Ron Paul on the D.L. Hughley Show

On Saturday night Ron Paul appeared on CNN’s news-driven comedy show “D.L. Hughley Breaks the News”. D.L. was very enthusiastic about Ron Paul’s views and could not believe he was talking to a Republican. Topics of discussion included Obama’s stimulus package, non-interventionism, the Civil War and Ron Paul plans for 2012.

Show: D.L. Hughley Show
Channel: CNN
Date: 3/7/2009

Transcript:

D.L. Hugley: I want him to keep his job, but since then Micheal Steele has apologized, which I hate. I think if you say something you mean you should just stand by it. What he said was, “I respect Rush Limbaugh, he is a national conservative leader, and in no way do I want to diminish his voice.”

I don’t understand. Why is name Steele? We should call him Aluminum, damn. He folded that fast. I don’t understand, so does Rush Limbaugh run the GOP? It seems like it to me.

Here now, to talk about the Grand Old Party is Texas Congressman Ron Paul. How you doing, Ron?

You see? It’s amazing. You are probably the favorite Republican of everybody that I know, man. You talk sensibly, you’re very reasonable. You’re very pragmatic in your approach. Can I ask you an honest question? Is Rush Limbaugh the Republican Party leader?

Ron Paul: Philosophically he has a lot to do with it, but technically no, he is not the leader. He is not the elected leader. But philosophically he is filling a void. I think there is a void in the Republican Party and somebody is filling it, but there are philosophic influences, and that’s what Rush Limbaugh does.

D.L. Hugley: Well, let me ask you probably a more direct question. Why do so many people insist on kissing his ass like that? Why he is so… you know, Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina apologized, Congressman Phil Gangly apologized, now you have the chairman of the RNC apologizing to him. I don’t think they said anything to him that was unreasonable. Why would they insist on…

Ron Paul: I have no idea. They’d probably would have had to have asked that as well. I can’t quite figure out all this excitement about this event.

D.L. Hugley: Me neither.

Ron Paul: Because, you know, in a way I just wonder about the Liberals and the Democrats wanting to help Rush Limbaugh so much. I mean, he is making a lot more money. But you know what I suspect is going on? And this has nothing to do with a conspiracy. But I think what they want to happen is for Rush Limbaugh to make a whole lot of money and then they are going to tax him and limit his income to about 250,000 dollars a year, and they’re going to put a tax on all the entertainers and we’re going to bailout everybody in the country and take care of all the poor people.

D.L. Hugley: Ay man, the work conspiracy is going to be used, let the black man do it, okay? I want to do it. But Rush Limbaugh does represent a pretty large segment of the Republican Party.

Ron Paul: I don’t think anybody knows the exact number, but I think I saw a poll that said maybe 11%, but they’re energetic and they know about it. But he doesn’t represent, you know, a lot of people involved with social values. He certainly doesn’t represent me.

D.L. Hugley: Now, Rush did say that he wanted President Obama to fail. Do you feel the same way?

Ron Paul: No, no. Not really. And I didn’t hear his exact words, but you know, if a person’s goal is to help poor people and take care and improve the world and bring peace, you want them to be successful. But if they want to socialize the country and nationalize everything… then no, you don’t want them to be this successful there.

But you can still support their goals and I hope they do, but I don’t want any authoritarian to be successful. I don’t want people to be successful in their foreign policy even if we go off to another war like Obama is doing right now in Afghanistan. You know, if you say, “Oh great, let’s have great success over there”, then he can go on to take on Pakistan.

D.L. Hugley: Thank you, Ron. We’re going to be right back. Next, we have more with Ron Paul. We’ll be right back.

We are back with Republican Congressman Ron Paul. Ron, you ran for president. When you dropped out you did not back John McCain. Obviously, you have some issues with some members of your party, right?

Ron Paul: Right, yea, when they don’t live up to their promises, you know. If they call themselves fiscal conservatives, and then they double the size of the budget and the deficit, then I can’t with a clear conscience support them.

D.L. Hugley: So you were against George Bush’s big spending too?

Ron Paul: Oh, absolutely. And certainly I was against his foreign policy and his violation of personal civil liberties. The privacy that he was invading and the secrecy of government… I didn’t like any of that. I am sort of an old-fashioned conservative that believes in the constitution.

D.L. Hugley: Now you also voted against President Obama’s stimulus package. Obviously you had reservations about that. Why was that?

Ron Paul: Well, I don’t think it’s going to do any good. Most of that money so far hasn’t helped the little guy. It’s going to Wall Street. If they would have taken all that money and just sent checks out, we would have been better off. I would like to get the money in the hands of the people. I don’t trust the government, I don’t trust the politicians and the bureaucrats because they bailout their buddies. What we want is to get more money in the hands of the people. That’s why if we just suspend the income tax everybody would get a pay-raise immediately. And there are still a few people that are employed, so this would be a big boost to the economy and the people make the decisions, rather than bailing out corporate giants and banks and then they take their money and they get billions of dollars worth of bonuses. It’s absolutely out of control.

D.L. Hugley: But Ron, okay, I too was against the bailout. But some aspects of the stimulus package I see, like as far as extending unemployment benefits to people, making those a little longer and things like that and other attributes of the stimulus package. I agree with some of those. But the bailout, I have to say, I was totally against that. I don’t think we should have bailed out GM. I could see how it was necessary to bail out some of the other banks but, honestly, what do we do then?

Ron Paul: You have to understand how we got into this mess. We got into this mess because….

D.L. Hugley: … because we spent like there was no tomorrow. We all spent like there was no tomorrow.

Ron Paul: Right. You know, we elected the Republicans to back off from big government and they doubled the size of everything, and ran up the deficit. So, we spent too much, we borrowed too much, and then we started putting pressure on the Fed, and the Fed acts on their own and they started inflating, i.e. creating credit out of thin air. They are the ones who literally caused the boom, and they literally bring about the bust.

You know, after the depression ended after World War II the spending went down two thirds and taxes went down one third and that’s when the depression finally ended in the late 1940s.

D.L. Hugley: Wow! You know, the amazing thing is that you almost… you don’t seem like a Republican to me that I have ever heard. You seem so reasonable. No, honestly. You really do. You seem to make sense, which I don’t attribute to very many politicians.

But the government does have to do something. I think we are very panicked. I think the electorate is clearly nervous. The government has to do something to lay their fears to rest, or we will never get on track, right?

Ron Paul: Yea, that is true. And we could if we had some sensible people here. And even though I am a strict constitutionalist, I don’t believe in most of these programs, I still have an interim set of priorities. I would cut 400, 500 billion dollars from oversees. I don’t think it makes any sense to blow up bridges in Iraq and then pay to rebuild them to no-bid contracts where the corporations never rebuild. I say spend all that money back here at home. We could save enough money by just changing our foreign policy, cutting down on our deficit and still take care of the people that we have taught to be so dependent. We spend over a trillion dollars a year maintaining an American empire, but nobody wants to give up on the empire, not even this new administration. They’re pursuing the Bush policies in the Middle East and they are not cutting back.

Yesterday I gave a speech on the house floor, and I literally bet that the troops will not be out of Iraq in 2011 because we’re going to have a big embassy, and we’re going to have 56 military bases, and believe me, that is very offensive to the people of Iraq.

D.L. Hugley: Ron, you are too human to be a Republican. Now, I was on Bill Maher about a year and a half ago or so, and you came on by satellite, and you were explaining about the Civil War and how it didn’t need to be fought. And I was at first like, ‘Is he saying that it didn’t need to be fought?’ But when you explained it to me, I thought it was one of the most pragmatic, reasonable things I have ever heard a politician say.

Ron Paul: Well, you know the other nations in the West that had slavery all got rid of slavery without a civil war. The motivation behind the Civil War had more to do than just the slavery issue. So we lost 600,000 Americans and there is lot of residual, probably some left over today. There is still residual. So you could have, with a small fraction of the money and no deaths, just bought the slaves, you know, and freed the slaves. That’s what Britain and some other nations did and that just makes a lot more sense than fighting a war and killing each other. I know I don’t like this war as a solution to our problems.

D.L. Hugley: I’ll tell you what, you make way too much sense. You can’t be a Republican. I’ll say it again. Are you going to run again in 2012?

Ron Paul: Well, I might be running from somebody or running for Congress… or who knows what.

D.L. Hugley: Thank you, Congressman Ron Paul, it was a pleasure man, a real pleasure. Wow! Well, next we will find out if Jesus was a Republican.