Ron Paul

Politician Ron Paul represented Texas as a Republican in the United States House of Representatives in three separate stints from 1976 to 2013. He earned attention by running as the Libertarian Party candidate for president in 1988, and ran again as a Republican in 2008 and 2012. He built a reputation as a strict constitutionalist calling for small government, including the abolition of the individual income tax and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Paul also had a successful career as an obstetrician and gynecologist.

Early Life

Ronald Ernest Paul was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on August 20, 1935, during the Great Depression. The third of five sons born to Margaret and Howard Paul, he began working on his family's dairy farm at the age of five. After graduating from Dormont High School in 1953, Paul entered Gettysburg College. Working as a paper boy, landscaper and milk man, Paul was able to save money to pay his tuition. During his senior year at Gettysburg, Paul married Carol Wells. Following his graduation, he entered Duke University School of Medicine.

Paul earned his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1961 and completed his residency at Henry Ford Hospital and the University of Pittsburgh. He was then drafted by the United States Air Force. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he served as a flight surgeon in bases throughout the world, including Turkey, Ethiopia, Iran and South Africa.

Following the completion of his military career, Paul and his wife moved to Texas, where he became a practicing obstetrician. He has said that during that time, he regularly delivered forty to fifty babies per month in addition to conducting surgery.

Political Career

Paul first ran for Congress in 1974, as a Republican representing Texas. Paul ran against incumbent Democratic Congressman Robert R. Casey. Although Casey won the election by a large margin, he was soon selected by US president Gerald Ford to head the Federal Maritime Commission. Casey's appointment resulted in a special election in 1976, which Paul won. However, Paul lost the seat to Democratic challenger Robert A. Gammage in the next general election. Paul lost the election by only 300 votes.

Paul proved to be surprisingly tough on the campaign trail, despite being a Republican Party candidate during the Watergate Scandal, which centered on Republican president Richard Nixon. In 1978, he challenged Gammage for his seat and won. Gammage has admitted that the personal relationship Paul established with the people of the district through his medical work helped him to win votes. Paul was reelected to the House of Representatives in 1980 and 1982.

In 1984, Paul opted to run in the Republican primary for a chance to represent Texas in the US Senate. He lost, and having left the House to participate in the primary, decided to return to his medical practice.

Paul successfully campaigned for the Libertarian Party nomination for president in 1988. Although he was able to bring the Libertarian message of civil liberties and small government to a wider national audience, Paul found difficulty getting on the ballot in some states, and received minimal poll results in comparison to Republican Party candidate George H. W. Bush and Democratic Party candidate Michael Dukakis.

The notoriety that Paul gained during his presidential candidacy helped him to establish the Foundation for Rational Economics Education, a think tank devoted to promoting the Libertarian concepts of personal economic freedom, free trade, and isolationist foreign policy.

Paul returned to Congress as a representative for Texas in 1996 after winning an unexpected election victory against Republican Greg Laughlin. Laughlin, a former Democrat who had switched parties, had been expected to win the seat with the support of George W. Bush, then governor of Texas.

In 1999, Paul was one of seventeen congressmen to sue President Bill Clinton for not seeking congressional approval for US military action during the Kosovo War. Paul criticized the dismissal of the case as an insult to the Constitution. Representing Texas's twenty-second district in the US House of Representatives, Paul served on the Committee on Financial Services, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Joint Economic Committee.

Throughout his career, Paul also authored multiple books. These include Freedom Under Siege: The US Constitution After 200 Years (1987), A Republic, If You Can Keep It (2000), A Foreign Policy of Freedom (2007), and The Revolution: A Manifesto (2008).

In February 2007, Paul announced that he would seek the Republican Party nomination in the 2008 US presidential election. Following his announcement, Paul gained a dedicated and motivated group of supporters, thanks in large part to the internet. Political analysts noted that Paul's campaign developed an effective web-based marketing and fundraising system. An October USA Today/Gallup Poll listed Paul as commanding 5 percent of likely Republican voters nationwide.

Although Paul campaigned for the Republican Party nomination, his political philosophy remained vested in libertarian ideals. He strongly opposed increased taxes and increased government spending. He also opposed the proposition of a nation identification card system and the widely-debated USA PATRIOT Act, which allowed for government surveillance of people suspected of involvement in alleged terrorist activities. Paul believed that legislation related to abortion in the United States should be handled by state governments.

As the 2008 Iowa caucus approached, it became clear that Paul was the candidate who had found a way to make the most of Web-based fundraising. Using an extensive Internet-based fundraising network, Paul's campaigned raised $20 million in the last quarter of 2007.

Paul placed fourth in the 2008 Republican caucus in Iowa, earning 10 percent of the overall vote. In the 2008 New Hampshire Republican primary, Paul finished fifth overall, earning 8 percent of the vote. He finished fourth in the Michigan Republican primary with just over 6 percent of the vote. Paul finished second behind Mitt Romney in the Nevada caucus, earning nearly 14 percent of the total voting. He placed fifth in the South Carolina primary, earning approximately four percent of the vote. Paul also earned four percent of the vote in the Florida primary.

In the 2008 "Super Tuesday" primaries and caucuses held on February 5, twenty-two states voted. Paul did not win the vote in any state. Paul finished fourth or fifth in the majority of states, behind Romney, Huckabee and McCain. Paul did finish third in Utah.

Paul finished behind Mike Huckabee and John McCain in primaries held in Louisiana, Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia. On March 4th, McCain won the Republican primaries held in Vermont, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont. These victories confirmed McCain's nomination as the 2008 GOP Presidential candidate. However, Paul did not officially suspend his 2008 presidential campaign until June 13, 2008.

Paul published the book End the Fed in 2009. In July 2011, he announced that he would not seek reelection to Congress so that he could focus all his energy on another bid for the Republican Party Presidential nomination. He finished third in the 2012 Iowa Republican Caucus. Paul finished second in the 2012 New Hampshire Republican Primary, earning 22.9 percent of the vote. He finished in fourth place behind his GOP colleagues Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in the 2012 South Carolina Republican Primary. On Super Tuesday, March 6, 2012, Paul did not finish first in any of the ten states that held GOP primary elections, and he stopped actively campaigning. When Romney ultimately won the Republican nomination, Paul refused to endorse him, claiming that Romney was essentially identical to incumbent president and Democratic candidate Barack Obama in policy terms.

As he had declined to run to retain his House seat in order to run for the presidency, Paul left Congress in the beginning of 2013. He remained an advocate for his signature brand of libertarian-influenced views through several channels, including the foreign policy–focused Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, which he founded shortly after leaving office. He also formed the online media outlet Liberty Report in 2015. Paul did not run in the 2016 presidential election (he supported his son Rand Paul in the Republican primary), but nonetheless received a single electoral college vote thanks to a faithless elector in Texas. Paul also continued to occasionally stir controversy, including with a 2018 post on the social media service Twitter that was criticized for images seen as depicting racial stereotypes.

Personal Life

Paul married his wife Carol in 1957. They had have five children, including Rand Paul, who went on to become a US Senator from Kentucky. Paul and his family lived for many years in Lake Jackson, Texas. Paul appeared in several films, including documentaries about his political career and a cameo in the satirical mockumentary film Brüno (2009) starring comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

Bibliography

Doherty, Brian. Ron Paul's Revolution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired. Broadside Books, 2012.

Harkinson, Josh. "The Apostles of Ron Paul." Mother Jones, Jan.–Feb. 2008, www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/12/apostles-ron-paul/. Accessed 12 Dec. 2018.

Rink, Jason. Ron Paul: Father of the Tea Party. Variant Press, 2011.

"Ron Paul Fast Facts." CNN, 2 Sept. 2018, www.cnn.com/2013/03/07/us/ron-paul-fast-facts/index.html. Accessed 12 Dec. 2018.

"Ron Paul's File." PolitiFact, 2018, www.politifact.com/personalities/ron-paul/. Accessed 12 Dec. 2018.

Weeks, Linton. "5 Things You May Not Know about Ron Paul." NPR, 4 Dec. 2011, www.npr.org/2011/12/03/143008554/5-things-you-may-not-know-about-ron-paul. Accessed 12 Dec. 2018.