, it's the same old Ron Paul campaign is going to top out at 10 percent.
I think the landscape has changed in almost in almost every way.
And even the way Ron campaigns, he was four years ago, he was on Tim Russert.
And Tim was really at his throat, never laid a glove on him, really.
But it was a very hostile situation.
And, you know, Tim was trying to knock him out.
And he was on Meet the Press the other day with David Gregory is treated with much, much greater respect and given more time to answer.
And all the although he was asked a number of tough questions, handled them all well.
And really, it really was a great interview, one of his best in a long time, I'd say.
Yeah, I did a tweet.
I said, boy, I think he just might have won the GOP nomination with that, because when he when he can answer, you know, the toughest questions about the the radical elements of his platform and sound very, very reasonable.
I think he's at the point where he's got to be taken as a mainstream candidate.
All right.
Now, the other thing, when you talked about what clowns they all are, same difference as last time, too.
I mean, just if I could go through them real quick.
Giuliani was pro abortion and a liberal and was making out with Donald Trump on camera, whatever.
He's not acceptable to Southern Christian Republican types.
There's no way.
So he was dead in the water.
Duncan Hunter hated China too much.
So big business didn't like him.
Tom Tancredo hated Mexicans too much.
So big business didn't like him.
Mitt Romney's the plastic man that no Republican voter could be inspired really to support.
And then there was Ron Paul, who's antiwar and pro Bill of Rights.
So that counted him out.
And so basically, they were left with, well, I guess here he was in last place this whole time.
But the old standby is so-called war hero McCain and whatever.
And so he just kind of got it by default because of the terrible shortcomings that the other candidates had.
And of course, I mean that in a tongue in cheek way as it applies to Dr. Paul.
But now this time, if there's kind of the old standby to fall back on after we've excluded, you know, the pizza man who wants to raise everybody's taxes and Mitt Romney, the plastic man who and let's face it to Southern and, you know, maybe I'm wrong about this, but I don't think so.
Southern Methodists and Baptists are not going to let Mitt Romney on Super Tuesday in their primaries.
He can't win in the South, I don't think because of his religion and because they're bigots, not because there's anything particularly wrong with Mormonism.
And then let's see who else, like you said, who else is even running Rick Perry?
Apparently, I mean, I would have thought that he would have been the one to beat, but apparently he just cannot get in front of a camera that completely blowing it.
And Karl Rove hates him.
And so has the whole Republican establishment against him, too.
If there's sort of a John McCain character in this one, who's the default after everybody else's disqualify themselves, it may very well be Ron Paul, I think this time, Jim.
You're correct.
Now, they're going to they're trying to reanimate the corpse of Perry.
They brought in a Sharpie.
I can't think of his name, but I was was reading about it.
They brought in a real Sharpie consultant trying to get him going again.
But then he had that silly performance on TV that many of us saw on YouTube yesterday.
And man, it's just wacky.
He's just wacky.
So again, I really think it's going to come down to Ron Paul versus Romney.
And I don't see how any intelligent observer can say Romney is a lead pipe cinch to win that.
I don't see that at all.
I think he runs got a real fighting chance.
You've got some obstacles, obviously, some real opposition within the party from the neocon faction.
But as I said in a blog post on the Rockwell the other day, I think it all really comes down to the tea party people who favor a neocon foreign policy.
They're just going to have to resolve their identity crisis.
They're going to say they have to say to themselves, am I for a big government foreign policy or am I for a small government candidate like Ron Paul?
Those two are obviously contradictory.
And when they resolve that identity crisis, we'll know who the nominee is going to be.
Yeah, well, that's one thing that's funny about the electoral process in America is you never have that many choices.
And it's really just some kind of miracle that Ron Paul's been able to put his purist libertarianism in the middle of this process, where so often we're left with just two choices.
And when it comes to Ron Paul versus Mitt Romney, even with all of the Republican Party backing in the world, I just don't know how the primary voters could be expected to choose Romney over Paul.
But anyway, sorry, music's playing.
We got to go out and take this break.
We'll be right back with more with Jim Ostrowski.
Political Class Dismissed is the name of the blog and the book.
Go check it out.
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all, welcome back.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Jim Ostrowski.
He writes for LewRockwell.com and his blog is called Political Class Dismissed.
It's also the name of his book, Essays Against Politics.
I like that.
Not essays against this side or that, but just all of these guys.
That's my dream, is that one day Washington, D.C. or, you know, the white part in the center, at least, will just sink into the old swamp there and we'll all be free.
And then it'll be nobody's fault, right?
It'll just be a thing that happened.
You know, it happens to the Japanese.
They get hit by typhoons and stuff.
You know, it could happen to us.
Anyway, so we're talking about the race for president here, Ron Paul versus the devil incarnate as a few different guys here in the primary election.
And what I said before about Southern Republicans won't vote for a Mormon, I didn't mean to imply that all Republicans are racist, because that's certainly not true.
Just that racists are Republicans.
And when it comes to, you know, strange religions and strange skin colors and things, these people cannot be relied on.
Never mind political correctness.
They can't be relied on to be intelligent or thoughtful whatsoever about these kinds of things.
In fact, that's probably the biggest thing that Ron Paul has going against him, is that he doesn't hate and fear Muslims.
He doesn't hate and fear Iran and want to threaten war against them every day, which is, you know, step number one in being a Republican candidate for anything is to appeal to people's fear and bigotry.
Well, I can't disagree.
I think a lot of people supported some of the Tea Party people support Cain, because he is perceived as anti-Muslim.
Yeah, he said your city ought to be able to make it illegal for someone to build a mosque there.
Yeah, and in spite of the fact that he has not specified a single spending cut, a lot of people, you know, the whole concept of the Tea Party movement has been so confused and distorted.
It was really very simple.
It was about the federal government's too damn big and we don't like these bailouts, you know, specifically.
And sure, constitutionally limited government is in there too, but it was never about foreign policy and it was really never even about so-called social issues.
But so when you look at that's what the Tea Party movement is, how does Cain qualify?
It's just madness.
He wants to create a new tax and he's not calling for any spending cuts.
So basically it's the old supply side concept.
Look, we can have it all.
We can have all these liberal programs and we're going to play around with the tax rates and the beast of burdens are going to work harder and we're going to raise more revenue.
We can pay for everything.
And he isn't called for a single spending cut.
So it's just completely crazy that he would be considered to be a Tea Party candidate, except for those people who have smuggled in a lot of other issues that aren't part of the Tea Party agenda and somehow those issues override all the issues that are part of that agenda.
But the only true Tea Party candidate really left as a major contender is Ron Paul.
Bachman to some extent on domestic issues, but she's already self-destructed and she's not a serious candidate anymore.
So Ron's the only guy left who's a serious Tea Party candidate.
I don't understand.
I was at the first Tea Party rally in Buffalo.
I helped organize it.
I'm as Tea Party as they come.
And I really don't understand fellow members of the movement who can support somebody like Keynes.
All right.
Well, and one thing that we know about Ron Paul, too, is that he's in it for the long haul.
He's got enough supporters out here.
It's not Wall Street.
They're all bankrolling Mitt Romney and Rick Perry and Barack Obama.
But he's got millions of people who are willing to give him 20 bucks to keep this thing going.
You know, regular Americans out here in the real world.
And, you know, I just wonder, though, it gives them a great strategic advantage that the other candidates don't have.
The other candidates have to create some buzz and create kind of this artificial impression of a campaign.
And Ron's campaign is organic.
Wherever he goes, he came to Buffalo.
He had 700 people on three days' notice.
He has the donations widespread across the state.
So he can basically run a 50-state campaign and run it for the long haul.
These other people are trying to do kind of a blitzkrieg.
Oh, if I steal Iowa, I'll get my picture on time, and then I'll get some money from the bigwigs.
So he has that great strategic advantage of actually being a candidate with real support.
But could it really be that the form of the government, as outlined in the Constitution, with the way the elections work and the Electoral College and you know, the old system of law left over from 1787, could it really be that in this day and age, in 2011, that the people could actually use that Republican form of their government to really pick a candidate who's one of us and not bankrolled by Wall Street and Big Pharma and the military-industrial complex and whatever it is?
Because, you know, there's a reason we call it a one-party state, because it's been this way for more than 100 years.
Well, this is the first Ron Paul we've ever had run for president and say, you know, for intents and purposes, Obama and Romney ought to run together.
They're the same as each other.
You know, vote me.
I want to undo all of this wrong, you know?
Right.
Well, it's historic.
He really would be the first Jeffersonian president since Grover Cleveland, who came out of Buffalo.
So, right, we've had sort of a progressive liberal president for 100 years.
I've been arguing with people on the web, I don't even know what a conservative is.
To me, a conservative is just a slow-motion liberal.
I think conservatism is spent, it's basically dead.
Insofar as it's not libertarianism, it's basically dead.
So we've had liberal governance for 100 years, liberal in the big government sense, not the original true sense.
And Ron would be the first Jeffersonian president.
And, you know, I don't know what's going to happen to the country if he doesn't get elected.
I don't hold out a lot of hope, frankly.
So, you know, I wish I'd come up with the expression, but it's Ron Paul or not at all.
And I think a lot of people feel that way.
They will not vote for Romney if he's the nominee, and probably Obama will win.
I think we have to get that message out there.
If they want Obama out of there, Ron Paul is the vehicle.
Right.
Well, and, you know, this is the other thing, too.
What's most important to me is not, obviously, you know, any particular politician, but the state of liberty in this society I live in and the wars are the obviously the number one thing in charge, you know, deciding or we'll see.
It's the issue that all of our domestic, horrible domestic policies are based around our economic policies and all the police state, the nationalization, homeland security and everything else like that.
And if anyone but Ron Paul wins the Republican nomination, then he's going then Obama will be attacked from the right the whole time.
He's already trying to protect himself.
I mean, I'm not saying he's not a bloodthirsty maniac in his own right, but I'm just saying the way the system is set up is the right wing always attacks him for killing too little.
And so he has to kill more in order to look like a tough guy, Democrat and whatever.
That's the way their calculus works.
And if Ron is the nominee, even if he loses, at least Obama has to defend his warmonger position from a real peacenik for, you know, the three or four months of the of the general campaign after the two months or whatever of the general campaign after the election, he'll have to defend himself from what would be termed, I guess, from the left, from a peacenik attack.
And so that'll put all the pressure on him to try to say, no, we're winding this down and we're winding that down and that kind of thing instead of the other way.
Well, you're exactly you're exactly right.
Now, the whole left left right political spectrum is gibberish in my view, but a lot of people believe in it.
So taking that seriously, Ron, Ron can outflank Obama from the left on the war and create many, many problems for Obama.
I think you can outflank Obama on other issues like medical marijuana.
So he outflanked him from the left and the right simultaneously, which is something a pretty good military strategy to me for winning.
Yeah.
So that's why he gives Obama problems that no other Republican candidate can possibly give Obama.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it's funny, too, about like what you said about, you know, conservative is just a slow motion liberal, depending on how you look at it.
You could say that liberals are the former libertarians who abandoned liberalism and adopted conservatism, adopted the means of using state power to achieve all their so-called liberal ends.
That's why Gabriel Kolko called the progressive era the triumph of conservatism, because it was a conservative right wing banker plot to convince all the people who were just born hating people like that to be statists and to believe that they could somehow use their democracy to keep big business in check when it was a scam all along.
They just wanted to empower the state to use it against us.
And we see how well it worked.
Yeah, you're right.
And in the broad historical sense, the state is a conservative way to get things done.
And the original liberals like Jefferson came in and got got the state out of the way.
And then liberalism comes back and smuggles the state back into the formula.
But people are witnessing is 100 years of liberalism is basically on the verge of destroying the country.
And if it doesn't stop now, the country simply may not exist as we've known it.
And I'm saying that openly to people.
I don't care if people think I'm being alarmist.
I'm not alarmist.
I'm really not.
I'm just I think I'm a cool analyst of the situation.
I'm not the only one who thinks the country's on the verge of collapse.
Yeah, certainly not drastic changes, drastic changes forthcoming.
That's what I'm saying, too.
It's our last chance is right here on a silver platter, the best chance we could ever have.
And right at the time we need it the most.
It's right here for us.
Ron Paul.
Exactly.
And in fact, as long as I'm keeping you over over the break here or into the break, just a second here, too.
I wanted to ask you what you think about this revolution pact, because I don't know exactly.
Is it the Supreme Court decision about corporations or people or whatever that said that they can set up these super PACs to raise money?
Yeah, you kind of got me there.
I mean, we've always had PACs.
I think what the Supreme Court decision is being interpreted to mean is that there's no longer spending limits on it.
But we've always had PACs.
And I have no problem.
One of the gentlemen running for president, Buddy Romer, criticized Ron for having a PAC.
First of all, it's not his.
He can't coordinate with it.
He can't set it up.
It'd be illegal if he did.
So it's not Ron's PAC.
But I don't see any harm in having one, two, three, four PACs out there.
The more the merrier.
You know, the creative competition in the market of ideas is a great concept.
So people will think of ideas that the other campaign operation didn't think of.
So, yeah, I have no problem from what I've seen.
They're doing good work.
Yeah, yeah.
I love it.
I mean, it's Tom Woods and I forget who all else.
But in all the ads they've made so far, they at least give at least part of it to a real focus on foreign policy and how it's really not supposed to be this way.
And, you know, the typical Republican primary strategy is just run to the right in the primary.
But what makes Ron Paul so special is that he's Ron Paul.
And it seems to me like the very best ads are just, you know, look at how this guy inspires so many people.
Well, take the clips that inspired them and mash them together with some music.
And they're doing that.
They're doing good.
You know, I really like the idea that, I don't know, somewhere there's some, you know, second cousin of a Rockefeller with a fortune who actually believes in liberties willing to kick down a couple of million bucks for some ads, you know, can give way more to Tom Woods and the revolution super PAC than, you know, they can to the campaign officially, you know, they got a twenty three hundred dollar limit or whatever.
Let's get just all it takes is a couple of good.
And I know they exist.
A couple of millionaires and billionaires who made their money in the free market would like to have one, you know, to do the right thing.
So let's hope so, because apparently they're not really restricted on what they can give.
All right.
Well, I got to cut you loose, but I really appreciate your time on the show today, Jim.
It's very good.
It's always fun.
Thanks very much.
All right, everybody.
That is the great Jim Ostrowski, James Ostrowski.
Same difference.
Political class dismissed is the blog and the book essays against politics.
You can also find him writing regularly at Lew Rockwell dot com.
