Ron Paul Ends Presidential Bid

Some of you might have heard that, yesterday, Congressman Ron Paul put an official end his quixotic bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

I'm a bit disappointed that he didn't follow through until the Republican nominating convention. I would have liked to see how many delegates ended up voting for him, although I expected only a handful. Still, it would have been fun to see.

Why did he not follow through until the bitter end? I don't know. I suppose it could be that he realized he was just banging his head against the wall, even with a paper campaign, at this point. Still, I can't help but wonder if the powers that be in the Republican Party let him know if he continued on to cause disunity at their convention, he'd become persona non- grata with the Republican Caucus in congress forever on. Not that he was all that well accepted as it was.

To his credit, he didn't endorse John McCain. I've always felt it looks so stupid when candidates run each other down during the race for the nomination and then endorse the person they told us wasn't fit for the job once that candidate gets the nomination. To McCain's credit, I don't remember him doing that when Bush beat him out of the nomination. I understood the two weren't speaking at that point.

Not sure if it's to his credit, or not, but Paul hasn't endorsed any other presidential candidates, either. I thought he might at least point a finger at some third party candidate he thought well of.

When I first heard he was going to make a big announcement yesterday, I figured he might be announcing support for the Constitution Party candidate. What's his name...Chuck Baldwin??? I guess not, at least not yet.

So now the campaign morphs into the Ron Paul Campaign For Liberty. Just what we need: yet another libertarian oriented educational organization, although I suppose the more the merrier. Whatever. I can't help but wonder if this isn't more about money. I haven't signed up to be a member of this one yet. I'll take a wait and see attitude.

As for who I'm voting for, I'm still in a wait and see mode to see how the Libertarian Party's candidate for president, Bob Barr, handles his campaign. If it looks like he's promoting a pretty much libertarian agenda, as it does so far, I'll probably go ahead and vote for him. If he changes course and it ends up being a plug for religious right Republicanism, or some such, I may just not vote.

We'll wait a month or two and see. Then, if I'm happy with Barr's campaign, he'll get a prominent link in my blog's side bar. In the meantime, both Ron Paul and Hillary's links have been removed, although I probably should have kept Hillary's up there.