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Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul (born August 20, 1935) is an American physician, author, and politician who has been serving as the U.S. Representative for Texas's 14th congressional district, which includes Galveston, since 1997. He is a three-time candidate for President of the United States, as a Libertarian in 1988 and as a Republican in 2008 and 2012. He is a member of theRepublican Party. He holds libertarian views and is a critic of American foreign, domestic, and monetary policies, including the military–industrial complex, the War on Drugs, and the Federal Reserve.
A native of the Pittsburgh suburb of Green Tree, Pennsylvania, Paul is a graduate of Gettysburg College and Duke University School of Medicine, where he earned his medical degree. He served as a medical officer in the United States Air Force from 1963 until 1968. He worked as an obstetrician-gynecologist from the 1960s to the 1980s, delivering more than 4,000 babies. He became the first Representative in history to serve concurrently with a child in the Senate when his son Rand Paul was elected to the United States Senate for Kentucky in 2010.[1]
As well as publicizing the ideas of Austrian Economists such as Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises during his political campaigns, Paul has also been an active writer on the topics of political and economic theory. In addition to contributing economic literature to the Ludwig von Mises Institute, he has written many books, beginning with The Case for Gold(1982) and including Liberty Defined (2011), End The Fed (2009), The Revolution: A Manifesto (2008), Pillars of Prosperity (2008), and A Foreign Policy of Freedom (2007).
Paul has been characterized as the "intellectual godfather" of the Tea Party movement.[2][3] On July 12, 2011, Paul announced that he would forgo seeking another term in Congress in order to focus on his presidential bid.[4] On May 14, 2012, Paul announced that he would not be competing in any other Presidential primaries, but that he would still compete for delegates in states where the primary elections have already been held.[5] At the 2012 Republican National Convention, Paul received the second most votes from the attending delegates.
Paul has served in Congress three different periods: first from 1976 to 1977, after he won a special election, then from 1979 to 1985, and finally from 1997 to 2012.
In his early years, Paul served on the House Banking Committee, where he blamed the Federal Reserve for inflation and spoke against the banking mismanagement that resulted in thesavings and loan crisis.[7][19] Paul argued for a return to the gold standard maintained by the US from 1873-1933, and with Senator Jesse Helms convinced the Congress to study the issue.[13] He spoke against the reinstatement of registration for the military draft in 1980, in opposition to President Jimmy Carter and the majority of his fellow Republican members of Congress.[20]
During his first term, Paul founded the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE), a non-profit "think tank" dedicated to promoting principles of limited government and free-market economics.[21]
Paul proposed term-limit legislation multiple times, while himself serving four terms in the House of Representatives.[20] In 1984, he decided to retire from the House in order to run for the U.S. Senate, complaining in his House farewell address that "Special interests have replaced the concern that the Founders had for general welfare.... It's difficult for one who loves true liberty and utterly detests the power of the state to come to Washington for a period of time and not leave a true cynic."[22][23] (On Paul's departure from the House, his congressional seat was assumed by former state representative Tom DeLay, who would eventually become House Majority Leader.)[24]
