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Who Killed Rudy Giuliani?
When Ron Paul leaves office in January, he will have been more successful than many of the legislators who spent decades maligning him. Paul’s ideas have gradually gone from marginal to mainstream, and his record shows how much even a single determined man of principle can do to change a movement. In foreign policy especially, the Texas congressman leaves behind a new generation of leaders, both libertarian and conservative, who challenge the disastrous bipartisan consensus.
A decade ago, only seven Republican members of Congress voted against the Iraq War—six congressmen and one senator. The number of conservative legislators who opposed the war was even smaller still, the redoubtable trio of Jimmy Duncan, John Hostettler, and Paul.
The other dissenters were moderate to liberal Republicans representing districts where George W. Bush and any policy he proposed—much less sending young Americans to die in a war of choice—would have been deeply unpopular. Lincoln Chafee, the only GOP senator to vote against the authorization of force, was the son of the last great Rockefeller Republican and easily his party’s most liberal member of Congress. Connie Morella of Montgomery County, Maryland represented the most Democratic congressional district held by a Republican.
Rounding out this group was the unpredictable Iowan Jim Leach and Amo Houghton, a New Yorker who voted with Democrats on many issues. While Paul, Duncan, and Hostettler all opposed the war from the right, the bare majority of antiwar Republicans opposed it from the left.
Small as this group was, its ranks would soon grow thinner. Morella was defeated in 2002, right after voting against the war, the victim of redistricting by Maryland Democrats. Houghton retired after the 2004 elections.
