Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, should give his opposition researchers a raise. In response to an ad from Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, that attacks Perry for supporting a 1988 Al Gore presidential run while reminding voters of Paul’s support for Reagan, the Perry campaign dropped this bomb: a year before Perry supported Gore as a conservative Democrat, Paul wrote a letter of resignation from the Republican Party that protested President Reagan’s policies.
In fact, Paul went so far as to write that “there is no credibility left for the Republican Party as a force to reduce the size of government. That is the message of the Reagan years.”
In the letter, Paul makes a series of attacks on Reagan’s agenda. In Paul’s defense, those criticism align with his current policy positions:
Of course, Paul is attacking President Obama for the same reasons today. He has been rock solid in his belief that the federal government is too big and spending too much, and that Republicans and Democrats have caused that problem for decades. But now he’s in the position of explaining how, despite Republican primary voters opinion to the contrary, he thinks that Reagan and Obama are alike.
Paul will have an especially difficult time explaining why he thought that President Reagan’s military policies produced “the inevitable result that we are less secure today.” “Today,” in the letter, being four years before the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Empire collapsed inward on itself.
As the letter concluded, Paul wrote:
You can’t accuse Ron Paul of being inconsistent. At least you couldn’t, but then he ran an advertisement reminding voters of his support for Reagan. To paraphrase Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Paul voted for Reagan before he voted against him.
