Tulsi Gabbard Is This Election’s Ron Paul?

(BuzzFeed)

There is no one else in the 2020 Democratic primary quite like Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, but there was someone in the 2008 and 2012 Republican primaries who was, and that is former member of Congress Ron Paul.

Paul ran the most visible message campaigns of any Republican in those years, a lone voice on the edge of the field railing against foreign intervention and the Federal Reserve. He attracted a network of enthusiastic grassroots support, and he was unwavering in his principles, even when they were unpopular.

They often were, enough to get him booed more than once on the primary debate stage — once in 2007 for saying that Americans wanted the troops to come home, and once in 2011 for suggesting that American military adventurism had provided a motive for the 9/11 attacks. He was also a highly controversial figure who dabbled in conspiracy thinking and whose connection to fringe politics dogged his campaign, especially when racist newsletters from the 1970s through the 1990s with his name on them were surfaced. Read more