While I fully appreciate the late Speaker Tip O’Neill’s coined sentiment that all politics is local, I feel Whidbey Islanders have every equal right as Iowans to weigh in on the winnowing of national candidates vying for their party’s nomination for president, even though we caucus months beyond the Hawkeyes.

As we watch yet another aspirant tip over the apex of support and commence their roller coaster ride down the polls, far too few “not Mitt” candidates remain. Though the establishment press and politicians find it abhorrent to give a most consistent, charactered, and constitutional candidate a fair hearing, I am personally willing to inquire forthrightly about two concerns I hear voiced in honest discussions about Ron Paul, a very serious candidate indeed for an eclectic patchwork of Whidbey Island pro-lifers, Libertarians, Constitutionalists, non-interventionists, and college students.

First, how does Dr. Paul balance his 10th Amendment anchoring of support for unborn life at the state level with Jefferson’s Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God which endows the unalienable first Right of Life, directing a national protection of life from our exceptional nation’s inception?

With Dr. Paul having been used to deliver over 4,000 miracles of life into this world, I’m convinced of his appreciation of life – just not so much how he would go about protecting it as president.

Secondly, how does Congressman Paul square his military isolationism, specific to his recent debate exchange with Michele Bachmann regarding Iran, with the historic consequences of appeasement in the face of stated aims of destruction: i.e. Hitler.

A firm believer in a strong defense (“opposition to attack, violence, danger, or injury”) as a 20-year Navy veteran with sons in the Air Force and Coast Guard, I find Ron Paul’s non-interventionist passion somewhat appealing in lone opposition to the other candidates’ incessant drumbeat for war against Iran.

With honest answers to these inquiries, I am convinced that the Whidbey mosaic of Ron Paul supporters will spread, if the deafening silence on the one hand and the dismissingly arrogant “crazy” epithets on the other give way to honest and reasonable discussions that allow refreshingly dissenting views.

Tim Geist
Oak Harbor