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With recent presidential impeachment proceedings as well as the insults flying between Republicans and Democrats in Washington, DC, many people may jump to the conclusion that the politicians of the opposing parties cannot work together on major policy matters and gridlock is at hand. Not at all, says former United States House of Representatives member and presidential candidate Ron Paul in a new, wide-ranging interview with host Larry King at the RT show Politicking.
While the partisan “vitriol” is easily observed, Paul explains that below the surface politicians of both parties are working to keep government abuses of power moving forward, with advancing a bipartisan foreign policy centered on intervention, including via military actions, a key component. It is “politics as usual,” concludes Paul.
While Republican and Democratic politicians in DC work together “on the big issues” like foreign policy and monetary policy, declares Paul, “right now there is a lot of vitriol out there because it’s almost a fight over who gets the power, who gets to make these decisions.” Yet, key ongoing government policies, notes Paul, “are not on the table for discussion.”
Further demonstrating the agreement among DC politicians of both parties below the surface, Paul points out that even in the midst of the recent presidential impeachment trial in the US Senate there was a pause to give bipartisan support to a budget bill advancing huge US government expenditures.
Just as Democrats tend not to complain much about Republican President Donald Trump’s “aggressive foreign policy,” including his decision to bomb Syria based on flimsy allegations of the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons, Paul notes that Republicans earlier went along with similar interventionist foreign policy actions of Trump’s Democratic predecessor.
Summing up the situation in Washington, DC, Paul, a long-time champion of libertarian ideas in American politics, laments in the interview that “policies don’t change” and “government is out of control, it’s out of control in domestic spending, it’s out of control in international spending, the military is out of control.” Hardly considered any more in DC politics, says Paul, is that the US government was supposed to have been designed “to protect the liberty of American people.”
